Trading Places

I just recently watched a movie with Eddie Murphy and Dan Arkroyd called Trading Places, made in 1983. The film plot centers around 2 completely different characters - Arkroyd's snobby, rich and ridiculous white man, Louis Winthorpe, and Murphy's poor, loud and homless black man, Billy Ray. The characters are ridiculously exaggerated stereotypes of each color, but I felt it was an appropiate portrayal so that ignorant people would get the point of the film - that these characters were exaggerations of stereotypes. The story gets exciting when one of Arkroyd's filthy rich and old employers Mortimer Duke, bets his brother Randolph, that a person's background and upbringing can never be erased - that since Billy Ray was raised poor and in an unhealthy environment, he could never escape his troubled lifestyle. On the opposite side, Louis Winthorpe should be successful even if he must start from nothing.
In order to prove his theory, Mortimer decides to test it out by switching the lives of Billy Ray and Louis, and placing them in their opposite environments.

I felt this film was a good example of the idea that whites and blacks are thought to have an expected "role" or "place" in society. The film was able to capture these stereotypes of both colors, without defending or supporting one of the other. I was also surprised to find that it was written and directed by white men, and appeared to be equally stereotypical about whites and blacks. I'd love to watch the film again after my Whiteness studies to see if I can pick up on any flaws or white norms that I'm generally use to seeing. Perhaps it's not as fair to a black person as it is to a white person.