Unit 2

Origin of Cinema as a New Form of Art

A) Introduction
I) About the Origin of Cinema
a) In the 21st century, movies are everywhere in the modern world and are undeniably the most
significant form of mass culture, way ahead in terms of popularity, influence and reach of books
and art.
b) However, this was not always the case. In fact, it is often easy to forget given cinema’s ubiquity
(presence everywhere) that its emergence as the dominant and the most technologically advanced
art form of our times has a particular, relatively recent history, one that goes back no longer than
the end of the nineteenth century.
c) Firstly, we need to know what does the term “cinema” itself implies? In common parlance,
“cinema” and “film” are used synonymously. At best, cinema is used to denote a whole
body/corpus of films. This is the sense embedded in the usage of phrases such as “Hindi Cinema”
or “Bombay Cinema,” to use examples that are immediately recognisable to us as Indians. But as
Geoffrey NowellSmith notes, cinema is a multidimensional signifier that refers not just to films
but also “the machinery that makes them, and the places where people go to see them.” In other
words, cinema “is a technology, an industry, an art form [and] a way of viewing the world - or of
creating worlds to be viewed”
d) When considering the origins of cinema as a new art form, it is important to focus, first and
foremost, on the technological advancements that enabled its rise.
e) Cinema’s direct antecedents (ancestry) lie in photography, a revolutionary development in the
history of the image that took place in the nineteenth century. Cinema rose as an attempt to bring
together basic photographic techniques and devices that rendered taking photographs in quick
succession possible and playing them back in such a way that an effect of movement is produced.
f) As Virginia Wright Wexman notes, cinema’s “tools and materials were invented out of a desire to
make visual the records of life and to study the movements of animals, including humans”
g) Not surprisingly, then, an earlier term for cinema/films was “moving pictures,” one that is directly
interlinked with the more contemporary term, “movies.” The idea of movement, a dynamic
rather than a fixed or static representation of reality, is thus central to cinema’s
distinctiveness as an art form.
 h) Strategies of viewing also acquired increasing sophistication over time: early examples of moving
pictures – which only gradually evolved into what we today recognise as “films”– were
experienced as peep shows before more state-of-the-art projection machinery was invented.
i) Other pre-cinematic technologies that contributed to the development of cinema were the Magic
Lantern (which involved the projection of images on a wall or a curtain), the Phenakistoscope (a
device comprising a carboard disc embellished with pictures that was rotated to convey an
impression of movement of images) and the Zoetrope (a drum-like structure whirled in such a way
that the drawings or photographs on its inner surface produce the effect of continued sequence),
among others.
j) The most significant moment in this narrative of the origins of cinema is the Lumière
Brothers’ public display of their cinematograph in Paris in 1895. Louise and Auguste Lumière
were French innovators and entrepreneurs whose device, combining a camera and projector, was
instantaneously hailed as a pathbreaking development in the history of cinema.
k) Some of the important distinguishing features of these formative experiments in filmmaking were
that these films were black and white, silent (without synchronized dialogue, although sound was
not altogether absent) and not more than 50-55 seconds in length.
l) Seen from a contemporary vantage point, these films were certainly not the technically-poised,
full-length feature films we are now used to watching. At the same time, the earliest innovators of
cinema were conscious of the limitations of their technologies and constantly strove to overcome
them. For this reason, the history of cinema is also the history of rapidly advancing technologies
that made both the production and projection of films increasingly sophisticated endeavours.
m) The most important landmarks in this still-developing trajectory include the shift from
silent films to “the talkies” as well as from black and white films to colour roughly in the
1920s and 1930s, the availability of progressively up-to-date projection and sound
equipment, the emergence of the videotape as a playback resource in the 1970s and the
digital boom that began in the 1990s and continues to this day.
II) Cinema as Questioning Traditional Functions of Art
a) The second important aspect under consideration here is cinema as an art form and its relationship
with other, pre-existing art forms.
b) Due to its heavy reliance on technology, cinema was initially not considered an “art” at all. This
view owes its conception to the Romantic notion of art as an organic product of the artist’s
 creativity– unmediated by the supposedly corrupting effects of mechanisation. The Romantic
suspicion of the unchecked growth of science and industrialisation, in other words, manifests itself
in the way emerging forms of art such as photography and cinema, which are constitutively
associated with automation, are considered inadequate with reference to the restrictive, and
somewhat elitist, parameters of the organicist ideal of art.
c) This resistance to cinema as a legitimate art form reduced over time as technical innovation and
artistic creativity were no longer deemed mutually exclusive spheres of human endeavour.
d) Cinema brings these dichotomous notions together, blurring the boundaries between “nature” and
“art,” the “natural” and the “artificial”: a director’s work on a particular film draws both from the
recesses of her/his creative potential and the technological resources that help realise her/his inner
vision on the celluloid for the audiences.
e) Cinema doesn’t give us a neutral/objective vision of reality, as is often assumed; it reconfigures
reality through the expressive tools at its disposal, including editing, lighting, setting, props,
costume, camera angles and so on.
f) In its early days when cinema was still struggling with its credentials as art, it sought to aspire for
respectability and legitimacy by highlighting its links with existing art forms: multiple versions of
Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, were already being produced in the first two decades of the
twentieth century. This strategy continues even today: by way of countering the charge that
straightforward narrative cinema is not “artistic” enough, selfconsciously “literary” adaptations of
canonical works continue to be routinely made. As early as 1911, however, marginal voices were
already making a case for cinema as a unique art form that needed to be appreciated in its own
right.
