Charlie Chaplin is one of the world's most famous comedy filmmakers, and perhaps the most acclaimed director and actor of the silent film era. Through his screen personality, the Tramp, he became a worldwide icon and is regarded as one of the most prominent people in film history. From his childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, his career spanned more than 75 years and was highlighted by both praise and controversy. He was one of the pioneers of silent comedies, as he changed the way humour was presented on screen– incorporating other acts besides just slapstick, that would generate empathy from audiences. In this paper it will be discussed how Charlie Chaplin’s comedy dealt with suffering and other serious issues through psychological aspects, incorporating real life and tragedies into his films, and influences from his own personal life.
One of the most notable things Charlie Chaplin was able to do in the world of comedic moving pictures was make people laugh because they could relate to his suffering, instead of simply taking delight in others’ misfortunes. Up until Chaplin’s reign on the silent film industry, silent comedies were full of gags and practical jokes and mishaps. Actors like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd established their careers with this slapstick type of comedy, but Chaplin's style of comedy influenced moviegoers on a psychological level, which is essentially what sets him apart from his colleagues.
Philosophers have proposed numerous theories of humour, but the one that seems to make the most sense in the relation to silent-era slapstick comedy is English philosopher Thomas Hobbes' "superiority theory." The superiority theory is concerned with the emotive response that frequently accompanies comedic amusement, which it claims is a pleasurable sense of superiority to the object of amusement.Essentially, it assumes that individuals relish in other people's misfortunes in order to feel superior. For instance, the classic ‘man-slips-on-a-banana-peel’ gag is humorous because audiences feel superior to the clumsy man and typically wouldn’t have much remorse for the painfulness of the fall. This, however, was not the case with Chaplin's famous figure. Instead, he made people laugh because they could connect to hissuffering. Laughter is a defense mechanism that helps people to explore and discuss uncomfortable and painful topics. Chaplin's use of tragedy in his comedy provided audiences with a character they could relate to amidst the Great Depression.
Perhaps seen as his first attempt to mix genres and create a sort of melodrama comedy, was Chaplin’s feature film The Kid. Its introductory title reads, "A comedy with a smile—and perhaps a tear." The plot of the film is a Dickensian melodrama in the style of David Copperfield and primarily Oliver Twist, and it revolves around an unwed mother forced to abandon her baby, and the tramp who learns to love and raise the child.Chaplin's chances of making a comedy out of such serious and emotional material appeared dubious. Some of his friends advised him that it won’t work. Chaplin, on the other hand, was beginning to comprehend a philosophical understanding of something he had intuitively known. The tight relationship between humour and tragedy, and it’s feeble cousin, melodrama.The Kid elicits sympathy by evoking a strong sense of identification with the powerless. Chaplin states in his autobiography that, “In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose, is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature – or go insane.”
Chaplin was well-known for being the first comedian to add pathos to humor. Pathos speaks to the audience's emotions and evokes feelings that they already possess. Until Chapin, comedy was done at a brisk pace, with physicality and movement being the key tools of the trade for comedians. Chaplin himself made extensive use of these tools, which he learned at Sennett's Keystone studio, where subtlety was not a priority. However, with The Tramp, his sixth feature at Essanay Studios, things started to evolve. The tramp is chasing some thieves away from a farmhouse at one point; the chase proceeds over the fence in the backyard. The farmer fires at the robbers, but gets Chaplin instead. Unlike the hundreds, if not thousands, of previous instances of roughhouse antics and slapstick carnage, where characters would shrug off the repercussions of the violence and go about their business, something unusual occurs here. The small Tramp character is seriously injured and feels the pain.Real suffering had never been a part of silent comedy prior, but that was about to change with this scene. The real anguish was significant not because it allowed for more violent comedy, but because it made viewers feel sorry for Chaplin, enabling for more emotional interaction and empathy between Chaplin and his audience.
Furthermore, the way Charlie Chaplin integrated sorrow into his comedies provided audiences someone they could empathize with and relate to as they struggled to get by during the Great Depression. Chaplin's comic insights into the human condition elevated cinema from novelty to viable art form, as his films used engaging characters to approach real-life issues in a way that made them easier to discuss. He depicted the misery of the Great Depression in many of his films. His persona, The Tramp, embodied the elegantly hapless individual who possessed dignity and loathed the system that surrounded him. This resonated with the majority of Americans, particularly the lower class.
