Abstraction and mass culture: Chaplin’s reception and the international language of film

ABSTRACT

Among the historical writings that address the concept of ‘Visual Esperanto’, numerous texts have focused on Chaplin’s films and the character he portrayed: the tramp. The tramp has become emblematic of the international language of film. It maybe that this emblem’s ubiquity has lent it a commonsensical armor that has averted critical questions, as no research has focused on this central topic. Yet the fact that the tramp has come to symbolize universality and the international language of film raises questions: Chaplin’s tramp has been repeatedly linked to migration and foreignness. Siegfried Kracauer, for example, regarded him as the personification of the outcast, the pariah. The image of the other, the stranger, is often used to delineate the social body from the outside, i.e. the group defines itself in contrast to the outcast. Therefore, the question arises as to how the character of the stranger helped define the boundaries of universality, not from without, but precisely from within? Through an examination of writings from the silent era and the years of transition to sound film, this paper will trace the paradox that lies at the heart of the concept of the universality of ‘Visual Esperanto’. An analysis of the tramp’s character traits against the backdrop of the formation of the Hollywood star system will shed new light on the deep connections between the esthetics of abstraction and the historical role of the masses at the beginning of the twentieth century.

KEYWORDS:

• Chaplin
• abstraction
• vernacular modernism
• Visual Esperanto
• universality
• reception studies

Notes

1. There are, of course, countless studies of Chaplin and the character he played but not in regard to the ideal of ‘Visual Esperanto’. An exception can be found in Russ Castronovo’s fascinating book Beautiful Democracy: Esthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era (2007), which does discuss Chaplin’s films in relation to ‘Visual Esperanto’ (see 136–151). Castronovo analyses how Chaplin (in his films and interviews) associated himself with the Esperanto ideal. The current study differs from Castronovo’s not only because it focuses on an earlier period, up until the transition to talking pictures, but also because it focuses on the discourse surrounding Chaplin in general, rather than limiting itself to materials that Chaplin himself propagated through films and interviews.

2. For more about the Pathé’s efforts to make their films acceptable outside of France see Richard Abel’s (1999) The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900–1910.

3. There are numerus texts from the silent era that dealt with Chaplin’s character and the international language of film. Here follows an unexclusive and not exhaustive list of references that includes Chaplin’s own published texts on the matter: Adorno [1930] 1996; Arnheim 1929; Balázs [1924] 2010; Benjamin [1929] 1999; Bowman 1931; Chaplin 1916, 1922; Churchill [1935] 1971; Cocteau [1919] 1988; Delluc [1922] 1971; Eliot 1923; Farmer [1919] 1971; Faure [1922] 1988; Fiske [1916] 1971; Fondane [1930] 1988; Gish [1926] 2006; Goll [1920] 2016; Kracauer and MacKay [1931] 1997; Aleichem [1916] 1999; Soupault [1931] 2014; Stark 1922; Tucholsky 1922; Lewis [1927] 1993.

4. 1915 is also the year in which Chaplin’s name and image began to be exploited in a wide array of products. Along with numerous references to his name in newspaper headlines (to increase sales), there were also illustrations of his figure, cartoons and imitation costumes. This trend also contributed to his recognizable qualities. For more on this subject, see Maland (1989), especially pages 10–11.

5. In his study about Chaplin’s popularity in Weimar Germany, Joseph Garncarz (2010) demonstrated that the statements about Chaplin’s unrivaled fame are usually based on textual sources, such as historical articles by intellectuals or promotional materials. Yet the examination of contemporary film revenues and surveys on the popularity of films and stars shows that Chaplin’s films were not extremely popular to audiences at large. Urban workers and intellectuals were Chaplin’s core audience in Weimar Germany. This essay is also based on textual sources, and as such it cannot attest to the degree of Chaplin’s popularity or to any comprehensive claim about the audience reception.

6. Sholem Aleichem quoted in: יעקב הלחמי 'כי מזרע היהודים הוא', בית הסרט העברי. 28 בפברואר 2016 http://www.filmography.co.il/articles/35-%D7%9B%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%96%D7%A8%D7%A2-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%94%D7%95%D7%90.html.

This quote is an exception in the essay since it appears in a pre-1916 text. As Maland shows, Chaplin’s character continued to be molded up until 1916, and underwent a significant change in this period, from the coarse and vulgar figure that characterized Keystone Studios’ nihilistic comedies into a more complex figure also typified by gentleness, generosity and altruism. The vast majority of the essays quoted in the essay was written from the 1920s on, and refers to Chaplin’s post-1916 more refined character.

7. According to Maland in the aforementioned essay, at the beginning of his career at Keystone Studios, Chaplin was considered by many of the critics as vulgar, and in the course of 1916 he learned to cater more to the taste of the America genteel culture.

8. On this subject see Jennifer Wild (2010).

9. Marshall McLuhan (1964) claimed that Leopold Bloom is Chaplin’s ‘Literary twin’ (296). For a more detailed account of the relations between the two fictive characters see Briggs (1996). For a close reading of Wyndham Lewis’ novel, The Childermass and its relation to Chaplin and to Lewis critique of the mass-produced Hollywood personality see Paraskeva 2007.