g) Based on Roman philosopher Horace’s classical dictum, poetry and painting had erringly been
treated as overlapping discourses, as “sister arts,” owing to their common appeal to the power of
imaginative creation and perception. Given this philosophical background, an attempt to carve a
special niche for cinema is noteworthy. It is argued that what makes cinema truly exceptional as
the newest artform on the horizon is its ability to amalgamate the principles of time and space: it
presents both a narrative, strongly associated with literature (poetry, novels, plays and short
stories), and visuality.
h) In Italian Film theorist Riccioto Canudo’s exact terms, cinema is a “superb reconciliation of the
Rhythms of Space and the Rhythms of Time ”. A photograph, by contrast, does not denote a
 narrative – lacking movement and rhythm, it merely captures a snapshot of a given moment in
time. To that extent, cinema embodies a marked expansion of expressive possibilities inherent in
visual media. Compared to photography, cinema’s representation of reality incorporates greater
complexity, nuance and comprehensiveness of treatment.
i) The relationship between Cinema and other art forms is explained further in Walter Benjamin’s
essay.

III) Silent Cinema

a) The final point of discussion in the introduction pertains to “Silent Cinema,” especially relevant
for our analysis of Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece, Modern Times. Silent cinema was a mode of
filmmaking, highly popular roughly between the 1890s and the late 1920s, characterised by the
absence of synchronised sound (audio that is recorded when a shot is being taken , for eg: of
running water in river)and dialogues.
b) Synchronised sound is sound technologically wedded to the image: it is more properly defined as
“[t]he combination of image track and soundtrack in such a way that sound and image fit
seamlessly together”.
c) This is not to suggest that the earliest films were completely mute experiences; the sounds
emanated from the context of the film’s screening and not the film itself. Often, the screening of a
film in an auditorium would be accompanied by a live pianist or even an orchestra, providing
acoustic compensation for the absence of a soundtrack in the film. In some cases, a narrator or
“lecturer” would explain the details of the narrative to the audience. It is evident, then, that the
silent film was not entirely “silent” in the way we retrospectively understand the phenomenon
today.
d) Another recognisable feature of silent cinema was the extensive use of “intertitles”: displayed on-
screen at regular intervals during the film.
e) Intertitles were title cards that contained basic narrative commentary and dialogues. In terms of
acting style, these films can strike modern audiences as somewhat rudimentary (underdeveloped).
Due to the absence of spoken dialogue, acting relied heavily on exaggerated facial expressions
and body movements. Drawn from theatrical sources, the vaudeville and the burlesque in
particular, this extra-naturalistic acting idiom was one of the characteristic features of the early
silent period.
f) Some of the most well-known silent films include The Birth of a Nation (1925), 5 The Passion of
Joan of Arc (1928), Ben-Hur (1925), City Lights (1931).
g) It was the release of the 1927 film, The Jazz Singer, that properly inaugurated the era of the
“talkies” (films where characters talked to one other), although efforts to achieve this
breakthrough had been underway for a while.
h) By the 1930s, most American films contained spoken dialogue. Besides dialogue, synchronised
sound also allowed for greater embeddedness of music into the film narrative – from being an
external accompaniment to the film, music became an integral part of the narrative. In specialised
genres such as the musical, it played an even more prominent role in the advancement of the
narrative.
i) Yet again, Chaplin’s films stood out as notable exceptions to these larger shifts: Chaplin famously
resisted embracing sound films for aesthetic and linguistic considerations. He believed that the
near-universal popularity of the Tramp (the central comic persona of Chaplin’s films), and the
silent comedy genre in general, would be hampered if the characters spoke in a particular
language. “[D]ialogue does not have a place in the sort of comedies I make,” he asserted in a 1931
interview. Yet, the maverick director-actor could not fully escape the increasing hegemony of
synchronised sound as the new aesthetic norm. Consequently, films like Modern Times make use
of an elaborate soundtrack even as they do not incorporate spoken dialogues. In that sense, they
represent a transitional phase from the silent era to the sound one.
B) Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1936)
Overall Summary points
a) The central premise of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” one of the
well-known and often-cited essays by the German philosopher and cultural theorist Walter
Benjamin (1892-1940), is that the rise of mechanical reproduction (wherein technology enables
widespread circulation of art, making it easily reproducible, transportable and accessible)
undermines the importance of certain outdated concepts that we typically associate with art:
“creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery.”
b) These notions have long upheld the conservative paradigm that art is an elite, exclusive
endeavour, out of the common person’s reach and sphere of understanding. In stark contrast,
 mechanical reproduction allows us to reconceptualise art as a transformative, revolutionary
enterprise easily available to the ordinary masses.
c) Mechanical reproduction represents a breakthrough in our engagement with art because it renders
irrelevant the value of the “original,” a prized Romantic criterion often used as a yardstick to
evaluate the worth of “good,” “authentic” art. This obsession with originality manifests in our
desire, for instance, to visit the famous Louvre Museum in Paris to see the “real” Mona Lisa or to
strive to access the manuscript of Hamlet in an antiquated British library.
d) What mechanical reproduction does is to substitute the singular, authoritative text (a literary work
or a painting, for example) with a multiplicity of copies, such that these copies become available
for consumption, and even appropriation, in one’s specific socio-political context. Whereas the
original is fixed in time and space, the copy is far more mobile and malleable. In the case of the
many prints of a photographic negative, for instance, the question of the “authentic” print ceases
to be important. Similarly, in literature, the multiple, easily available copies of a canonical play or
poem nullify the sanctity of the original: one utilises the mechanically-reproduced copy in the
form of a cheap paperback edition not as a poor replacement for the hallowed original but as the
only means one approaches texts in our technology-saturated age.
e) We live, thus, in times where the proliferation of copies has evacuated the original of its
cherished status: the original not only ceases to matter but also, in some cases, to exist.