Poverty was one of the largest issues many people were faced with during the Great Depression. Charlie Chaplin, or rather his character of the Tramp, is an icon who represents poverty. In a new, highly popular medium, Chaplin developed depictions of class disparity that reached a broad, cross-class audience. In general, Chaplin's films portray respectable poor people who strive for and deserve a better life. Although the disparity between the Tramp's destitution and his bourgeois ambitions is humorous, these ambitions are never insulted. The humour, irony, and satire that constantly complement and balance the characters' moments of intense emotion are the intellectual element in Chaplin's portrayal of poverty.
In his films, the Tramp never becomes permanently wealthy, but he imitates the desire for wealth and the ability to cross social barriers. Despite his poverty, the Tramp maintains his dignity and self-esteem, refusing to be pushed around by the authorities. Obviously, his lack of wealth hasn't dehumanized his existence, but the Tramp isn't fully idealised either. He, like other slum dwellers, has developed greedy and even nefarious qualities: In The Kid, he attempts to get rid of the baby who will become a burden by dumping him in a poor woman's stroller; his use of the child to destroy windows (in the poor area) that he would afterwards restore is also problematic. In City Lights, he battles another tramp for a cigarette butt in good clothing and the millionaire's car, being "both respectable and disreputable." Such characteristics in the Tramp's behaviour keep his portrayal from being overly sentimental. But the scenes also reinforce the notion that the Tramp has not been disempowered, that he is a man with initiative and considerable ingenuity, which is vital in Chaplin's works. Nevertheless, the Tramp is endowed with physical grace and beauty, debunk-ing the common stereotype that the poor and their lives are ugly.
Moreover, Chaplin's renowned Little Tramp character struggles to live in the contemporary, industrialized society in his 1936 film, Modern Times. The film is a commentary on the severe employment and financial situations that many people encountered during the Great Depression, which Chaplin believes were brought about by the virtues of modern industrialization. Despite his skepticism of technology, Chaplin's own success was built on a technologically defined art form. As he began work on Modern Times, he was more eager than ever before to supply his art with a social critique of the industrial ideology that shaped twentieth-century life. However, the film's political dissertation became twisted up in ambiguity, conflating between the terms of its own technological production and the terms of its production of a critique of technology. Regardless, it was a film that was relevant to the real world at the time, offering audiences something with which they could identify and fully comprehend Chaplin's critique of capitalism and industrialization. Still a comedy as well, it provided entertainment and a chance for moviegoers to find laughter in the midst of the Great Depression’s grim reality.
Similar to how Chaplin incorporated real life events into his films, he also included a number of personal experiences into his stories. His own upbringing was a tragedy in itself- in 1893, he was born and raised in the city of London. This was a tough period for Charlie, for his father died when he was just ten years old, leaving him to fend for himself with his mother. Charlie was going through a hard time as his mother had been confined to a sanitarium due to mental health issues caused by a serious case of syphilis. He was forced to care for himself throughout that period, unable to find solace with his mother owing to the reality that she would never be able to properly care for him again. Forced to live in an orphanage, he attended a school for the poor to gain what little education he could. Despite the challenging conditions from which he had come, Charlie's parents had given him a fantastic gift. They'd both instilled in him a passion for acting. His mother was an actress and singer, while his father was a vocalist. Embedded in the young Chaplin was a love for theatrics, inspiring him to want to perform on stage one day. As a result, Charlie Chaplin began to perform, and he was a success from the start.
Circling back to Chaplin’s film, The Kid, perhaps not coincidentally it was his most blatantly autobiographical piece.Chaplin's childhood is well-known, and with The Kid’s shabby settings and amusing parts involving an orphaned child befriended by the tramp, which Chaplin created earlier in an unfinished comedy he interestingly gave the working title Life, it's nearly impossible to avoid interpreting aspects of Chaplin's own childhood into the film. It’s laced with self-pity, which is a staple of melodrama.
Moreover, Chaplin also made a number of films that included poverty as part of the story, as he also grew up poor. As all of Chaplin's biographers point out, his representations of class struggles are based on personal experience. His climb from poverty in his youth in South London to tremendous wealth and fame in America is often presented as a classic rags-to-riches tale. One can assume that Chaplin's personal experience made him wary of adopting a voyeuristic look on the poor in his films.Chaplin appeals to the audience's emotions and asks for empathy with his underprivileged characters and their hardships through sentiment; the audience is encouraged to share their own life experiences. The audience's class and emotional distance from the characters is lessened, which counteracts any voyeurism that would result from the fact that poor people are displayed on a large screen in front of an audience in the cinema. Chaplin's audience isn't supposed to just look at the poor; they're meant to feel their pain.
Perhaps we've never thought of his life as a continuous process in which subsequent events, particularly those surrounding his first two marriages, could have as powerful an impact on his character and work as his childhood. Chaplin's adult personal issues reactivated and reinforced his previous experiences, resulting in significant changes in the Charlie persona as well as the tone and psychological function of his films.
