Let's Trade

Trading Places, starring the Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd is a not so traditional Christmas movie that follows Billy Rae Valentine, an unlucky con artist and Louis Winthorpe III a successful Harvard graduate as they become the subjects of a bet conducted by two immensely successful stock brokers. Mortimer and Randolph Duke bet that they could take someone like Valentine and turn him into a successful working man while at the same time turn a man like Winthrope into a criminal by switching the environments they live in. This movie is not a comedy just for the sake of being funny, it’s a movie that also gives a great deal of insight on social, economic, and class structure in our country behind all of its slightly risky jokes. Most relevant to this blog post, this movie does follow the most basic rules of Aristotle’s definition of Comedy. 

Relating to Aristotle’s point that Comedies must have a happy ending and tell the story of the rise of a central character, this movie does just that. Valentine works his way up from a struggling man who was out on the street begging for money to a man who was able to make a living for himself working a job that supposedly only men who were bred to succeed life could fulfill. Not only did the main character climb the economical ladder by the end of this movie, he brought others with him while putting down the people that tried to use him as a social experiment, giving this movie the happy ending the audience expects.

It’s hard to miss the question that this movie expects its viewers consider about our society. At the most basic level, this movie is about two men who use their power to disadvantage others for their own entertainment. At the same time, it shows the economic contrast of Black and White Societies in America while trying to answer the question of whether people who are “culturally disadvantaged” and grow up in poverty adopt certain behaviors like crime that keeps them impoverished and whether or not they can be changed by removing them from said environment. Any comedic work that allows for a further examination of how we live and interact with each other while being funny is a plus in my opinion.