B. A. (Hons.

) English – Semester VI DSE-3

Literature and Cinema Study Material

Unit-2
Origin of Cinema as a New Form of Art

Edited by : Dr. Neeta Gupta

Department of English

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

University of Delhi
 DSE-3 : Literature and Cinema
Unit-2
Origin of Cinema as a New Form of Art; Walter Benjamin’s essay,
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936);
Charlie Chaplin’s film, Modern Times (1936)

Edited by:
Dr. Neeta Gupta
School of Open Learning
University of Delhi
Delhi-110007

 
SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
 DSE-3 : Literature and Cinema
Unit-2
Origin of Cinema as a New Form of Art; Walter Benjamin’s essay,
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936);
Charlie Chaplin’s film, Modern Times (1936)

Contents
S. No. Title Pg. No.
1.1 Learning Objectives 01
PART-I
1.2 Introduction 01
1.3 Check Your Progress 05
1.4 Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical 05
Reproduction” (1936): An Analytical Summary
1.5 Check Your Progress 10
PART-II
1.6 Analysis of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) 10
1.7 Check Your Progress 17
1.8 Summing Up 18
1.9 Glossary of Important Terms 18

Prepared by:
Sameer Chopra

 
SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
 Unit-2

Origin of Cinema as a New Form of Art; Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The

Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936);
Charlie Chaplin’s film, Modern Times (1936)
Sameer Chopra

1.1 Learning Objectives

After going through this chapter, you will be able to:
a) Understand the emergence of cinema as a distinctive art in the early twentieth century
and how it both borrows and diverges from existing art forms like literature and
painting;
b) Engage in an in-depth analysis of the key arguments put forth by Walter Benjamin in
his seminal essay on cultural studies and film theory, “The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”;
c) Develop a nuanced perspective into Charlie Chaplin’s film, Modern Times, and
contextualise it as an iconic silent comedy as well a scathing critique of
industrialisation, the Great Depression, and the plight of the ordinary factory worker
in the machine age.
PART-I
1.2 Introduction
1.2.1 Origin of Cinema as a New Art Form
We in the early twenty-first century take the presence of cinema more or less for granted.
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. This
was not always the case. In fact, it is often easy to forget given cinema’s ubiquity 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. Before we delve into that history, however, let us first clearly understand
what 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 Nowell-
Smith 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” (1).
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. While the precise
beginnings of cinema continue to be a matter of scholarly discussion even to this day, one
aspect is definitively clear: cinema’s direct antecedents lie in photography, a revolutionary

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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. 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” (1). 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. 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.
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. 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 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Lumière Brothers, a Monument in Yekaterinburg, Russia

Source: Wikimedia Commons
The Lumière Brothers were also closely involved with both private as well as
commercial screenings of the first projected films. These included one of the earliest films
ever made, La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in
Lyon, 1895). Some of the important distinguishing features of these formative experiments in

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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. 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. 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.
1.2.2 Cinema as Questioning Traditional Functions of Art
The second important aspect under consideration here is cinema as an art form and its
relationship with other, pre-existing art forms. 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 – a “spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings” in the poet William Wordsworth’s famous formulation –
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. 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. Cinema brings these hitherto
dichotomous notions together, blurring the ontological 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. 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.
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, self-
consciously “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. In ‘The Birth of the Sixth Art,’ Italian
film theorist Ricciotto Canudo argues that cinema represents the collapse of the traditional
distinction between poetry as the art of time and painting as the art of space as postulated in
Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766), a work of aesthetic theory

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by the German philosopher Gotthold Ebrahim Lessing. From Lessing’s perspective, painting
and poetry are discrete phenomena whose functions must not be conflated; painting is
synchronic and visual and nature, while poetry is diachronic and verbal. Based on Horace’s
classical dictum, ut pictura poesis (as is painting, so is poetry), 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, Canudo’s attempt to carve a special niche for cinema is noteworthy. He argues
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. In Canudo’s exact
terms, cinema is a “superb reconciliation of the Rhythms of Space (the Plastic Arts) and the
Rhythms of Time (Music and Poetry)” (qtd. in Nowell-Smith 51). 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.
Note: We shall return to the question of cinema’s relationship with other arts in our analysis
of Walter Benjamin’s essay.
1.2.3 Silent Cinema
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 and dialogues. 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”
(Kuhn and Westwell 420). 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.
Another recognisable feature of silent cinema was the extensive use of “intertitles”:
displayed on-screen at regular intervals during the film, 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. 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. Gradually,
however, the influence of the stage waned and screen acting became more realistic and
understated. In some quarters, however, the influence of theatre persisted as late as the 1930s.
The figure of the little Tramp, the central comic persona of Chaplin’s films, continued to
draw sustenance from its theatrical roots and utilise comic campiness to attract widespread
popularity. Some of the most well-known silent films include The Birth of a Nation (1925),

