Content Warning: Racism. I adore this film, but in this column I will be looking at some of the ways it fumbles with race as it humorously explores class.
The 1983 Dan Aykroyd/Eddie Murphy comedy Trading Places has been one of my favourite films since I first saw it on TV in the early ’90s. It is one of the traditional movies I watch every year on New Year’s Eve, and I can watch it endlessly the rest of the year–often followed by it’s not-really-but-kind-of-in-my-mind-due-to-one-throwaway-scene-sequel, Coming to America.
At the same time, as a thoughtful and critical viewer, there are elements of it that I cannot deny are problematic, even if we accept that it was 1983, the film reflected its time, and was mostly using these moments within its larger social commentary.
The first element I want to discuss is a scene that always draws comment from new viewers (as I have learned from a newfound fascination with film reaction videos): the train scene, in which Dan Aykroyd appears in blackface. Now, I (as a white, middle-aged man) am inclined to give the movie a pass on the blackface itself because the unlikeliness of the disguise is the point. Louis Winthorpe III needs to be unrecognizable to someone who knows his face very well. It’s not a minstrel show or similar, and at no point is he supposed to be an actual black man. Further, the other three characters in bizarre ethnic disguises are also cultural cliches, with Jamie-Lee Curtis’ character drawing attention to its absurdity by–as Denholm Elliot’s character points out–having the wrong accent for the costume.
And yet.
As YouTubers who aren’t taken out of it by the blackface often note: the scene doesn’t belong in the first place. It’s pushing the absurdity of the film to its breaking point with the idea that Louis Winthorp III, a rich white man who is demonstrated to be utterly ignorant of the lower classes in his own city, let alone the cultures of other parts of the world, could pretend to be a Rastafarian even to the stereotypical degree he does. As a filmmaker, I get the impulse. It’s a funny, stupid scene and we’re already invested, so we don’t really notice that it’s suddenly Dan Aykroyd onscreen instead of his character. But, combined with the racial insensitivity of blackface, its tonal incongruity makes its problematic.
The second scene I want to discuss is actually the one that motivated this post in the first place. Something I don’t like acknowledging, given my love for the film itself, but which I cannot deny and which I believe deserves attention for the good of social progress.
As the climactic scenes close and the denouement begins, we see the Duke brothers, Mortimer (played by Don Ameche) and Randolph (played by Ralph Bellamy), confronted by the Chair of the Exchange to settle their (massive) losses during the day’s trading. In their rage and anxiety at having been bankrupted both professionally and personally, Randolph clutches his chest and collapses to the floor while Mortimer continues to protest strenuously. The Chair says “Mortimer, your brother’s not well,” To which Randolph succinctly replies “FUCK HIM!” and continues his diatribe.
Fans of the film all know the story extraordinarily well: Don Ameche, being a gentleman of some years, initially refused to say the word “fuck.” Thanks to both his own professionalism and some coaxing from director John Landis, Ameche agreed to do a single take saying the offending word, and that is the take that appears in the film.
It’s one of the most-told stories about the making of the film, because it contrasts Golden Age Hollywood values with ’80s Comedy values. Some tell it to suggest moral degeneracy in the present, while others to suggest the quaint delicacy of the prudish past. And I must count myself firmly in the latter camp, especially because this lighthearted story throws a rather dark shadow upon another scene from the film.
Immediately after Winthorpe crashes the Dukes’ office Christmas party to implicate Billy-Ray Valentine by filling his desk with illegal drugs–thus proving that Randolph has won the bet that forms the foundation for the film’s plot–Valentine retires to the executive washroom with a joint he salvaged from the drugs Winthorpe had planted. As he is “blazing a fat one,” as I believe the parlance goes, the Duke Brothers enter. Afraid of being discovered with the joint (semi-related rhetorical question: how the hell didn’t they smell the damn thing? I’ve lived in plenty of apartment buildings in which I could tell people on another floor were toking up), Valentine pulls his legs up and puts the lit joint inside his mouth to hide his presence.
Having checked under the stalls to ensure they are alone, Mortimer pays Randolph his winnings from the bet. The two proceed to wash their hands (a wonderful symbolic action) while discussing what to do next. Randolph asks how they are to put Valentine back on the streets and bring Winthorpe back. Mortimer responds that he does not want Winthorpe back, given his actions that evening. Incredulous, Randolph responds, “you mean keep Valentine?” Mortimer’s reply is simple and striking: “do you think I would have a n****r run our family’s company?”
I promised myself I wouldn’t censor that word. I am not afraid of any language that is honest, and I am not afraid of frank words. Returning readers will well know that I consider cursing to be an excellent means for communicating tone and intensity. And yet here we are. I ultimately chose to censor the word simply because it feeds into the point I’m making, which I will now continue doing:
There are no making-of stories about Ameche refusing to say the n-word except for a single take. It never comes up. It didn’t even occur to me to think about it, through almost thirty years of watching the film, until a few years ago. The man who refused to say “fuck” has never been reported as similarly refusing one of the most intensely hateful words in North American English.