Furthermore, mechanical reproduction has the potential of directly or indirectly animating
contemporary mass movements based on the principles of social equity and justice by allowing
the reader/viewer to first access the hitherto distant and inapproachable text in one’s own unique
cultural milieu and then possibly employ it as a tool to achieve distinct political and ideological
ends. In making this argument, Benjamin debunks the “old-fashioned idea of art as autonomous of
social or political reality”
f) Benjamin begins his essay with a quotation from Paul Valery's "The Conquest of Ubiquity," in
which Valery notes that the definition of art itself is likely to change as society changes. As a
piece of cultural criticism, the essay is largely devoted to thinking about the way society is
changing and why those changes matter. Benjamin examines these societal changes specifically
through a study of art, and more specifically through a study of art production
g) Benjamin opens the essay by noting that, like Karl Marx's communist theory, his analysis will
focus on the topic of means of production—specifically, art production—in society in order to
anticipate political futures.
h) Benjamin notes that art has always been reproducible, and cites a number of technologies that
made reproduction faster and easier. These technologies include the printing press, the lithograph,
and the photo camera. He explains that film, however, provides the best example of how changing
technology has altered the production and reception of art. Written during the Nazi regime in
Germany, Benjamin's essay posits that the way art is produced and consumed can and will be co-
opted for political ends by proponents of fascism. He introduces his primary case study by
providing a brief history of technologies that made mechanical reproduction of art possible.
i) With the advent of new technologies, mechanical reproduction has muddied the concept of
authenticity. Whereas an "original" piece of art retained its value due to its authenticity,
contemporary modes of reproduction are so advanced that they can bring to light elements of art
that even the original cannot show. As such, mechanical reproduction effectively diminishes
the value of the original, a phenomenon Benjamin describes as the loss of a piece of art's
"aura." It is within the theoretical exploration that Benjamin develops the central argument of his
essay: mechanical reproduction of both quality and quantity has diminished the uniqueness or
"aura" of art objects. That Benjamin uses the term "aura" to describe the uniqueness of a work of
art is significant because the word typically denotes a spiritual or energetic quality surrounding a
person or thing. As such, it is often associated with mystery and an enigmatic, unseen experience.
This enigmatic quality is precisely what Benjamin argues has been diminished in the production
and reception of art, as an art object's aura can only exist in a particular time and place—a temple,
for example is built in one place—while mechanical reproduction of that image of temple allows
for the art object to exist in many places at once.
j) Benjamin goes on to describe how art began as a form of ritual, but has now been entirely
emancipated from that original function and will, he predicts, be co-opted entirely for political
purposes.’
k) As Benjamin moves further into his argument about the production and reception of art, he
provides more background explication for why he sees film as the ultimate example of how art
and its consumption has changed. Benjamin denotes two ways that art is received and valued: the
cult and the exhibition.
l) .Benjamin uses the term "cult" to denote a connection to spirituality, ritual, or ceremony—that is,
art that is created for a purpose other than simple viewing. An example of this type of cult art is
the cave drawings of prehistoric men, which were created primarily as methods of communicating
with the gods. By contrast, exhibition art is made to be viewed, and Benjamin argues that the
concept of cult art has essentially disappeared from the zeitgeist altogether. Most art now gains its
value from exhibition—from being viewed, as the cult value of art has all but disappeared. He
uses the example of photography, noting that photographs of deceased loved one still retain
private "cult" value while photographs of deserted public spaces represent the value of exhibition.
Photography, he concludes, altered the entire nature of art.
m) Now, film is producing a change of its own. The process of film production, Benjamin argues,
highlights the exhibition value of film as an artistic mode. With the audience replaced by a
camera, "the performance of the actor is subjected to a series of optical tests". Furthermore, that
actors must perform without an audience means that their aura disappears, as aura is "tied to the
actor’s presence; there can be no replica of it".
n) The camera "need not respect the performance as an integral whole," meaning that the camera
and the cameraman have the advantage of shooting from multiple perspectives at different times.
