The Representation of Race in Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd's Film Trading Places - Movie Review Example

The Representation of Race When exploring the representation of a contemporary media text such as EddieMurphy and Dan Ackroyds film Trading Places, there are many ways in which race is represented in terms of place in society, behavior and abilities. Although movies are generally seen as a means of escaping the everyday world to a few hours of fantasy, they can also have a profound impact on how we view the world around us, including our concepts regarding racial issues. However, it is also up to us, as the audience, to determine how we will interpret these messages. There have been several theories proposed regarding how race is represented in the media. To understand the concept fully, it is necessary to understand how media influences society, with examples from the movies Trading Places to illustrate these theories, as well as how society influences the media, again using scenes from Trading Places as examples. It is through the analysis of film that we can understand the values and ideologies emerging from our culture and gain a glimpse into how the powers that be define us, a sort of ‘single voice’ that works to promote the status quo or to effect social change. This ‘single voice’ typically belongs to those who hold the power and leaves very little room for differences of opinion. “Broadly speaking, the media exist in a very close, sympathetic relationship to power and established values. They favor a consensus view of any problem: they reflect overwhelmingly middle class attitudes and experience. Basically, this unfits them for an authentic portrayal of the black community and its problems” (Hall, 1974). More than simply speaking of the news or documentary forms of media, Hall’s ideas encompass the world of entertainment media as well. He indicates that even here, where the goal is supposed to be strictly entertainment, the media continues its long-standing tradition of reinforcing middle-class society’s concepts of the world. “Above all, the media are defensive about the sacred institutions of society – whereas black people most encounter problems in these sensitive power-areas: employment, public discrimination, housing, parliamentary legislation, local government, law and order, the police” (Hall, 1974). In order to appeal to the middle class, many of the films that come out of Hollywood tend to reflect the hopes and dreams of this class of society. This typically involves the concept that the lifestyle of the very wealthy is the only lifestyle worth having. It also reinforces the thought that it is only through hard work and struggle that one can appreciate this good life. Even films like Trading Places tend to underline the concept that only white men are able to achieve this status. The black man, and occasionally a woman, is allowed to enter this world only at the invitation and assistance of a white man. This type of portrayal reinforces the concept that black men are not capable of success and white men are not very capable of failure. As Hall (1974) makes obvious, even comedies that are merely supposed to entertain, such as Trading Places, can contain several unremarkable messages that serve to maintain and promote the existing power relations within society, representing the black man as a necessary failure. According to Hall (1974), the way in which race is depicted in the media reinforces a negative concept of race in society without bringing attention to the fact that this is being done. It does this, he says, by the way in which the media focuses reports and relates to the world. “The media tend to favor experts, privileged witnesses, middle men – whereas blacks are predominantly an out-group, outside the consensus.” (Hall, 1974). Because they are an out-group, they are not permitted to reflect their society in the way it should be reflected, from a true perspective and with a focus on what is really important or representative. Instead, they are required to either conform to the predominantly white male ideology of the Western world by adhering to its precepts or are kept quiet and behind the scenes. This means that the representation of race is not true to life, but is instead a fabrication based on the observations of outsiders or a focus on the eccentricities of a vocal, but not necessarily representative, minority subgroup. This means that only one aspect of society can be clearly understood while others, perhaps the majority, remain unknown. “The media are sensitive to middle class ways of life – whereas blacks belong to the skilled and semi-skilled working class” (Hall, 1974), making their dreams and aspirations significantly different from those of the solidly middle class, but never alluding to what those dreams might be. Within the movie Trading Places, this kind of ideology can easily be traced. The entire premise of the film follows the story of a white man who grew up within a privileged environment and a black man who has always lived on the streets, reinforcing the Western idea of the ‘natural’ societal structure. This structure is highly emphasized right from the beginning. The whole opening sequence works to indicate that only white men can enjoy wealth and privilege and only black men live on the street. While the white man sleeps in his richly upholstered bed with a sleeping mask to prevent unwanted morning light from disturbing his sleep, his butler prepares an elaborate breakfast consisting of the four food groups and a fresh flower in a vase on a serving tray brought to his room. Meanwhile, the black man wakes up in doorstep, struggling his way off the concrete and out from under the several layers of newspaper