I have no interest in condemning Don Ameche for this. This is a legitimate example of “those were the times he lived in.” If he weren’t forward-thinking, he wouldn’t be in this movie or saying such a line (or several other similarly-heinous racist lines) in that context. What I’m pointing out is that, as a result of Ameche’s having lived through mid-century America, even in his forward-thinking mind, the n-word was more acceptable than “fuck.”
The fact that I choose to censor the one and not the other, however, shows–to me, if no one else–that that contrast has now shifted in the other direction. I do not use the euphemistic phrase “the n-word” in discussions about the word it describes. It is a word, and an important one that must be used for itself if discussions about it are to clearly represent the full weight and power it has come to carry. I intended not to use the euphemism here, for the same reason. But the simple fact is that that I do not control my audience here. I do not know who may stumble across this post while looking up more information about a movie they just saw and loved. And my careless use of that word, no matter how well-intended, could cause such people pain on a level I can’t even understand.
The n-word is not equivalent to curse words; they are abstract terms drawn typically drawn from unmentionable topic areas such as defecation, sex, and religion in order to express emotions that are often treated as similarly-unmentionable, such as anger, frustration, fear, or even unrestrained joy (sorry… that sentence kind of got away from me as I started thinking out loud halfway through it. Still leaving it, tho). The n-word, on the other hand, carries a very specific and directedly-hurtful weight, which is precisely why its ironic use within the African American community became important even as it disconnected itself from its use from all-to-real people who resemble, in thought at least, the character Mortimer Duke.
I do not condemn Ameche, or the writers, or even Landis (except for spawning a fuckwanking shitnozzle as untalented, useless, and arrogant as his son, and then letting him trade on the name recognition to get his irredeemably fucking terrible writing into the world. Oh, and the hubristic narcissism that caused the infamous helicopter accident on the set of The Twilight Zone: The Movie that cost Vic Morrow and several extras their lives. And also… okay, fuck it. I do condemn John Landis, even though he made several of my favourite movies of all time).
Sorry. Got distracted.
I do not condemn the film or the filmmakers for not showing a resistance to using the n-word. It was a motivated, conscious, and effective use, serving as a defining character moment that demonstrates an ultimate truth: bigots are driven by bigotry (even the grandfatherly Randolph heartily agrees with his brother’s assessment) before anything else. I further do not condemn Ameche for not having–to our knowledge, I repeat, as it is possible he also balked at this line and we just never heard of it–the reticence about saying the n-word that he did the word “fuck.”
My purpose in discussing this matter is, rather (and aside from a desire to exorcise these damned thoughts from my head when I watch what is–again–one of my favourite films), to highlight the racially- and socially-motivated change that has affected how we think about these words.
Our culture has shifted to more-fully appreciate the difference between racist language and so-called curse words, with the result that the potentially-hurtful language, whether intended as such or not, is more frowned upon today than the expressive and evocative vocabulary of smut to be derived from creative and effective use of curse words (cf. my entirely-apt assessment of Landis the younger above).
I love this movie. I am watching it, as I do every year on New Year’s Eve, as I write this. It’s not only intensely funny, but generally thoughtful and progressive (the stumbles I’ve mentioned above notwithstanding). Jamie Lee Curtis plays a prostitute who smart, capable, and is never shamed for it by others except for a moment that uses said attempt to actually shame Winthorpe for being an elitist twit incapable of seeing past labels.
Similarly, Billy-Ray Valentine is a two-bit hustler who is nonetheless in possession of a remarkable intellect, allowing him to adapt to the (no less shady than his previous cons) business world without difficulty. And, of course, the performances are genius–especially from Denholm Elliot, whose subtleties of expression I appreciate more and more with every viewing.
What I’m saying–to an excessive degree–is that I don’t mean to denigrate the film. It has flaws, which I discuss out of love and in a way that I hope is respectful both to the film and to the marginalized groups who weren’t treated as well as they deserved from the film (the repeated homosexual slurs stand out even beyond what I’ve dealt with here).
Oh, the hell with it. This isn’t an essay, and I’m not going to be able to wrap it up neatly with a conclusion. This is a second draft, which is one more than 99.9999% of the posts I write for this site, so you get to just deal with the fact that I didn’t tie it all up. I’ve raised some issues with a move I love deeply, and–within the context of my over-arching belief that one can be critical of texts while still loving them in spite of their flaws–I’m not sure that my “it’s good that the world had progressed to the point that a forward-thinking movie now has outdated elements” take is strong enough to compensate for the problems I’ve mentioned.
It’s a fun movie made by a talented guy–whose son, I cannot emphasize enough–is a massive, untalented douche, and it has problematic elements in among all the goodness. That’s as much as I can give you right now, so we’ll all have to accept it so I can stop friggin’ rambling semi-coherently in pursuit of a conclusion.
Merry New Year, everyone.
Crossing the Themes 