Similarly, the actor is no longer the same type of actor as a theater actor, because film production
takes place over many months, in many different places, and rarely are the scenes shot in the order
they appear on screen. This mode of production, Benjamin argues, alienates the actor from the
audience, to be sure, but also from himself
o) Finally, that the audience comes to identify with the camera rather than the actor transforms the
role of viewers more generally: all spectators are suddenly thrust into the role of critics.
p) Mechanical reproduction, then, changes the response of the public toward art in general. Benjamin
argues that film offers for the masses simultaneous enjoyment and criticism in a way that painting
simply could not. Movie-going is, he notes, a collective experience that allows the masses to
"organize and control themselves in their reception".
q) As he continues his discussion of film art, Benjamin notes that it is a perfect medium for
psychoanalytic theory. He explains that film technologies that like the slow-motion or close-up
shot open viewers' eyes to see their own familiar world in differently and in more detail. Benjamin
argues that through the use of close-ups and slow-motion shots, audiences become more aware of
the otherwise unknown elements of familiar behavior. Anyone can imagine someone reaching to
 pick up an object for instance, but once that action is slowed down on film, the intricacies of the
process are laid bare. He compares this phenomenon to psychoanalytic theory's study of the
mediation between the unconscious and conscious human mind.
r) Benjamin here focuses on the similarities between the "unconscious" mind of psychoanalysis and
the "unconscious" world of filmography. Just as Freud argued that a "slip of the tongue" was a
signifier of unconscious desire or thought, so too does technology in film production produce an
unconscious optics for viewers.
s) Next, Benjamin discusses the concept of contemplation. Benjamin argues that watching a movie
does not require true engagement from its audience. He labels audience's of films "distracted" and
"absent-minded," not to criticize people who watch movies, but instead to showcase how the very
nature of art has transformed into something that can be consumed in a passive manner. He argues
that film scenes change too quickly to ever allow the viewer to actually contemplate what they
have seen, as one would when standing in front of a painting. Thus, interest in film reflects a
fundamentally distracted public. This phenomenon is nothing new, and has indeed existed in the
history of architecture. Benjamin argues that architecture is viewed as art not through optics but
through habit, by physical interaction with a building. Film has created a similar demand of its
audiences: "the public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one".
t) In the epilogue, Benjamin cautions that it is the work of fascists to attempt to aestheticize politics
by drawing on the societal and technological changes that have taken place with art. Benjamin
concludes his essay by cautioning that mechanical reproduction has altered art so fundamentally,
and therefore altered society's perception of man so fundamentally, that fascist advocates will rely
on these changes to aestheticize and promote political life—the worst incarnation of which is war.

Thematical points
I) The Film’s Distinctiveness as an Art Form: The Stage Actor and the Screen Actor
a) In the latter half of his essay, Benjamin narrows his focus on the film as the most representative
example of mechanically reproduced art in the contemporary era.
b) He goes on to raise some fundamental concerns about the ontological status of cinema as a new
art form that we touched upon in the introduction to this chapter. Benjamin begins by discarding
as fruitless the scholarly attempts to gauge whether cinema is an art. Instead, for him, the far more
critically interesting question that needs attention is the way cinema transforms “the entire nature
 of art.” He compares the artistic performances of a stage actor and a screen actor to explore the
multiple ways cinema is distinctive from other pre-existing, more established art forms.
c) The most obvious point of divergence between the two modes of acting is that while we encounter
a flesh and blood actor on stage, a screen actor’s work is mediated by a camera: the latter does not
perform before a live audience. Consequently, the organic wholeness of the stage actor’s presence
is undercut by the technologically-inflected performance of the screen actor. The screen actor’s
“acting” is constituted of not only her/his individual efforts but also the varying effects of camera
angles, close-ups, lighting choices, editing patterns and so on. Just as mechanical reproduction
leads to the loss of the “aura” of the artwork, the film – as a form that is not only “subject to” but
also “founded in” technology – undermines the aura of the actor’s corporeal presence: “the aura
that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure that he portrays.”
d) This is also so because the screen actor’s performance is discontinuous: it is “composed of many
separate performances,” such that a “jump from a window” and the “ensuing flight,” witnessed as
one uninterrupted sequence on screen, need not be shot in that manner. Shots are often taken in
different places and times and then inserted into the final product through post-production editing
procedures. Screen acting, to that extent, is thoroughly centred on artifice: it challenges
verisimilitude, or lifelikeness, one of the central artistic principles of realist-naturalist drama.
I) In place of lifelikeness, cinema gives us a technologically-generated effect of reality, “a
thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment.”
II) The Film and Psychoanalysis
a) In Section 13 of the essay, Benjamin furthers his arguments about the film by analysing how the
artform “enriches our field of perception” in terms of Freudian theory. Just as psychoanalysis – a
method for treating mental illnesses involving sustained, uninhibited conversations between a
patient and a trained practitioner pioneered by the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud – has
deepened our understanding of the mind, the film brings about a greater penetration of reality
from different points of view.
b) It is the technical prowess of the camera that makes this deep dive possible: close-ups, for
instance, expand our perception of space, just as the slow-motion extends time. “By close-ups
of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects [and] by exploring
common place milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera,” cinema reveals to us “an
immense and unexpected field of action.” It presents our everyday reality to us on screen in a new
 light, defamiliarizing its contours such that we begin to acquire a fresh perspective into our
surroundings.