he used as a blanket while other black men stand in tattered clothing over a trash can fire, slowly heating up whatever their breakfast was on sticks. Those not lucky enough to have actual food to heat are seen to be drinking their breakfast from bottles hidden in coat pockets or paper bags. There are several other examples of how the Western stereotypes are reflected within the movie without really bringing attention to themselves. Within the men’s only club, the Duke brothers are served by a black waiter who looks a lot like the stereotypical black man in earlier films and there isn’t another black man in the room, certainly none of the other members of the club. The black police officer that participates in Valentine’s (Eddie Murphy) arrest is only allowed to be successful because he is in a working man’s profession and because he is willing to go along with what the other police officers say occurred. The police officers who arrested Valentine should have known that he was not attempting to steal the briefcase from Winthorpe (Dan Ackroyd) as they had just stopped him from panhandling in the street and watched him walk away. The police officers in the car also watched as Valentine turned around and accidentally bumped into Winthorpe and then tried to hand the briefcase back to him. Still, they chose to ignore the evidence of their own eyes in favor of what the white man was yelling. When Valentine is arrested for attempting to rob the payroll from Winthorpe, there is only one white man in the cell that contains six prisoners. This white man is portrayed as being such a backwoods, slack jawed individual, though, that he is only able to qualify as ‘white trash.’ Throughout the movie, the only time black men are seen is when they are downtrodden, struggling to survive and either homeless or just on the verge of being homeless, reinforcing these conceptions within mainstream society. At no point are black men shown to be possibly successful unless they are serving white people or have taken on a white man’s persona. This point is finally made when the only way Valentine achieves any kind of success is through the hand of a white man, Winthorpe, illustrated by the rapid fire instruction Winthorpe gives Valentine as they walk into the stock exchange. These racial stereotypes that reinforce the idea of the black man as incapable of blending into the white man’s world are further brought out into the open when Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd meet on the train to try to steal the orange crop report from Beaks. Valentine gets on the train wearing the very colorful traditional full length robe of Zimbabwe and presents himself as a very loud, very obnoxious and very self-absorbed individual. Winthorpe appears in blackface, another flashback to the old days of blacks in cinema, and joins Valentine in his crazy antics. However, it is also on the train that the play with stereotypes is made blatantly obvious. Coleman, the butler, appears in the train compartment as an Irish Catholic priest who isn’t necessarily all that pious nor is he all that sober. Ophelia, the prostitute/girlfriend of Winthorpe, shows up speaking with a Swedish accent, insisting she is from Sweden but is wearing lederhosen, a traditional costume of Germany, a fact that Coleman stumbles over as they introduce themselves just to make sure the audience understands the joke. This seeming contradictory action of focusing attention on the stereotypes being displayed begins to illustrate the important role being played by the audience itself in interpreting the movie. Although it had been proven by the Frankfurt School in the 1930s that media has demonstrable social effects upon its audience, further investigation into the theory in America illustrated why the idea of the media as an all-powerful straightforward tool for social manipulation was incorrect. It was determined that the audience itself had a lot to do with how information being presented would be interpreted. “The viewer came to be credited with an active role, so that there was then a question … of looking at what people do with the media, rather than what the media do to them. From this perspective, one can no longer talk about the ‘effects’ of a message on a homogenous mass audience, who are all expected to be affected in the same way” (Morley, 2005). This realization led to the development of Stuart Hall’s ‘encoding/decoding’ model of communication at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. This model suggested that the same event can be encoded and decoded in more than one way. “Messages propose and ‘prefer’ certain readings over others, but they can never become wholly closed around one reading: they remain polysemic (i.e. capable, in principle, of a variety of interpretations)” (Morley, 2005). This polysemic principle makes it difficult to correctly understand the message, no matter how transparent it is communicated. The introduction of screen theory brought the text of the media back into the discussion regarding how media affects society by focusing on the idea that the media, particularly the films coming out of Hollywood, worked to ‘position’ their audiences in a way that served to ‘fix’ them into a specific perspective. This again assumed that the audience was trapped into a single perspective, this time based upon the environment or ideology that the media itself invokes. As can be seen in Trading Places, this ‘positioning’ can also be easily decoded in more than one way, explaining why Hall’s theory of encoding/decoding remains one of the most prevalent theories in media study and makes understanding of how race is represented difficult to accurately judge. The opening scenes of a movie are ideal for establishing