Modern Times for Charlie Chaplin - Academic Paper

Modern Times for Charlie Chaplin

Picture courtesy of Google Images and http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b9efe2680.

Charlie Chaplin has long been regarded as one of film’s greats, as a person who changed cinema and redefined it by his own means. Many of his movies reflect his exceptional filmmaking in which he is frequently the director, writer, composer, and lead actor. Charlie Chaplin’s comedy Modern Times is no different. In Modern Times, Chaplin provides a poignant social commentary about the socioeconomic conditions many Americans faced during the Depression era presented through the “Little Tramp’s” humorous, sometimes sad, yet always insightful antics. The film also criticizes the upcoming “talkie” movement of film in which dialogue was incorporated into cinema. Chaplin seamlessly combines his criticisms and satire with pure comedy, leaving his unforgettable contributions and mark on the film industry.

            The opening twelve minutes of Modern Times set the feel for the movie when the Tramp (interchangeable with Chaplin) is working in the factory. The audience is shown the harsh working conditions the factory workers suffer right from the very beginning. The stress and tension are high, and one mistake can wind up ruining the whole factory, which it does when the Tramp has his nervous breakdown. Chaplin’s tyrannical boss forces him to work faster and faster and appears to threaten Chaplin, who, like many of the time period, could not afford to lose his job. The factory conditions the workers in the film are subjected to are similar to the actual conditions workers faced in real life during the Great Depression. Chaplin is further victimized when he is chosen as the test subject for the Billows Feeding Machine, produced by the Sales Talk Transcription Company, Incorporated. Chaplin, as the “robotized victim of the machine, extends this into a frontal assault on industrialization” (Stewart 297-8).

            Once the machine starts to malfunction, Billows is quick to attempt to fix it while leaving Chaplin defenseless against the force-feeder. The materialism depicted here suggests that corporations, symbolized by Billows, the other Sales Talk Transcription Company’s representatives, and the owner of the factory who does nothing to help his employee, care more about their products (the machine) than they do their workers.  Chaplin believed that “Machinery should benefit mankind. It should not spell tragedy and throw it out of work” (“Overview of His Life”). Taken in a different context, the audience can also interpret the Billows Feeding Machine as society itself trying to force-feed the population whatever it can and however much society will take. It is only when the machine breaks that people try to better it; while it is working properly, nobody questions the potential effects it may have. This is also true of society. Before the Great Depression, laissez-faire politics were used and went unchallenged by society. But once the Depression struck, people were up in arms about the government and how it was going to fix the recession.

            The satire displayed in the factory illuminates Chaplin’s fears of industrialization but also his desire to break free from the machine which society is becoming. Chaplin takes it another step further even when he satirizes the up-and-coming “talkie” movies when the Tramp is in the bathroom trying to catch a break before returning to work. The president of the company pops up onto the large screen in the bathroom and chastises Chaplin, ordering him to get back to work. This scene works on many levels. First, the intrusion of the president on the Tramp’s break suggests politically that it is nearly impossible to break away from society, or so it seems at this point in the film. Second, it emphasizes classicism in which the president is both literally and figuratively looking down on Chaplin, whom he regards with disdain. Chaplin is merely a gear in the president’s machine and can easily be replaced. Finally, on a cinematic level, the cacophonous intrusion of the president on Chaplin’s much desired and enjoyed break, his small release from the pressures of work, is symbolic of Chaplin’s emotions toward talking movies. Chaplin disliked the idea of talkies not only because he felt they held little artistry but also because silent films were where he made his magic.

Chaplin was well known as the most ardent reactionary of the silent film, enemy of that “progress" which he dreaded would drain the movies of their serene, emotive artistry, and in his first unabashed "talkie," this miniature documentary on the president's dictatorial voyeurism, his satiric genius has jumped forward to a glimpse of film (or TV) as an intrusive, bullying manipulation of the viewer – propaganda quite literally stripped of its aesthetic distance… (Stewart 308-9)

Ergo the president, in this instance, is truly the talkie and his intrusion in a bathroom of all places emphasizes again Chaplin’s distaste for talkies. Bathrooms are primarily for expelling human waste, and this waste is what Chaplin is comparing talkies to.

            Chaplin later satirizes talkies when he is drinking tea with the minister’s wife in the jail. Both suffer from gaseous stomachs, and to tune out the noise of the grumbling, the Tramp turns on the radio, the disc jockey immediately proclaiming something about “gastritis.” Again, talking is reduced to a bodily function, and an odorous one at that. Chaplin dislikes the idea of the talkie because, to him, the “essential art of the movies…was the rendering of emotion through motion,” not speech (Stewart 305).

            Modern Times also highlights civil unrest of the times most prominently in the rioting scenes. In the first, men are picketing and marching with signs that proclaim “Libertad” and “Liberty or death.” They are trying to escape from the pressures and oppression they feel society is forcing onto them. The Tramp is then arrested and thrown into jail when accused of being a communist. Ironically enough, a decade or so later J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation would target Chaplin as a communist.

            The film presents the audience with the age-old question of whether or not a person would steal bread to feed his or her family. When do tough times become too tough? The gamin girl, played by Paulette Goddard, stole bananas to feed her two sisters and her father. Both she and Chaplin stole bread to eat. Chaplin stole a whole meal not only to feed himself but to put himself back in jail because it was better than life on the streets for him. These scenes are very reminiscent of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. Chaplin and the gamin sleep in the department store for which he works, and Chaplin goes so far as to let starving robbers take food from the store.