III) The Film and the Painting: The Subversive Power of Distractedness as a Mode of Perception
a) In Section 14, Benjamin returns to drawing comparisons between the film and other art forms,
painting in this case. While a painting, with its static depiction of life, usually invites
“contemplative immersion,” (when you look at a painting, you are compelled to think about it and
relate it to your life in some sense) cinema, with a rapid movement of shots, epitomises dynamic
change and fluidity.
b) The “shock effect” of the film – one that would have been felt much more keenly by cinema’s
first spectators than their contemporary counterparts who are much more habituated to cinematic
rhythm – engenders a distracted state of reception. This has long been seen as the basis for a
philosophical critique of cinema as an infantilising massspectacle that requires no intelligence,
discretion or concentration.
c) According to Georges Duhamel, whom Benjamin quotes and refutes in the essay, cinema is “a
pastime for helots, a diversion for the uneducated, wretched worn-out creatures . . . which kindles
no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a
‘star’ in Los Angeles.” This is an unabashedly elitist tirade against a democratic art form that
precisely owing to its roots in mechanical reproduction is accessible to a wider cross-section of
consumers as compared to literature or the “finer” arts.
d) Against the grain of such arguments, Benjamin considers the state of distraction that the
film generates as a strength. Echoing the Marxist German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-
1956) on the verfremdungseffekt (usually translated as “alienation effect”), Benjamin argues that
the experience of watching a film, interrupted as it is by a constant stream of moving images,
prevents the audiences from developing a stable sense of association or identification with the
cinematic spectacle. This then positions them as impersonal critics and judges of the film,
provoking them to thought and perhaps to action. “A man who concentrates,” Benjamin states,
“before a work of art is absorbed by it . . . In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of
art.” Distractedness, hence, is a preferred mode over concentration when it comes to the
reception of the film: it transforms cinematic spectators from being naïve and passive recipients
of artistic illusion to active and judicious meaning-makers.
 e) Further, since cinema as an art form is often collectively experienced by the masses in a public
theatre, it can be used as a tool for their shared political interests far more categorically in
comparison to a painting. Paintings are often unable to become “object[s] for simultaneous
collective experience” even when they are exhibited in galleries and salons because, despite the
changes wrought by mechanical reproduction of art, they continue to remain shrouded in an aura
of impenetrability.
f) The residual nostalgia for art’s “cult value,” its purported originality and authenticity, finds
expression in our relatively distanced and reverential attitude towards paintings. This is the basis
for Benjamin’s stringent faith in the politically revolutionary potential of the film: “the reactionary
attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie.”
g) Articulating a rather valid concern that Benjamin’s essay sometimes runs the risk of romanticising
the emancipatory power of the film, Theodor Adorno’s (a critic) key point is that mass-reproduced
forms of art lend themselves just as readily to the counterrevolutionary trends they are meant to
subvert. To put it simply, no art form can be seen as essentially or intrinsically more progressive
than the other, even when one concedes the qualitative differences among them. Cinema can very
well serve the interests of modern capitalistic societies that thrive on the growing
commercialisation and commodification of art.
h) By turning people into complacent, resigned consumers of “entertainment” that is often based on
damaging stereotypes and bourgeois( middle class people) propaganda, cinematic representations
can effectively ratify rather than threaten the status quo.
IV) Conclusion: Cinema as a Counter to the Fascistic Aestheticization of Politics
a) As a German of Jewish ancestry, living in exile in Paris when he composed this essay, Benjamin
was acutely sensitive to the inexorable rise of fascism in his native country as well on the
continent. This ominous development required a concrete and powerful response: Benjamin
sought to emphasize the revolutionary promise of mass-reproduced forms of art by way of
countering the fascistic attempt to render all art reactionary, self-enclosed, and ultimately
“apolitical.”
b) In the epilogue of the essay, Benjamin connects his ideas to these larger socio-political
circumstances in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Fascism, in his view, seeks to channel the
potentially transformative energies of the proletarian masses under democratic systems in the
direction of racial pride, ethnonationalism and, eventually, war. To that extent, the very purpose of
 waging war is to preserve the established property structure that the newly-empowered masses
strive to eliminate.
c) Fascism proceeds, then, by rendering politics “aesthetic” – glorifying and mythologising its
dangerous project in terms of self-serving narratives and symbols as well as turning war not only
inevitable but also, through a cruel and twisted logic, beautiful.
d) To counter such a cynical aestheticization of politics under fascism, “Communism responds by
politicizing art.” The implication here is that mechanical reproduction aids such politicisation of
art and hence the communist goal of a proletarian revolution by effecting a fundamental shift in
the very way we understand and experience art.
e) The film, in many ways still coming into its own when Benjamin first published the essay in 1936,
holds forth for him the promise of utopian change. With its unique embeddedness in technological
innovation, its widespread reach, and its capacity to inaugurate modes of perception that subvert
fascistic efforts to depoliticise art and culture, the film is emblematic of a paradigm shift that
portends a more egalitarian and emancipatory role for the arts in society than was heretofore
conceivable.

C) Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936)

Key thought in the film: “Unemployment is the vital question . . . Machinery should benefit
mankind. It should not spell tragedy and throw it out of work.”
I) Charlie Chaplin and the Figure of the Little Tramp
a) Modern Times is a silent comedy based on the renowned English actor, filmmaker and music
composer Charlie Chaplin’s (1889-1977) memorable onscreen persona, the little Tramp. The little
Tramp – considered by many as “the most universally recognised fictional image of a human
being in the history of art” – is essentially a childlike, goofy, good-spirited vagabond who
struggles to survive, and come to grips with, a hostile and alienating socio-political environment.
