Trading Places
After another boring quarantined day, my cable and other television subscriptions have failed me — AGAIN! So my wife decided to scroll through our extensive list of recorded content and she hit play on one of my favorite movies of all time, “Coming to America.” I hope you all are familiar with the story and if not, PLEASE stream it ASAP (insert my personal bias here). As a refresher this is a tale of a young African prince (Eddie Murphy) who has just reached his 21st birthday and according to tradition, he’s being forced into marrying a stranger. To avoid a lifetime with someone he doesn’t love, the prince travels to America (Queens, New York) to find his bride.
At this point I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve seen this film and I can recite it verbatim from beginning to end, but it always amazes me how we tend to overlook small details that lay in plain sight. Let’s fast forward a little towards the second half of the film. Eddie Murphy’s character, Prince Akeem has finally caught the attention of his love interest, Lisa (Shari Headley) and while the pair is on a date they walk past a couple of homeless men sleeping on the wintery cold grounds in NYC. Prince Akeem then walks towards the two men and places an extensive amount of cash in their pockets and continues to walk with Lisa…
As the new couple walks off in the distance one of the homeless men awakes to discover the large amount of cash and immediately turns to wake up the other man. The significance here is that these two men were characters in Murphy’s earlier classic film, “Trading Places.” So now let’s rewind. The two homeless men were actually the fictional characters, Mortimer and Randolph Duke, of the also fictional Duke and Duke Commodities Brokers. In the film, “Trading Places,” the Duke brothers decided to create a social experiment by transforming their star broker, Louis Winthrop (Dan Aykroyd), from a life of glamour to a life of crime, and on the flip Billy Ray Valentine, (Eddie Murphy) would go from street hustler to a star broker. The purpose of the experiment or wager was to determine if people would create better life choices if they had opportunities that would lead to success. Mortimer wasn’t convinced that a hoodlum like Valentine could turn his life around, but Randy Duke thought otherwise.
Winthrop was soon framed for a crime which led to an arrest, the lost of his job, his assets, and his fiancé. He quickly spiraled into a life of crime, but Valentine was given a home, money, and a job where he was able to complete a 180 degree turn. As the movie went on the two — Winthrop and Valentine, discovered that they were merely pawns in a twisted game. So they developed a scheme that resulted in the Duke’s losing their fortune.
Now to fast forward again to that scene in, “Coming to America,” where Akeem provides money to the Dukes, we can see some hidden beauty. On the surface fans of Murphy’s films will instantly tie the two movies together, but tonight I found another perspective of that moment. By this time the Dukes would have been stripped of their fortunes and possibly homeless for five years. I’m sure hot meals, baths, and shelter were all hard to obtain during this time and because of that whenever the homeless receives the smallest of financial help, they’ll usually run to get food or something to ease the physical pains. Not the Dukes…well at least not during that moment.
Instead of thinking of about food, coffee, beer, or even a hotel, the brothers immediately regained that entrepreneurial itch. In fact in the movie both brothers looked at the money and then at each other and after a pause Randolph concluded with, “We’re back!” They saw this kind donation as a way to re-invest into themselves so that they can build wealth — again. Now the Dukes were indeed racist assholes and this is not a piece to glorify their shallow characters, but I do believe in that moment they exhibited much discipline to first think of tomorrow and not today.
Our recent days have been unprecedented as we’re trying to adapt to this new social distancing way of life. Employees and companies alike have suffered severely and most of the world are struggling to make ends meet. For many, stimulus checks have come and gone and within a snap of a finger we were back in the same financial boat. We all have struggled throughout life at some point and some are still fighting, but now is the perfect time for us to reshape our financial focus to ensure that we’re slowly building the wealth or stability we desire. The Dukes, while being homeless saw an opportunity for the future and they moved in that direction. Some of you will say, “yea I get that, but man this was a movie. It’s make believe!” Well that is true to an extent. Yes it was a scene in a move and yes Hollywood tends to create the unbelievable in films, but sometimes the unbelievable provides hope. Romantic films are often super cheesy as it appeals to the hopeless romantics of the world right? Blockbuster superhero films are full of shit, but the inner kid in us wants to fly and blow shit up right? So if all of that is fictional and yet we pack out theaters to fill personal voids, why can’t we find inspiration in two homeless men who decided to take a donation and turn it into a fortune?
The inhumane experiment that the Dukes created in, “Trading Places,” was despicable and yet it was necessary. Far too many of us in this world believe that people who come from the wrong side of the tracks or who’s skin is a tad darker are destined for mountains worth of nothingness. We all come into this world equal and on the same playing field, but also different based solely on the natural talents we’ve been given by God. Regardless of color, money, or social status, at one point in life we all believed that we could become anything! Over time and with some aging, many of us saw our surroundings and developed a different reality. A world with lower standards and a disbelief of achieving our wildest desires. The opportunities to win in certain sections are nonexistent, but the opportunity to fail are everywhere. With the strains of survival weighing you down, one doesn’t have to climb too high to reach the summit of Mount Nothingness. Oh but when true opportunity is provided and we’re able to maneuver in unfamiliar territories we’re able to shine like Billy Ray Valentine. Even the Dukes mentality changed once Akeem placed the opportunity in their pockets. My people, our current status or our struggling points in life are not permanent. We too are able to Trade Places…