Catherine Adams
Diagnostic Essay
Eng 111-60
27 August 2009 http://www.channel4.com/film/media/images/Channel4/film/T/trading_places_xl_01--film-A.jpg
Given the choice of a super power I imagine most people would like to have X-ray vision, the ability to fly, super strength, and/or even the power of invisibility. To wake up tomorrow having a super power to switch people’s lives completely, would be what I would want. I’d like to be able to have people experience life completely as each other. We have become a very superficial society, placing value on physicality and making snap judgments about individual(s) or situations solely based on what we see. To experience that part of person’s life, take on their responsibilities and take on the everyday, fortunes and misfortunes of that person. My thought is that the only way to understand the why and how of a person’s life is to exist as that person.
People are more inclined to commiserate when we can identify with the individual or their circumstance(s). It’s easy to feel disgust for a beggar on the side of the road not knowing how he got there. The movie ‘Trading Places’ with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd is a perfect example of this. Two people from completely different social, racial and economical backgrounds trade places so to speak. Though not of their own choosing, each in due course, began to become accustomed to their new roles. Eventually, these two men who aside from both being male and human had nothing in common, after finding out through what circumstances their situations came to be, they teamed up to even the score with their foes.
Perception is defined as the process of attaining awareness; this is an eye opener. It allows for one to speak knowingly. Those who lack but are open to gaining, I admire. This is all starting to sound a bit heavy, so I will put it simply. I would just like the power to have one individual walk a mile in the other’s shoe.
SNIP ITS FROM THE MOVIE 'Trading Places' courtesy of YOUTUBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqtBT5k_0zQ The good life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4EgsYEneac&feature=related Now you are me and I am you
