February 16, 1999

Announcements:  The student films are available on reserve in the Sparks Building.

Lecture Notes:

I.  Comedy and Liberation

• Jokes recognize racial, class, and gender issues
• Comedy dispels significance of these differences by the end of the film

II.  Resolving Ethnic Differences:  Modern Times

• Making fun of ethnic differences was the forefront of film comedy
• This film makes fun of the exploitation of the urban immigrant in an industrialized society
• We are forced to look beneath stereotyping and recognize humanity and dignity
• Charlie Chaplin plays an ethnic immigrant whose job is tightening nuts and bolts on a machine.  His humanity is stripped from him.
• He takes part an experiment of scientific management
• Profit is a priority over humans
• In the experiment, he is automatically fed by a machine to reduce the lines for food
• Clip:  Chaplin is doing his job as usual and then the machine speeds up and he gets sucked into it
• He emerges from machine which shows he won't be completely "swallowed up" by the industrial society

III.  Resolving Gender Differences:  Bringing Up Baby

• High comedy
• verbal puns
• used in transformation of movies into stories
• geared toward well educated middle class
• Low comedy
• physical slapstick humor
• appealed to urban ethnic people

• Cary Grant plays a paleontologist, who is highly repressed in his sexuality
• An example of high comedy:
• A dog runs away with a bone he needs to put together his dinosaur
• He keeps asking, "Where's my inter coastal clavicle?"
• This is a tongue-in-cheek play on words
• When he steps out of his world of science he meets Katherine Hepburn
• By using her leopard(Baby) and her dog(George), she tries to get Grant to notice her
• Clip:  An example of low comedy:
• Hepburn and Grant are at an upscale restaurant and she rips her dress in the back
• He has to walk right behind her through the restaurant so no one sees the rip
• The clip shows their attraction to each other
• In the end they get married:  marriage assimilates the differences between men and women

IV.  Resolving Class Difference:  My Man Godfrey

• This comedy grew out of the depression, when it seemed as if the middle class had dropped out of existence
• A group of wealthy people are on a scavenger hunt in a low class area
• One woman stumbles upon a local resident, Godfrey, and ends up taking him home with her to live with her family
• It turns out he is actually a renegade heir of wealth
• He takes the family's money and invests it and eventually builds a restaurant with it
• This shows that even though class differences are established by capitalism, at the same time they are able to be dissolved by capitalism

MOVIE:  TRADING PLACES

    Eddie Murphy....................................Billy Ray (William) Valentine
    Dan Akroyd.......................................Lewis Winthorp
 
 

    Two older men, Randolph and Mortimer Duke, are getting out of their limo and a bum (Eddie Murphy), who is pretending to be crippled, comes up and begs them for money.  They brush him off and enter a prestigious club, The Heritage Club.  The young executive, Lewis Winthorp, meets them to have them sign some employee checks.  He points out that he doesn't recognize one of the names on the checks.  Randolph and Mortimer just say that it is top secret and take the check.

    Outside, the bum accidentally bumps into Lewis on the street and he drops his briefcase with the checks in them.  The bum picks it up to give it back to him, but Lewis acts like he is stealing it.  The cops chase the bum and handcuff him in the club.  Randolph and Mortimer talk about how they think the bum is only bad because he is black and if he were given the right surroundings, he would be successful.  They said if Lewis was fired and put in the poorest situation he would commit a crime, too.  They place a bet on it and decide to replace Lewis with the bum.

    The Dukes go to the jail and bail out the bum, Billy Ray Valentine.  They tell him they're rehabilitating culturally disadvantaged people.  They will give him a home, car, bank account, and a job at their company.  They then take him to Lewis' house, which is now his.

    A meeting is held at the club for all the members explaining that there has been a theft of 3 $50 bills.  Lewis is framed and slipped the stolen bills.  He is taken to the police station and stripped down.  The cops find a bag of angel dust on him and throw him behind bars.

    Billy Ray goes to a local bar and buys drinks for everyone there.  He takes a bunch of them back to his house for a party.  He ends up throwing them all out once he realizes they aren't his friends and have no respect for him or his house.

    Lewis' fiancee, Penelope, bails him out of jail.  As they're leaving, a hooker comes up to him and starts kissing him in front of Penelope.  She storms off saying she'll never talk to him again.  The hooker tells him that she was paid to do that.

    Lewis and the hooker, Olivia, go back to his house, but the locks have been changed.  The butler, Coleman, pretends that he doesn't know who he is.  Then they go to the bank to withdraw money but his account was frozen.  They repossess his credit cards and throw him out on the street.

    Billy Ray goes to work the first day and the Dukes teach him what they do as commodities dealers.  He catches on pretty quickly and makes some accurate predictions on the price of pork belly.  Meanwhile, Lewis is at Ophelia's apartment, where he'll be staying.  She makes a business proposition that if she helps him get back on his feet, he will pay her five figures.

    Lewis goes to see his friends to try and convince them that he's innocent and see if they'll give him a loan.  They tell him he's an embarrassment and ask him to leave.  As he's walking home, he passes a restaurant and sees Billy Ray with the Dukes eating dinner.  The next day, he sees Billy Ray on the front page of the paper.

    At the company Christmas party, Billy Ray is doing some work and notices one of the suspicious checks made out to Clarence Beeks.  Once again, Mortimer brushes it off and takes the check.  Lewis shows up dressed as Santa and plants drugs in Billy Ray's desk to frame him.  Billy Ray and the Dukes walk in on him and call security until Lewis points a gun at them.  Lewis runs out like a lunatic.  Billy Ray takes one of the joints from the desk and goes to the bathroom to smoke it.  While he is in there, the Dukes go in and talk about the bet.  They say they'll hold off getting rid of Billy Ray until they get their crop report on New Year's.  They also say they could never have a black man running the company.

    After hearing this, Billy Ray runs off to find Lewis.  He follows him to Olivia's apartment.  Olivia and Billy Ray take him back to the house because he is ridiculously drunk.  When Lewis wakes up he thinks it is all a dream until he sees Billy Ray.  Billy Ray explains how the Dukes made the $1 bet.

    On the news they see the man who paid Olivia and set up Lewis.  It turns out to be the same man the Dukes have been paying, Clarence Beeks.  He gives the Dukes access to the crop reports ahead of time.  Billy Ray listens in on a conversation and finds out where the Dukes are meeting him. On the way to meet the Dukes, Clarence finds a private room on the train, but is interrupted by Billy Ray, who is dressed as an African foreign exchange student.  Olivia and Clarence come in, also in disguise.  They switch Clarence's briefcase with another one and Billy Ray takes it to Lewis who is in the bathroom waiting.  Lewis and Billy Ray go back to the room to switch back the briefcases but this time Clarence notices.  He realizes who they are and holds them at gunpoint.  He leads them to the back of the train to a luggage room.  Clarence backs up against a cage with a gorilla in it.  The gorilla bops him on the head and knocks him out.  They put him in the cage with the gorilla.  Billy Ray slips the briefcase with the faulty reports to the Dukes.

    Billy Ray and Lewis go to New York City with Coleman and Olivia's life savings in hand.  The Dukes are also there telling their clients to buy shares in the orange commodity and plan on cornering the market.  Billy Ray and Lewis, knowing the actual reports plan on selling the shares and making a killing.  Their plan works perfectly and they put the Dukes out of business.

    The four of them all move down to an island somewhere.  The last scene is of Clarence and Billy Ray on the beach and Olivia and Lewis on their yacht.