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The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Ben-Hur (1925), City Lights (1931), The Gold Rush
(1925), The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), The Lodger (1927) The Wind (1928), Metropolis
(1927) and The General (1926).
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. The significance of this momentous shift is
symbolically captured in the singer Al Jolson’s iconic words in The Jazz Singer: “you ain’t
heard nothing yet.” 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. 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, 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 (qtd. in Robinson). 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.
1.3 Check Your Progress
a) What is the precise meaning of the term “cinema”? Are “cinema” and “film”
interchangeable as terms/ideas?
b) Why are films also called “movies” or “moving pictures”? What is the relationship
between the concept of movement and the birth of cinema?
c) What are some of the pre-cinematic technologies that contributed to the emergence of
cinema as a new art form?
d) Why was cinema not initially acknowledged as a legitimate art form?
e) What makes cinema distinctive according to Ricciotto Canudo?
f) What are some of the important features of silent-era films?
1.4 Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1936): An Analytical Summary
1.4.1 Mechanical Reproduction: From the “Original” to the “Copy” and the Withering
of the Artwork’s “Aura”
“[N]othing is more revealing than the nature of the repercussions that these two
different manifestations – the reproduction of works of art and the art of the film –
have had on art in its traditional form.”
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

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accessible) undermines the importance of certain outdated concepts that we typically
associate with art: “creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery.” 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. 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. 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. 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”
(Mieszkowski 36).
What withers as a consequence of mechanical reproduction is termed by Benjamin as the
“aura” of the work of art, a “unique phenomenon of distance, however close it [the artwork]
may be.” The crucial qualification “however close it may be” shows that the distance
between the subject (reader/viewer) and object (the artwork) of perception is not always
inherent to the artwork. It is oftentimes ideological in nature, emanating from an attitude of
uncritical and unquestioning reverence for the artwork’s supposed “greatness.” A play by
Shakespeare, a painting by Michaelangelo or a musical symphony by Beethoven – artworks
whose merit one is supposed to take for granted – hence function as sacrosanct cultural
symbols enveloped in a peculiar mystique. The shrivelling of the artwork’s aura due to
mechanical reproduction, then, not only brings it literally and metaphorically closer to the
perceiver but also democratizes the artwork and liberates it from the stranglehold of tradition.
Benjamin describes this profound shift in the way we experience art as the loosening of the
artwork’s “cult value” in favour of its “exhibition value” – from a ceremonial object that is,
like a magical or religious cult, shrouded in mystery and incomprehensibility, the artwork
becomes widely prone to open exhibition or display.

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1.4.2 The Film’s Distinctiveness as an Art Form: The Stage Actor and the Screen Actor
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. “In the case
of films,” he instructively notes, “mechanical reproduction is not, as with literature and
painting, an external condition for mass distribution. Mechanical reproduction is inherent in
the very technique of film production.” 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. 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.” 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. In place of lifelikeness, cinema
gives us a technologically-generated effect of reality, “a thoroughgoing permeation of reality
with mechanical equipment.” Most straightforward narrative cinema (the exception to this
point would be forms of experimental cinema that self-reflexively highlight their status as
art– the 2001 musical Moulin Rouge is a good example), nevertheless, seeks to hide its
artifice, erasing, to the extent possible, the conditions of its production.
1.4.3 The Film and Psychoanalysis
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 (1856-1939) – has deepened our understanding of the mind, the
film brings about a greater penetration of reality from different points of view. 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

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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. Benjamin hails cinema’s capacity to do so: he likens our mundane world to
a “prison” that the film “burst[s] … asunder” by revealing a “different nature” to the camera
than is possible for the naked eye. “The camera introduces us to unconscious optics,”
Benjamin contends by way of developing the analogy between cinema and Freudian thought,
“as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.”
1.4.4 The Film and the Painting: The Subversive Power of Distractedness as a Mode of
Perception
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,” cinema, with a rapid movement of shots, epitomises dynamic
change and fluidity. 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 mass-
spectacle that requires no intelligence, discretion or concentration. 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.
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. 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. 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

