Current Forum: Session 5: Ideology and Class	Read 12 times 	
Date: 11-Feb-2001 11:56:32	
Author: DRAKE-BOYT, ELIZABETH D. <edd1290@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>	
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       I would like to begin by saying that Kyle' s powerpoint presentation gave a very clear structure relating Marx's points on the product/consumer relationships from feudal times to those 
of present-day industrialized nations. The layout he showed of historical progression demonstrated a continuity of ideological apparatuses and how they maintain and reproduce conditions of stability to advantage each succeeding hegemony. The point is really brought home with the graphs included in the presentation. It might be interesting to add a similar graph showing the proportion of the world's resources consumed by the United States as a whole, compared to all other nations in the world; I have been told that it is well over 65%. So even given that a very small amount (10% by Kyle's graph) of the US population is overwhelmingly wealthy and privileged, that 10% additionally overwhelms the wealthy and privileged populations 
of all other countries combined. I might add that being poor in the US is not quite the same as being poor in third-world nations, but that is not something this movie is about to address. 
       I also like Kyle's bulleting of arguments against Marx and his rebuttal to those arguments, which have the potential to stimulate some lively classroom discussions. If students are given a variety of opportunities to first-hand examine ideologies encoded in their own social structures, then they can more completely understand not only how they work in other social/political systems, but the ways in which the film media either does or does not support them in their own. And that is a prime point of the course. Jeneen's argument on how the movie makes a gesture toward an equality of privilege across racial and economic lines, and supports a fluid (ideological) concept of race relative to privilege is well taken. But in a way, this is a little like 
looking at virulent racism, and congratulating ourselves that we "don't do that" as a means of ignoring more passive and "by default" racism as we happily carry around our invisible knapsacks (McIntosh). 
       I would push that approach just a little further to suggest that the baseline economic concern of this movie, Trading Places (Landis: 1993) has shifted slightly (but not too far) from addressing the white middle-class male viewer. With its partnership of leading men, Akroyd and Murphy, I would suggest that TP gingerly and cautiously begins to include the black middle-class male viewer. As George Bernard Shaw is often credited with having said (and I have not yet found exactly where he said it) "All men are equal; some men are more equal than others." 
I ask you to notice the word, "men" here, for Shaw (who presented a Pygmalion story not unlike the one in this movie), is not quite up to including women in this class struggle any more than is this movie. In TP, we are given the upper-class, perfect, and stereotypically hypocritical girlfriend (Penelope) pitted against the equally stereotypically "genuine" prostitute "with a heart of gold" (Ophelia). While we are given a bit of personality and background about Ophelia, the white 
romantic interest, she, like the good girl she is, pecks her man a kiss and wishes him good luck as he and his partner in battle head for the pit to ruin the Dukes. In this new hegemonic 
arrangement (Dukes in ruin; Winthorp and Valentine on top of the world) the black female romantic interest is just a gorgeous body. The ending of the movie, as Jeneen points out, shows the guys in an escapist paradise being served servants, and each with a girl in a bathing suit. Go guys. 
       The point of view is still pitched white, however. Valentine does succeed on his own, validated as Winthrop had been, by the all-white, good old boys of Duke & Duke and privileged "friends". But when it comes time to defeat Duke & Duke, Valentine needs a similar mentor/validater in Winthrop, who calls out the shots. Valentine marches by his side, 
progressively affirming Winthrop's plans and getting pumped up for the battle ahead. It is this relationship between them, for all that Valentine pulls "Billy" out of the gutter, that inclines me to see theirs as a slightly uneven partnership. This makes me believe the main pitch of the movie, for all its show of Murphy, is still white and male. 
       I would also point out that when we see Billy dressed, as Jeneen put it, in all scattered grab-bag clothes, the shots of him are almost always medium/long, not unlike the one we have of him from the butler's point of view, his pants down and his girlfriend hiding behind him. While we have fun over this shot of rich snobs with their clothes partly off trying to talk reasonably while their non-intellectual attributes are taking over, we still have some connection to Winthorp's point of view. We may even pity him, as we laugh at him, that he has such a superficial girl friend. By contrast, our first view of Valentine is a long shot, and the camera stays well away from him even as he moves his little cart forward along the sidewalk. It is as if even at that distance we can smell the alcohol, the body odor, the stench of filth that stereotypically goes with being destitute. This kind of camera work points out the obvious--it is more attractive to be rich than to be poor. Valentine shouts out his needs in desperation because certainly if he spoke in a normal 
tone of voice, no one would hear him, least of all the viewer of the movie. While desperation impels his shouting on the street, it is fear that impels his shouting in jail. Either way, he is funny because he is inferior to anyone in the audience. In a similar way, the Indians in Griffith's movie 
are far (they probably smell bad, too) from the viewer, "shouting" (for all that it is a silent film) in an equally uncouth manner. In both cases, the viewer is spared the trouble of thinking of far away people as more than the stereotype. 
       The distance is a physical expression in this movie of the psychological "invisibility" of the destitute in our society. It is only when he gets cleaned up and in decent clothing that we see Valentine in the point of view (medium shots) and using a calmer, more rational tone of voice we have been seeing and hearing Winthorp. The only exception is when Valentine gives us a startling and direct look from the window of the police car, as if to say, "Do you believe this is happening to me?"; a direct appeal to the black male viewer.
       The god's view shot of Valentine and Winthorp colliding on the steps of the Heritage Club is also very interesting because it most often signifies death. But in this movie, it not only offers a wry comment on "all men are equal in the eyes of God" maxim (as the bronze plaque of the Club ironically states, "with liberty and justice for all"), but it signifies an almost planned intersection of their disparate lives. It is "fate" that has brought them together, giving Mortimer Duke an opening to question Valentine on his upbringing and get the idea to set his bet with his brother that drives the narrative. But while this very obvious ploy of the movie puts forward an ideological concept of race and privilege to support the myth of the American meritocracy (i. e. Valentine proves to be every bit as good at work as Winthorp had been, and Billy behaves just 
as "badly" as any other homeless) it does so mainly to soothe its viewers. This "we're all the same under different colored skin" attitude glosses over the more serious and complex issues of privilege and race. As Omi and Winant state in "Racial Formation, "Racial ideology and social structure, therefore, mutually shape the nature of racism in a complex, dialectical, and over-determined manner" (90). Such complexities do not fit in the movie industry's goal of entertainment. 
       Understanding that shortcoming in the movie makes it interesting to use as a foil in trying to explain the Marxist solution to the "either/or" of race and class in its ideological and 
essentialist forms. The statement that "Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class" (Marx/Engels: 107) seems to focus the question into an economic one. From that perspective, it is easier perhaps to point out that even among those of the same economic disadvantages, there is great disparity and disunion, unlike the representation of the working classes as a unified ideological whole. In other words, this kind of investigation points out, in contrast to the TP movie, that much as we would like to believe it, there are no simple answers.