position and ‘fixing’ the audience in a particular ideology supported by the movie-makers. In Trading Places, the title credits are played against a backdrop that sharply contrasts the world of Winthorpe with the world of Valentine. The contrast between Winthorpe’s early morning routine and Valentine’s are described above as a means of reaffirming the preconceived notions of white men as rich and black men as living on the street. Not only does this scene establish the preferable lifestyle, it emphasizes who is entitled to such a lifestyle and demonstrates the impossibility of a black man like Valentine’s ever achieving such a position. This same opening scene, though, could be interpreted as a slap in the face of the wealthy elite. This depiction of Winthorpe living in pampered luxury shows him to be completely incapable of taking care of himself, unable to sleep with the tiniest notion of light and utterly unable to see life from another perspective. In these terms, the representation of the white man is one of complete helplessness and gross self-indulgence. By contrast, Valentine’s world is full of resiliency, resourcefulness, creativity and self-sufficiency despite overwhelming hardship, indicating the black race is better equipped and more compassionate than his white brethren. The other scenes discussed above can also be interpreted in different ways depending upon how this opening scene is decoded by its viewing audience. If the second view is taken, that of the black man as being better skilled at self-preservation, it can be seen that the black servant at the gentleman’s club has nevertheless found his way through doors that have obviously been barred to black men. He is also confident enough in his position to risk sarcasm to the club’s more prominent members when the Dukes provide him with a Christmas bonus of $5. The black police officer can be seen as an authority figure as well as a direct refutation of the concept of black man equals thief and scoundrel. The men that share the prison cell with Valentine are not given specific crimes that have landed them in the jailhouse and some are even seen the night when Valentine is released, indicating perhaps the charges against them were not valid either. The individual that approaches the movie from this perspective is able to also pick up on the concepts that it is Valentine who emerges as the stronger of the two characters. While Valentine quickly catches on to the nature of the brokerage business successfully enough to make a name for himself in a very short time, Winthorpe requires the help of a woman to struggle through his adjustment period, another message for another discussion. It is also Valentine who discovers the experiment being conducted by the Duke brothers, successfully tracks down Winthorpe and suggests an appropriate and legal means of both retaliating against the Dukes and retaining the lifestyle both he and Winthorpe desire. For those who were not able to clue in to these concepts, the scene on the train in which stereotypes are brought so blatantly to the forefront should give them cause to sit up and take notice, to laugh at themselves for allowing themselves to fall into the standard middle class interpretation of social structure. However, again, it falls to the audience itself to carry this generalization of white stereotypes regarding Ophelia and Coleman’s costumes to include the generalizations that have been made thus far regarding the role of the black man, taking us full circle. Therefore, while it can be shown that films such as Trading Places can work in many ways to reinforce and help define prevailing society’s concept of race and social structure by the way in which it chooses to represent it, it also requires the interaction of the audience to bring these aspects of the film into play. “The mass media play a crucial role in defining the problems and issues of public concern. They are the main channels of public discourse in our segregated society. They transmit stereotypes of one group to other groups. They attach feelings and emotions to problems. They set the terms in which problems are defined as ‘central’ or ‘marginal’” (Hall, 1974). Yet it takes a perceptive audience to key in to these representations and to choose the message they feel the representation is attempting to portray. To indicate that the text of the film is of primary importance in establishing the prevailing views of society regarding race and the way it should be represented is irresponsible because of the various ways in which human beings, coming from different backgrounds and experiences, can interpret the same event. But it is also irresponsible to deny that the representation of race within films like Trading Places has little or no impact on the way in which society views race, its available or appropriate positions in society and the inherent abilities and weaknesses associated with a particular skin color. Instead, it should be understood that the representation of race within films like Trading Places can serve to either confirm or refute the prevailing societal view depending upon how the audience interprets the images and messages that are being sent. References Hall, Stuart. (1974). “Black Men, White Media.” Savacou, Journal of the Caribbean Artists’ Movement. Vol. 9/10. Cited in “Revealed: How UK Media Fueled Race Prejudice.” (2001). Chronicle World. Retrieved May 7, 2006 from < http://www.thechronicle.demon.co.uk/tomsite/8_6_1rev.htm> Morley, David. (2005). “Audience Research.” Courtesy of The Museum of Broadcast Communications. May 7, 2006 from < http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/A/htmlA/audiencerese/audiencerese.htm> Trading Places. (1983). [DVD]. Hollywood, CA: Paramount. Read More