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potential of the film: “the reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the
progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie.” Such a view has invited criticism from some
quarters. Benjamin’s theorisation has been challenged for overestimating the radical
possibilities of cinema by creating a sharp wedge between this newly emergent art form and
its antecedents. From this perspective, not all painting lulls us into a state of contemplative
passivity, just as cinema doesn’t necessarily position us as active and alert critics. Theodor
Adorno, a renowned German sociologist, contends that Benjamin could be questioned for
placing “blind trust in the spontaneous powers of the proletariat within the historical process”
(qtd. in Mieszkwoski 42). Articulating a rather valid concern that Benjamin’s essay
sometimes runs the risk of romanticising the emancipatory power of the film, Adorno’s key
point is that mass-reproduced forms of art lend themselves just as readily to the counter-
revolutionary 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. By turning people into complacent, resigned consumers of “entertainment” that is often
based on damaging stereotypes and bourgeois propaganda, cinematic representations can
effectively ratify rather than threaten the status quo.
1.4.5 Conclusion: Cinema as a Counter to the Fascistic Aestheticization of Politics
Taken abstractly, this critique has a sound basis to it. However, what Adorno and other
detractors of the essay fail to properly take into account is the social context of Benjamin’s
ideas. As a German of Jewish ancestry, living in exile in Paris when he composed this essay,
he 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.” 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. 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. “Mankind[’s] . . . self-alienation,” Benjamin notes disturbingly
and prophetically, “has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an
aesthetic pleasure of the first order.” 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. 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

9
film is emblematic of a paradigm shift that portends a more egalitarian and emancipatory role
for the arts in society than was heretofore conceivable.
1.5 Check Your Progress
a) What is mechanical reproduction? How does it alter our conceptualisation of art?
b) Why do we value “originality” and “authenticity” in art? What does mechanical
reproduction replace the “original” with and to what effect?
c) How does mechanical reproduction animate contemporary mass-based movements?
d) How does Benjamin define the “aura” of a work of art? What is the significance of the
artwork’s aura withering away in the age of mechanical reproduction?
e) What is “cult value” and “exhibition value”? How does mechanical reproduction
engender a shift from the former to the latter?
f) What are the important differences between the performances of a stage actor and a
screen actor? What impact does the screen actor’s performance have upon her/his
audience?
g) What similarities does Benjamin identify between the film as an art form and
psychoanalysis?
h) How does Benjamin distinguish between paintings and films? Do you agree with the
basis of his distinction?
i) How according to Benjamin is the state of distracted perception of cinema actually a
unique advantage in its favour? What is Adorno’s critique of Benjamin on this point?
j) How does Benjamin connect his ideas in the essay with the socio-political
developments in 1930s Europe? In what ways does he see mechanically-reproduced
art forms, especially the film, as a challenge to the fascistic aestheticization of
politics?
PART-II
1.6 Analysis of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936)
1.6.1 Charlie Chaplin and the Figure of the Little Tramp
“Unemployment is the vital question . . . Machinery should benefit mankind. It
should not spell tragedy and throw it out of work.”
– Charlie Chaplin (qtd. in Robinson)

Basic Details about Modern Times

Date, Year and Place of Release: 5 February, 1936, the USA

Directed, Written and Produced by: Charlie Chaplin

Main Star Cast: Charlie Chaplin (the Tramp), Paulette Goddard (the
Gamin), Henry Bergman (a café owner), Tiny Sandford (Big Bill) and
Chester Conklin (a mechanic)

Running Time: 1 Hour, 30 minutes (approx.)

Genre: Silent Comedy

10
We now move to the final section of this chapter, a critical analysis of Charlie Chaplin’s
iconic film Modern Times (1936). Modern Times is a silent comedy based on the renowned
English actor, filmmaker and music composer Charlie Chaplin’s (1889-1977) memorable on-
screen 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” (Robinson) – 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, good cheer and joie de vivre. In
Chaplin’s own words:
The whole point of the Little Fellow is that no matter how down on his ass he is, no
matter how well the jackals succeed in tearing him apart, he’s still a man of dignity
(qtd. in Deb).
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
characteristics of the Tramp as immortalised 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 (See Figure 2). 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 poignant and relatable while avoiding the
pitfalls of overt sentimentality and preachiness.

Figure 2: Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp

Source: Creative Commons
1.6.2 The Mechanisation of Humanity in the Factory Scenes of Modern Times
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

11
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” (2). Elaborating on the way
Chaplin came to conceptualise the film, Vance adds:
The genesis of “Modern Times” is rooted in Chaplin’s sixteen-month world tour
following the première of “City Lights” (1931). As he traveled, he saw firsthand the
economic and political consequences of the Great Depression and met some of the
most influential thinkers of the era . . . Upon his return to the United States, Chaplin
was struck with the idea for the film after learning about healthy young men who had
been lured away from their farms to work in factories in Detroit but, after several
years on the assembly line, succumbed to nervous breakdowns. “Modern Times”
evolved into a comedy that embraces difficult subjects such as strikes, riots,
unemployment, poverty, and the tyranny of automation (1).
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.

