'Trading Places'Film Review - Essay Example

11 December “Trading Places” Journal In the film, “Trading Places,” it is satirical because it is a film where a homeless man who works as a hustler crosses the path of a high class broker. Unbeknownst to them, they are part of a bet. The bet is designed by a pair of brothers in Philadelphia that try to conduct their own social experiment. The part of the experiment is to put two people who are socially in different classes and to see what would happen if they crossed paths or even had to trade positions.

The film satires the upper class by making a mockery of how uppity they are. In some ways it is brutal to the lower class citizens but it makes upper class people seem so snobby. They take things for granted that the homeless people do not. The upper class citizens have no idea what it is like to be homeless. The upper-class-level of wealth is glorified simply because two powerful brokers have taken power that they have and have used two people as pawns in their social experiment. The characters have a class consciousness because they both know that neither of them belong in the class that they have ‘accidentally’ been led to.

The whole concept of nature versus nurture comes into consideration. When they trade places, they become different people. It would be difficult for a white man to go to a lower lifestyle than he is used to though it would be quite compelling for a poor homeless man to all of a sudden have access to money and luxury. A sociological environment certainly comes into consideration when it affects who the person is and how they identify in class hierarchy.