            Society seems to have turned against these unfortunate people.  The gamin girl’s father is shot and killed during a riot. The gamin and her sisters are now orphans left to the daunting care of the state. Preferring to go it alone rather than to rely on society, the gamin runs away. Society again turns on the protagonists when the social workers attempt to take the gamin into their custody after her and Chaplin’s predicaments seem to be changing for the better.

            When Chaplin tries to get arrested, the audience can clearly see the machine that is society is truly broken for what man in his right mind would want to go to jail? But for the Tramp, jail is a far better place than the streets are. Chaplin has gone through society’s machine, both figuratively and literally (when he was pushed through it in the factory), and it did not lead him to a good place. Chaplin inconspicuously seems to suggest that to return to a better society, people need to go backwards. When the Tramp was stuck in the cogs and gears of the machines, the other worker on his line had to physically turn the gears backward to free Chaplin. The gamin and Chaplin are happiest when they are on their own in their dilapidated shack and when they are walking away from society into the bright dawn of a new day. They are out of the city and away from the machines of society and the factory.

            The use of very limited dialogue is highly effective in Modern Times. Chaplin is able to emphasize his distaste for talkies by using dialogue in a dehumanized way. The audience only hears spoken dialogue that is transmitted through technology. The mechanical salesman speaks through the apparatus, the president when he is on the large screen, and the disc jockey speaks through the radio. Each of these voices can only be heard through some other medium and not directly to the human ear, thus separating them from the other characters and the audience. The musical numbers, however, are a different story. The audience is able to see and hear the beginnings of the waiters’ song until the shot changes to the dressing room in which they can only hear the song. The song is actually “In the Evening by the Moonlight,” which is quite derogatory towards people of color, though the waiters do not sing the original version (see Hammond and Hitchcock).

          When the Tramp heads to the center of the floor to perform his intended song, “Titina (Je Cherche apres Titine)” and loses his cuffs on which the lyrics are written, he resorts to his imagination to make up rhyming nonsensical and nonexistent words (Posner). Chaplin, as always, resorts to his body language and mannerisms to tell the story of Titina. Though in a way Chaplin cedes here to the advent of talkies by allowing spoken “words” in the film, he still emphasizes his point that the true art of storytelling lies in actions, not words. So though he may admit to the potential that talkies may have and the possible decline of his beloved silent films, he still proves to everyone that actions speak louder than words. The movie-going audience sees his entire performance, which is to be expected as it is a sort of finale for the silent film, at least in Chaplin’s eyes. In the movie, the restaurant clients find his performance wonderful, and the Tramp is offered a steady job by the manager thereafter.

            But society is not so kind again when the social workers come to take away the gamin. She and Chaplin escape and the audience sees them the next morning on a dusty road in seemingly the middle of nowhere. The gamin is losing hope and asks what the point in trying is. Chaplin, ever the optimist, replies, “Buck up – never say die. We’ll get along.” The two walk off together along the dirt road away from society and its machinery, leaving the audience with the feeling of hope that the two will make it despite all of their hardships because that is the theme of the entirety of Chaplin’s silent movies (Hurley 315). “No matter how often society dashes the ‘little tramp’s’ hopes to pieces, he shrugs his shoulders resignedly and wanders off to begin life anew” (Hurley 315).

            People love the story of an underdog, which is what Chaplin presents to them time and time again. But he does it not just in an entertaining way, but in a way that also reflects society and what needs to be fixed about it, like cogs and gears in a machine. Modern Times is an exceptional example of this machine and Chaplin is able to truly show the audience through his actions and satire the atrocities of the Depression-era society while still being able to make them laugh. Chaplin offers his audience a timeless message that is sure to be remembered, even if it goes unspoken.

Works Cited

Hammond, Johnny. "Lyrics For: In The Evening By The Moonlight." Johnny Hammond Productions. Houston-Websites.com, n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2012. <http://www.johnnyhammond.net/songs/moonlight.htm>.

Hitchcock, B.W. "American Old Time Song Lyrics: 02 In De Evening By De Moonlight.” Traditional Music Library. Rod Smith, n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2012. <http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/songster/02-in-de-evening-by-de-moonlight.htm>.

Hurley, Neil. "The Social Philosophy of Charlie Chaplin." Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 49.195 (1960): 313-20. JSTOR. Web. 01 Oct. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/30099234>.

Modern Times. Dir. Charles Chaplin. Perf. Charlie Chaplin. YouTube. YouTube, 17 June 2012. Web. 29 Sept. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFpCyMwqmvs>.

"Overview of His Life." Charlie Chaplin. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2012.                                                     <http://www.charliechaplin.com/en/biography/articles/21-Overview-of-His-Life>.

Posner, Phil. "The Music of Modern Times." The Music of Modern Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2012. <http://www.philposner.com/mtmusic.htm>.

Stewart, Garrett. "Modern Hard Times: Chaplin and the Cinema of Self-Reflection." Critical Inquiry 3.2 (1976): 295-314. JSTOR. Web. 1 Oct. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1342891>.

Woall, Michael, and Linda Kowall Woall. "Charlie Chaplin and the Comedy of Melodrama.” Journal of Film and Video 46.3 (1994): 3-15. JSTOR. Web. 01 Oct. 20. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688043>.

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