Amid the most desperate circumstances, however, he preserves his optimism and good cheer.
b) A comedic figure whose origins can be traced back to nineteenth-century theatrical traditions such
as the vaudeville and pantomime, the little Tramp is an Everyman struggling to endure the
hardships of a relentlessly materialistic, self-centred world. The physical and sartorial (dressing
style) characteristics of the Tramp played by Chaplin include a bowler hat, a pair of baggy pants, a
large, ill-fitting pair of shoes, a tight coat, a cane and, perhaps most identifiably in the popular
 consciousness, a toothbrush moustache. He is poor yet gentlemanly, and subtly, without ever
getting too confrontational, challenges authoritarian figures, getting back at them in his own
idiosyncratic ways. The quintessential response that the Tramp draws from the audience is an
amalgamation of humour and pathos: one sympathises with his plight just as vigorously as one
laughs at his loveable gaffes. The effort is to explore the comic potential inherent in human
suffering, rendering it relatable while avoiding the pitfalls of overt sentimentality and
preachiness.
II) The Mechanisation of Humanity in the Factory Scenes of Modern Times
a) In Modern Times, the Tramp is at the centre of a scathing critique of twentieth-century capitalism,
industrialisation and the dire socio-economic conditions that prevailed during the Great
Depression in America and elsewhere in the 1930s (mass poverty, unemployment, crime and
social unrest and, most crucially, the dehumanisation of the ordinary factory worker). According
to Jeffrey Vance, the central theme of the film is the “struggle to eschew alienation and preserve
humanity in a modern mechanised world” that is intent on reducing workers to the status of
“helpless cogs in a world beyond control”
b) “Modern Times” evolved into a comedy that embraces difficult subjects such as strikes, riots,
unemployment, poverty, and the tyranny of automation.
c) As the film begins, the opening intertitle explicitly lays out its keynote for the viewer: “Modern
Times – a story of industry, of individual enterprise – humanity crusading in the pursuit of
happiness.” The framing of the subject thus makes clear that even though the film raises important
questions about the plight of the common worker owing to the oppressive working conditions
prevailing in modern capitalist societies, it resists overt contextualization and politicization.
d) Instead, the film articulates a humanistic defence of a transcendent “humanity” seeking to pursue
“happiness” despite multiple hardships and challenges, hence retaining its cherished sense of
autonomy and vitality.
e) Consequently, the principal characters as specified in the introductory credits are not
individualised: Charlie Chaplin is a “factory worker” without a name while Paulette Goddard is,
quite simply, a “Gamin.” Evidently, the film’s message takes precedence over naturalistic
depiction and psychological interiority – characters function more as representative types rather
than fully distinct subjects here.
f) The very first shot of the narrative proper, depicting a flock of sheep being herded together, fades
into a sequence where a large group of factory workers are seen emerging from a crowded subway
and walking to the factory nearby. The poignancy of this moment is unmistakable: a symbolic
juxtaposition between the pitiable condition of the animals and the workers is established based
on their shared experiences of conformity, docility and oppression.
g) The interiors of the factory are even more menacing: we witness oversized representations of the
machines, their enormity and looming quality both literally and metaphorically dwarfing the
worker into insignificance. The president of the organisation – which is named Electro Steel
Corporation – is introduced to the viewer leisurely solving a jigsaw puzzle in his plush office, his
laidback lifestyle in stark contrast with the stringent, backbreaking work routines the workers are
subject to. What aggravates this situation is a densely embedded network of audio-video
surveillance of the factory so that every movement of the worker is closely watched and policed.
The president uses precisely these monitoring devices to repeatedly instruct the floor
superintendent to intensify the speed of the conveyor belt that the Tramp and a small group of
fellow workers are responsible for.
h) The imperative of speed – one of the defining features of modern life that is inextricably
connected with capitalistic notions of productivity, efficiency and profit maximisation – is
treated sceptically in the film because it directly contributes to the alienation and the
marginalisation of the worker.
i) In the film’s most emblematic and famous scene, the Tramp is frantically working on the
conveyor belt as he tightens bolts of machine parts. The accelerated speed of the conveyor belt as
per the president’s instructions – in addition to the effect of chaos and hurriedness generated by
the heightened projection speed typical of silent films – makes the monotonous, repetitive and
soul-crushing nature of work in modern factories come alive viscerally for the audience.
j) The Tramp eventually gives up trying to keep pace and is, in a symbolically potent moment,
swallowed by the machine. He remains stuck inside until he is drawn out by a fellow worker . At
stake, therefore, is not only workers’ freedom but also their bodies: the annihilation of the worker
by the machine signifies how completely dispensable his labour has become in the machine age.
k) Not surprisingly, rest is sought to be nullified in the factory, as the worker’s unique humanity is
degraded as an unnecessary obstruction to the unbridled advance of capitalist hegemony. The
Tramp is caught out smoking in the washroom by the president whose all-seeing and knowing
 power invades every nook of his establishment as well as every aspect of the workers’ existence.
Significantly, in an otherwise silent film, it is only the president’s loud, booming, intimidating
commands we hear in the factory; “voice” belongs to the powerful capitalists even as the
workers are rendered voiceless in comparison and bereft of all agency.
l) The management of the factory is eager to erase even the last vestiges of the workers’
individuality: the Tramp is forced to participate in a trial of the “Billows Feeding Machine,” a
technological innovation advertised as a “practical device which automatically feeds your men
while at work.” The objective is ominous: to “eliminate the lunch hour, increase . . . production
and decrease . . . overheads” and ultimately stay ahead of one’s competitors.
m) The increasing mechanisation of the workplace, then, imperils the very personhood of the worker.
