Gabby Paluch
On Chaplin, Schiller and Laughter
(�Modern Times film excerpt to consider: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTgeNw1guBs&NR)
Charlie Chaplin, in one of his few lines in the film Modern Times, pleads with a jail warden who has just set him free from prison, Cant I stay a while longer? he asks, Im so happy here. Although in a sense, this line tells a sad truth about the tragic historical setting in which many Americans found themselves during The Depression, it has been widely declared that comedy is simply tragedy plus distance. Because we have both gained historical distance, and we have physical distance from a man who is playing a role, the humor in the absurdity of the idea that a man might be happier to stay in jail than to be free seems to overpower the tragedy of the situation.
John Morreall writes in his article titled, Humor and Aesthetic Education, that the enriching experience man has when he encounters high art is no more or less valuable than the effect that humor has on his spirit. He continues to describe our cultural biases against humor as a valuable participant in the world of the arts, citing, for example, that tragedies have always been considered to be more important than comedies in the realm of theater, and that Plato would have discouraged laughter in his ideal state. It seems to the author, that although humor is not denied a place in art, when it does appear, it is simply viewed as art taking a break before returning to the serious business at handthe serious business of exposing beauty. The author describes the way human beings develop a sense of humor much in the way Kant describes his relationship to beauty and art. An immediate parallel Morreall points out, is that humor, like art, is a self-contained endeavor, often undertaken for no ulterior motive or goal, but because the pleasure of participating is an end in itself. Further mirroring Kants ideas about mans capacity to appreciate art; he asserts that in order to actually enjoy the humor of a situation, one must first be able to distance oneself from it, touching upon the distinction between tragedy and comedy.
When considering Schillers conception of art and beauty as articulated in the Eighteenth Letter, it seems that Morrealls objections to the diminutive role which humor has earned in aesthetic education could be supported by Schillers beliefs. He writes, Through Beauty the sensuous man is led to form and to thought; through Beauty the spiritual man is brought back to matter and restored to the world of sense. One might argue that humor, as a genre, typifies the role of art as described here as the agent of the digesting of tragic truths, and conversely the agent which sobers the absurd.
In the factory scene of Modern Times, through visually representing physical comedy, protests what Schiller phrases as a wound that culture has inflicted upon modern humanity itself. He discusses the individual as, no longer a man who can fulfill several roles of his own choosing, but rather simply a gear in the machine of society. He laments the loss of the Greek States, where every individual enjoyed an independent like and, when need arose, could become a whole in himself, which now gave place to an ingenious piece of machinery, in which out of the botching together of a vast number of lifeless parts a collective mechanical life results. State and Church, law and customs, were now torn asunder; enjoyment was separated from labor, means from ends, effort from reward. Eternally chained to only one single little fragment of the whole Man himself grew to be only a fragment ( ) and instead of imprinting humanity upon his nature, he becomes merely the imprint of his occupation, of his science. Although separated by about 200 years, it seems as though the writings of Schiller narrate the visual representations in the Charlie Chaplin film. What Chaplin criticizes through physical comedy, or, for example the absurd juxtaposition of the images of a cattle drive, and men exiting the subway on their way to work at the factory, Schiller develops (quite humorlessly, although with recognized aesthetic value) through his preferred mediumletters. Chaplins character in the film, the tramp, seems to have become an impression of his occupation. When he takes breaks, he seems to have been irreversibly wired to eternally perform his assembly line, bolt-tightening gestureeven when he sees the buttons on the buttocks of the secretary, his reaction is to tighten them like bolts. Although he is by no means an extremely diligent worker, the tramp, once in the groove of his work, cannot stop. Eventually, he is engulfed by the machine, churning together with it in its gears, much as Schiller described man and society. When the tramp is finally regurgitated, he dissolves into a manic ballerina, a natural man with no reason to curb him. What makes us laugh at this somewhat distressingly meaningful scene is the distance which we have from it. We know this is an actor acting in a film, which takes place in an era quite foreign to ours. Also, because the degree to which Chaplin allows his ideas to play out, the exaggerated nature of an allegorical symbol, when we are met with such a degree of absurdity, we make humor of it. It is precisely this ability to appeal to the sensuous mans desire to laugh to lead him to form and thought, to bring the spiritual man back to the world of sense, through an irreverently wise, yet absurd suggestion that makes this film beautiful.