A study of Chaplin's personality between 1917 and 1930 exposes both the intrinsic coherence of his psyche and the significance of his chronic depression vulnerability. Chaplin's depression impacted the growth of his films as well as many of his seemingly perplexing characteristics, such as his asceticism, impulsive risk-taking, preoccupation with suicide and the macabre, obsession with control, rebelliousness, ambivalence, and expertise for getting into trouble. Chaplin held himself responsible for not only his mother's illness, but for all of his family's misfortunes. Following his father's death, irrational guilt had a role in his painful breathing and suicidal thoughts, and it was even more clear in an incident that occurred at Hanwell School when he was just seven. Chaplin was wrongly accused of starting a fire during his first long separation from his mother. Rather of contesting the charge and attempting to avoid caning, which he found "terrifying" to witness, he impulsively confessed,
“Are you guilty or not guilty?’ he asked.
Nervous and impelled by a force beyond my control, I blurted out: ‘Guilty.’ I felt neither resentment nor injustice but a sense of frightening adventure as they led me to the desk and administered three strokes across my bottom. The pain was so excruciating that it took away my breath; but I did not cry out, and, although paralysed with pain and carried to the mattress to recover, I felt valiantly triumphant.”
This was far more than a meaningless act of penance. Charlie put his endurance to the test and took control of his pain by choosing to be caned, methods he would use as an adult.
Chaplin developed a number of qualities that have been linked to key disruptions in parenting. Depression; a desire for love and affection, especially maternal or nurturing attention; feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and isolation; anger, often turned against oneself in the form of guilt; and an inclination to connect to others by identifying with them are just a few of them. Chaplin's effort to conceal the severity of his depression was mirrored by his associates' aversion to noticing it. His unpredictable work habits, bouts of melancholic pondering, restlessness, insomnia, bad headaches, and general unpredictability were dismissed as the whims of an eccentric genius.
Chaplin's emotional sensitivity, like his coping mechanisms, dates back to his youth. Shortly after his father's death, he realized that via art, he could achieve both economic and psychological control over his life simply by successfully expressing his feelings. Chaplin's art offered him control over not only other people's feelings, but also his own. He could keep his emotions in check rather than allowing them to dominate him by acting out his emotions on purpose. Art, especially comedy, became a means of surviving as well as a type of controlled insanity that might subsume or ward off external and internal threats. Chaplin not only recognized this, but he held to it with tenacity. Chaplin also claimed that comedy was founded on conflict and pain, and that it was thus a conversion of anguish into pleasure, a concept he attributed to his friend Max Eastman:“He sums it [humour] up as being derived from playful pain. He writes that Homo sapiens is masochistic, enjoying pain in many forms and that the audience like to suffer vicariously.”
All in all, Charlie Chaplin was a sad man who expressed his sufferings in the form of comedy, which as a whole inspiredmany other like-minded individuals throughout history. His films are still relevant today because they address a topic that is pertinent to people of all eras: class consciousness and status. Class, wealth, and social standing are all major topics in each of our lives, and Chaplin's comedy pokes fun at them all. His comedy is also an outlet for people to relate and connect with, most evidently with the iconic character of the Tramp. As moviegoers of his time dealt with the effects of the Great Depression, his films were an escape for them, yet also were based off of real life events as such, giving audiences a chance to reflect and talk about their problems together. Chaplin trulychanged the course of film history with his comedies– not only would they inspire mundane humans, but they would inspire future generations of filmmakers to combine tragedy and comedy into one form of art. As Chaplin once said, “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”
Filmography
City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)
The Kid (Charlie Chaplin, 1921)
The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)
Bibliography
Charlie Chaplin and David Robinson, My Autobiography(Melville House Publishing, 2012)
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Korte, Barbara. “New World Poor through an Old World Lens: Charlie Chaplin’s Engagementwith Poverty.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 55, no. 1 (2010): 123-41.http://www.jstor.org/stable/41158484
Kuriyama, Constance Brown. “Chaplin’s Impure Comedy: The Art of Survival.” Film Quarterly45, no. 3 (1992): 26-38. https://doi.org/10.2307/1213221.
Lintott, Sheila. “Superiority in Humor Theory.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74,no. 4 (2016): 347–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44510295.
Totaro, Donato. “What Makes Charlie Chaplin Endure.” Offscreen, October 2010.offscreen.com/view/chaplin_endure.
Woal, Michael, and Linda Kowall Woal. “Chaplin And TheComedy Of Melodrama.” Journal ofFilm and Video46, no. 3 (1994): 3. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688043.
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