What ensues is a hilarious sequence where the machine becomes dysfunctional due to a
mechanical snag. More seriously, however, the failure of the machine signifies the human spirit’s
inability, and unwillingness, to align itself to its impersonal, corrosive rhythms. It also powerfully
demonstrates the limits of ceaseless technologization. The regime of the machine, Chaplin seems
to suggest, can never be absolute and totalising.
n) As a cumulative consequence of these concerted efforts to devalue the worker, the Tramp suffers
a nervous breakdown and is sent to a hospital. What ameliorates the profoundly disturbing, even
tragic, implications of the brutalising treatment meted out to the worker is the Tramp’s
irrepressible sense of humour and hope and his slapstick antics. A source of much hilarity in the
film, they are also symptomatic of the Tramp’s refusal to discipline his body and soul in
conformity with the demands of the machine age. Even in the most trying conditions, his physical
exuberance and childlike clumsiness remain intact. These attributes connote an inner strength that
makes the Tramp an epitome of human resilience, ingenuity and creative individualism. His is a
form of jouissance (a French word meaning “a sense of joy and pleasure”) that is always in excess
of, and rejects schemes of capitalistic control and regimentation.
III) Life outside the Factory: Challenges and Possibilities
a) Life outside the factory is no less challenging for the Tramp. He is mistakenly identified as the
leader of a communist demonstration and thrown into jail. Such high-handed repression of modes
of collective resistance anticipates the McCarthy era paranoia about communist activities in
America during the Cold War.
b) For unintentionally thwarting a jailbreak planned by some of his fellow inmates, the Tramp is
rewarded with a relatively clean and comfortable cell as he grows to experience a sense of
stability for the first time in his life. When he is eventually pardoned, he actually prefers
remaining in jail over the uncertainties and hardships involved in finding steady employment.
c) The prospect of physical freedom is paradoxically not experienced as liberating (the intertitle
indicates the Tramp’s moving question directed to the jailer: “Can’t I stay a little longer? I’m so
happy here!”) because it spells a return to chronic joblessness, abject poverty and lingering
precarity.
d) Very briefly, he takes a job as a shipyard cleaner before being fired for accidentally unmooring a
ship stationed on the harbour. Meanwhile, he meets the Gamin (Paulette Goddard) – the unnamed
female protagonist of the film portrayed as a street urchin engaging in petty crime to fill her
stomach – who is fleeing from being taken in custody for stealing a loaf of bread. Out of the
goodness of his heart, the Tramp tries to take the blame but an eyewitness reveals his lie.
e) Determined to go back to the security of jail life, he goes into a cafeteria and brazenly orders a
large amount of food without any intention of paying for it. To his delight, he is arrested once
more. By sheer coincidence, he encounters the Gamin in the police van on his way to jail. After
the vehicle accidentally crashes, they stage an escape and quickly become inseparable friends
f) As their bond strengthens, they imagine, and yearn for, a steady roof over their heads, a “home”
they can call their own, even though the practical exigencies of their economic status render their
plans virtually unachievable. This aspiration for bourgeois stability and respectability, familial
belonging and normative conceptions of domestic life shows that despite being wronged by the
excesses of capitalism and industrialisation, the two protagonists remain cautiously invested in the
middle-class ideal of the “American Dream.”
g) Indeed, it is precisely the Tramp’s and the Gamin’s reluctance to aggressively challenge the
capitalist paradigm, seeking to be accommodated within it even as they are victimised by it, that
makes them palatable and reassuring as characters to a conventional bourgeois audience. At no
point in the narrative are the two consciously eager to participate in public protests and other
activities against the socio-economic ravages of the Great Depression. In the absence of an
alternative imagination of a “good life”, the Tramp begins to work earnestly towards realising the
goal of a home, this time taking a job as a night watchman at an upscale department store, a
 veritable emblem of capitalistic excess and concentration of wealth. His efforts are doomed to fail,
however, because the conditions of his perennial unemployment are structural in nature.
h) Engendered by the inherently exploitative and hierarchical power dynamics of capitalism as an
economic system, the deep-seated inequalities that the characters of Modern Times struggle with
on a daily basis cannot be offset by individual endeavour and merit, howsoever well-intentioned.
To be sure then, the Tramp loses his job and has a run-in with the police authorities yet again and
the cyclical process of unemployment and destitution – and the pervasive obstacles the poor face
in their attempts to achieve even a modicum of social mobility and security – continues unabated.
He is arrested for failing to report a burglary at the store and sleeping on a counter under a heap of
clothes, thus upsetting the storekeeper and a privileged shopper.
i) The Tramp and the Gamin reunite as the latter finds a rundown shack for both of them to live in.
This fragile accommodation becomes a witness to the couple’s continued efforts to find a
semblance of cohesion in their lives. They remain persistent, finding joy and affirmation in each
other’s presence irrespective of the hardships and challenges. Chaplin described the Tramp and
the Gamin as “[t]he only two live spirits in a world of automatons” and as “children with no sense
of responsibility, whereas the rest of humanity is weighed down with duty”.
j) Clearly, they are conceived as vanguards of spiritual freedom and unyielding optimism in the
film. Seen from a Marxist perspective, however, it is their overall reluctance to seriously
challenge or antagonise the established class structure of American society that endears them to
the normative bourgeois viewer, who is called upon to sympathise with the protagonists’ plight
without fundamentally re-evaluating their own faith in the inviolability of capitalism.
k) In other words, while the film makes a genuine liberal humanist plea for better working conditions
and employment opportunities for the dispossessed, and recovering the worker’s buried humanity,
it fights shy of offering a more forthright, radical critique of capitalism and its systemic inequities.
