Carl Peters - Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times

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Charlie Chaplins Modern Times

This book looks at Charlie Chaplins masterpiece, Modern Times (1936), through the lens of film aesthetics, structure, and post-modern perspective.

The nave Tramp character of Modern Times is often seen as the embodiment of a revolutionary reaction to his age. However, this study of the film shows that it is not only difficult but also impossible to accept the long-established critical reception of Chaplins film and its characters in our own Post-modern Times. Drawing from extensive research and bringing post-modern context to the film through a comparative analysis of Todd Phillipss Joker (2019), the book introduces how exhilarating a comprehensive study of film can be for engaged viewers.

Illustrating that a detailed filmic reading of Modern Times can be a guide, or an extended case study, for analysing culture, this book will be of interest to students and teachers in film studies, literary studies, and the visual arts.

Carl Peters is a scholar, curator, and author of bpNichol Comics (2002); textual vishyuns: image and text in the work of bill bissett (2011); and Studies in Description, the first annotated study of the entire text of Gertrude Steins Tender Buttons (2016).

Figure 0.1 Tramp in the crowd

First published 2022

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2022 Carl Peters

The right of Carl Peters to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Peters, Carl Lynden, 1965- author.

Title: Charlie Chaplins Modern times : the work of life in the age

of mechanical reproducibility/Carl Peters.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021035262 (print) | LCCN 2021035263

(ebook) | ISBN 9780367339838 (hardback) | ISBN

9781032180267 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429323317 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Chaplin, Charlie, 18891977-Criticism and

interpretation. | Little Tramp (Fictitious character) | Modern

times (Motion picture) | Work in motion pictures. | Motion

pictures-United States-History-20th century.

Classification: LCC PN1997.M639 P48 2022 (print) | LCC

PN1997.M639 (ebook) | DDC 791.430973/0904-dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021035262

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021035263

ISBN: 978-0-367-33983-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-18026-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-32331-7 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429323317

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is dedicated to the memory of Jerry Zaslove

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface: the art of seeing

2 Life

3 A comedian sees the world

Postscript: meanwhile

1. Acknowledgements Page
2. Preface: the art of seeing Page
3. 2 Life
4. 3 A comedian sees the world
5. Postscript: meanwhile

1. ii
2. ix
3. x
4. xi
5. xii
6. xiii
7. xiv
8. xv
9. xvi
10. xvii

Guide

1. Acknowledgements Page
2. Preface: the art of seeing Page

Figures

0.1 Tramp in the crowd

2.1 Dream home

2.2 Dream home (when the cop enters the shot)

2.3 Roller skating (scene from Joker)

2.4 Fleck watches Chaplin (scene from Joker)

2.5 Ellen models her robe/coat

2.6 Bedroom display

2.7 The ramshackle home

2.8 Breakfast table with comics

2.9 The Tramp as feeding machine

3.1 A pretty girl and a gay old man

3.2 Singing waiter just before he is about to sing

3.3 Closing image (Tramp and Ellen on the divided highway) frontal

3.4 Image of Tramp and Ellen from behind

Acknowledgements

I have always thought that all writing is construction. It takes work lifting the heavy parts. There are no light partsI want to thank Karl Siegler, Jerry Zaslove, Ken Harmel, Jennifer Vennall, Graham Mears, and my loving wife Kimberly.

Preface

The art of seeing

The work of art is valuable only in so far as it is vibrated by the reflexes of the future.

(Andr Breton cited in Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility)

Time is of the essence. And, as John Berger points out, All creation is in the art of seeing.

This study of Modern Times attempts to show that it is not only difficult but also actually impossible to accept the long-established critical reception of Chaplins film and its characters in our own Post-modern Times. A transformation of traditional audience perceptions of Modern Times to those of almost a century later is accomplished by the 2019 film, Joker, which uses Chaplins 1936 film as its central structural element. The critical reception of Modern Times to date has not accounted for its historicity, a historicity clearer to us in retrospect from our vantage point in the 21st century. If there was ever any doubt of Chaplins film being a classic of its genre, that doubt is put to rest when Modern Times appears midway through director Todd Phillipss film Joker as its own turning point.

Films, to borrow an expression from the film critic and historian Jay Leyda, beget films. Joker, for example, finds, acquires, and seizesinstructsthe spectator to see Chaplins film through the critical lens of the post-modern present, whereas modern critics such as those represented in Richard Schickels The Essential Chaplin tend to view Modern Times outside of history. Phillipss film, in fact, deconstructs Modern Times, which is, in a word, the methodology of post-modernism. Joker makes certain demands on the viewerit insists that we re-evaluate the film Modern Times with scepticism. I think youd have to watch Modern Times, Phillips comments, because we believe there is some Chaplin in [Arthur Fleck] that I think is really important. He has also said that Jokers costume is inspired by that of Charlie Chaplins Tramp. What is that something of Chaplin in Phillips character, Joker, is the question we will seek to answer.

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