10. On Chaplin’s role in the imaginary of the USSR avant-garde see Tsivian (2014).

11. For another detailed and enlightening account about Chaplin’s reception in the press during the Wilhelmine era and the Weimer period, see Aping (2014).

12. Chaplin did not only write about his films’ popularity, but also took active part in promoting his films as connected to the idea of ‘Visual Esperanto’. For more on this subject, see Castronovo (2007, 177–179). Similarly, Chaplin integrated scenes in his films that refer to the ideal either directly or indirectly. A charming scene in the film Shoulder Arms (Charles Chaplin, 1918) dealt with the cinematic apparatus and universal language. Chaplin plays an American soldier who meets a French girl played by Edna Purviance who fears that he might be an enemy soldier. She asks him in French, which also appears in the original in the dialog titles: ‘Parlez-vous Français?’ he does not understand and tries to reply in English. The misunderstanding is resolved through the pantomime that allows them to transcend the borders of language. In the films City Lights (Charles Chaplin 1931) and Modern Times (Charles Chaplin 1936), the issue of universal language is associated with the transition to sound and with Chaplin’s famous resistance to talking pictures. Chaplin, who was very aware of the universal appeal attributed to the tramp, made sure that the character did not speak. Even when the tramp was forced to speak, in the famous dancing and singing scene from Modern Times, he finally did so in Gibberish, avoiding using a national language. In these films, the issue of cinema’s international language is associated with Chaplin’s elegy for silent film. It seems that Chaplin did not abandon the Esperanto ideal even after it disappeared from the central discourse on cinema. In the film The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin 1940), which also features wonderful Gibberish scenes, the character of the Jewish hairdresser he plays actually does speak a national language. The Esperanto language created by Ludwik Zamenhof only appears in this film in the artwork, on the signs of the stores in the Ghetto. The final speech indirectly raises the question of ‘Visual Esperanto’, though not as part of the discussion of cinema and silent film, but rather in the context of other inventions that changed the world. In the speech in which he calls on everyone ‘to do away with national barriers’ he also refers to a recurring theme in the discussion of ‘Visual Esperanto’, concerning the widespread distribution of the new inventions that enabled the unification of humanity. ‘The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world’. In this scene, the Esperanto ideal is connected to the new distribution capabilities of the products of reproduction rather than to the qualities of his character or to pantomime.

13. In this context it is also interesting to look at the tramp’s merchandise mentioned in footnote 3. Already in 1915, illustrations and cartoons of Chaplin had attained wide circulation (Maland 1989, 10–11). His figure in these graphic images is easily identifiable. It seems sufficient to catch a mere glimpse of the bowler hat and the winking mustache to know who is being depicted. His icon-like features are well suited to his non-specific abstract manner.

14. More details can be found at Alain Bergala’s (1992) chapter on the subject: ‘The Film Spectator and Identification in Film’ and especially on page 201.

15. Among the most famous criticisms is that written by Noël Carroll, which appeared in several publications, notably in Mystifying Movies: Fades and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory (Carroll 1988) and in the book he co-authored with David Bordwell, Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (1996). Carroll’s criticism also led him to demand an alternative formulation to the concept of identification in cinematic theory in order to discuss the emotional relations of viewers to film characters. While discussing the horror genre in The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart (1990) Carroll refutes the notion that spectators adopt the viewpoint of characters, and fuse with the protagonist and his position in the film. Carroll claimed that the spectators do not merge with fictional characters but only interact with them (1990, 95–96). He opposed the features associated with identification, which he found misleading, and offered the concept of assimilation to describe the structure of interaction between spectators and fictional characters (Carroll 1990, 95–96). Assimilation does not describe identity or sameness, but rather an emotional experience that also emphasizes the spectators’ separateness from the fictional characters. Despite Carroll’s criticism, and although he adopted a distinct methodology, his concept of assimilation also deals with the elements that the spectator adopts from the fictional character, rather than discussing what they projects. Murray Smith’s Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (1995) also returned to the issue of identification with fictional characters in an attempt to offer an alternative to the psychoanalytic conceptualization in film studies. Smith devoted the first two chapters of his book to criticism of cinematic theory conceptualization of the spectator’s identification. He proposed that the discussion of the structure of viewers’ sympathy with characters should be based on cognitive and affect theories. He stressed that spectators are invited to experience films from multiple positions and not just from the perspective of one character (Smith 1995, 81) and suggested that the conceptualization of viewers’ involvement be divided into three levels, which he called ‘recognition, alignment and allegiance’ (Smith 1995, 81). Smith’s book introduces various tools to explain and describe the emotional attitude of spectators to fictitious characters, yet he does not discuss the elements of casting and projection, traits imposed by the spectator on the character.

16. For an extensive discussion of Chaplin’s opposition to the talkies, see Crafton (1999). On Chaplin’s fear of revealing his accent, see page 348.