The Tramp is again forced to quit a job as a mechanic’s assistant owing to ongoing strikes and
disruptions.
l) Upon his release two weeks later, he joins the Gamin as a singer-waiter in a local café where she
works as a dancer and entertainer. When it is his turn to perform, he loses the cuffs bearing the
text of his song due to his characteristic clumsiness. He manages to salvage the situation,
nonetheless, and ingenuously extemporizes the lyrics using a garbled mixture of gibberish, mock-
Italian, pantomime and even some rudimentary dance movements. Despite the nonsensical quality
 of the song, it has a charming, delightful rhythm of its own that invites a rapturous applause from
the evening’s guests.
m) This is also the only moment in the silent film where we hear the Tramp’s voice. “Voice,” as we
have seen, is hitherto exclusively associated with authority figures at the Electro Steel
Corporation. The reclamation of voice by a figure who represents the “voicelessness” of the
marginalised is emblematic of his increasing self-assertion as well as his unfazed vivaciousness
and survival instinct.
n) The scene also highlights other redemptive dimensions of the human spirit – beauty, fluidity,
grace, motion and melody – that have somehow survived the deadening onslaught of the machine.
Akin to the symbolic function of the circus as the locus of creative spontaneity and freedom in
Charles Dickens's Hard Times (1854) – a novel that, in my view, strongly anticipates the film
under consideration – the song performance in Modern Times becomes the site where the Tramp’s
zest for life manifests itself most resoundingly.
IV) The Ending of Modern Times: Subversion or Accommodation?
a) The bonhomie at the café is short-lived, however, as the Gamin is finally apprehended by a group
of juvenile welfare officers, who she has been evading ever since her father’s death earlier in the
narrative. In a quick turn of events, she is successful in fleeing the café with the Tramp. The two
are next seen seated by a deserted roadside at dawn amidst hills and bushes: both the lush setting
and the timing of the day are figurative markers of the palpable optimism the film endeavours to
espouse. The Gamin breaks down out of a sense of helplessness and desperation: “What’s the use
of trying?” she questions. The Tramp, ever the idealist, consoles her and urges her not to feel
despondent: “Buck up – never say die. We’ll get along!” Heartened, she resolves to take life’s
trials and tribulations in her stride. As the narrative winds down, the two walk down the long road
into the horizon buoyantly, embracing a tentative, yet vaguely promising future.
b) The long shot of the mountain range in the film’s climax softly fades into the closing credits. The
humanist framing of the ending of Modern Times neutralises the potentially subversive critique of
industrial capitalism that the film offers, especially in the first half. The Tramp’s intervention
effectively transforms the Gamin’s despondence – possibly signifying a sense of niggling
discontent with existing socio-economic conditions – into a renewed, and perhaps irrevocable,
reconciliation with the imperatives of capitalism. His indefatigable cheerfulness makes him a
perfect exemplar of a transcendent humanity crusading against adversity and injustice but it also
 configures him as an essentially non-threatening figure who implicitly rejects radical anger,
confrontation and public protest as affective modes of challenging the capitalist status-quo.
c) The apparent “solution” to the issues that the film raises – personal fortitude and idealism – does
not adequately confront capitalism as a systemic problem that is fundamentally geared towards
inequality, exploitation and the alienation of the worker. In pitting individualism, one of the
fundamental capitalist virtues, as a supposed counter to capitalist hegemony, the film adopts an
apolitical frame of reference (compare this with Benjamin’s insistence on the historical necessity
of politicizing art) and negates its own emancipatory premise.
d) To put it another way, the film’s liberal critique of the glorification of the machine at the expense
of the worker simultaneously distances itself from the possibility of politically undermining the
sanctity of capitalism. Based on his unwavering hopefulness and resilience, the Tramp seeks
accommodation within the existing social order on more humane terms rather than subvert it from
within. Consequently, he remains consistently in sync with the biases and ideological limits of a
conservative spectatorship that is called upon to acknowledge the worker’s submerged
individuality without having to question the very basis of the worker’s subaltern status.
Final points for this unit
a) The emergence of cinema as a powerful and pervasive art form in the twentieth century, one that
roots in, but also registers a break from, pre-existing art forms such as literature, painting and
photography.
b) The features of silent cinema and the gradual transition to sound films in the 1920s.
c) Benjamin’s theory outlining how mechanical reproduction transforms the epistemological basis
of art.
d) Benjamin’s conceptualisation of the film’s singularity based on its comparison with theatre and
painting.
e) The politically progressive potential of the film, rooted in its ability to disrupt “contemplative
immersion” as the default mode of engagement with art.
f) The film’s propensity to challenge the fascistic “aestheticization of politics” by relentlessly
politicising art and making it amenable to the needs of the proletariat.
g) The symbolic and affective dimensions of the figure of the little Tramp in Chaplin’s cinema.
h) Modern Times as a critique of modernity in general and the Great Depression in particular.
i) The limits and problematic aspects of such a critique: the film’s inability to conceptualise an
alternative to bourgeois individualism and humanism.