12
 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 (20-24 frames per
second) – makes the monotonous, repetitive and soul-crushing nature of work in modern
factories come alive viscerally for the audience. 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 (see Figure 3). 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. 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.
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. 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, often seen in our time as a
catalyst for positive change in the professional sphere. The regime of the machine, Chaplin
seems to suggest, can never be absolute and totalising.

Figure 3: The Tramp Stuck in a Machine

Source: Wikimedia Commons

13
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 repudiates, schemas of capitalistic control
and regimentation.
1.6.3 Life outside the Factory: Challenges and Possibilities
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. 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. 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. 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. 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
(see Figure 4).
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.”
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

14
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. 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.

Figure 4: The Tramp and the Gamin in Modern Times

Source: Creative Commons
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” (qtd. in Robinson). 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. 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

15
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. 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. 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. 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.
1.6.4 The Ending of Modern Times: Subversion or Accommodation?
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 (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: The Ending of Modern Times

Source: Creative Commons

16
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. 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. 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.
1.7 Check Your Progress
a) What does the little Tramp stand for in Chaplin’s cinema? What makes him so
memorable as a character?
b) What are the central themes of Modern Times? What is the significance of the film’s
framing of its message as “humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness?”
c) Comment on the symbolic juxtaposition of factory workers and sheep in the opening
scene of the film.
d) What are the working conditions at the Electro Steel Corporation? Why are these
conditions experienced as dehumanising by the worker?
e) Why, in your view, is the scene where the Tramp is swallowed by the machine
considered the film’s most iconic?
f) Discuss the importance of the “Billows Feeding Machine” scene to the narrative of
Modern Times.
g) What does life outside the factory look like for the Tramp? Why is he intent on
remaining jailed?
h) Critically analyse the relationship between the Gamin and the Tramp.
i) Why is the Tramp and the Gamin’s desire for a stable home and bourgeois
respectability problematic? What makes them safe and reassuring as characters for the
bourgeois viewer?

17
 j) There can be many ways of reading cinematic and literary texts. Do you agree with
the reading of Modern Times offered in this chapter? Based on your personal
experience of watching the film, give an alternative reading. Support your reading
with evidence/references from the text.
k) Why are the protagonists of the film not able to find steady employment? Why is their
plight cyclical? Is it due to the lack of personal merit or is the reason more deep-
rooted?
l) What message does the Tramp’s ‘nonsense’ song convey? Is it really nonsensical?
What is the symbolic import of the song and the way it is sung?
m) The ending of Modern Times features the Tramp “consoling” the Gamin. What effect
does his consolation have? What do you think is the flipside of the Tramp’s perennial
optimism in the context of the film’s politics?
1.8 Summing Up
In this chapter, we have covered the following aspects:
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.
1.9 Glossary of Important Terms
Note: Terms included in the glossary have been highlighted in red in the main text. They have
been alphabetically ordered.
Adaptations (film)
Transforming a prior work, a play or novel for instance, into a film, hence effecting a shift in
medium from the literary to the visual. Examples of literary texts that have been extensively

18
adapted to films include Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s 1818 masterpiece, and Arthur Conan
Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories/novels.
American Dream
A term coined by James Truslow Adams in 1931 to refer to possibilities of socio-economic
self-improvement supposedly available freely in America irrespective of class and other
identitarian markers. Enshrined in the credo “all men are created equal” in the United States
Declaration of Independence, the American Dream is premised on the primacy of hard work,
personal merit and individualism.
Aura (in Walter Benjamin’s theory)
In the sense that Walter Benjamin uses the term, aura refers to the quality of distinctiveness
and uniqueness that a work of art possesses by virtue of its fixity in a certain time and space.
Mechanical reproduction leads to the demystification of the artwork’s aura.
Burlesque and Vaudeville
Burlesque is a form of humorous entertainment that imitates a previous work of art to
caricature, and thereby deflate, its seriousness or moral earnestness. Vaudeville is an amusing
theatrical routine containing songs, dances, jokes and pantomime.
Capitalism
A socio-economic system wherein the means of production are privately owned by
individuals for the purpose of profit maximisation.
Cinematograph
A device for showing/projecting motion pictures; an older term for what is now referred to as
a “projector.”
Close-ups
A shot (the smallest unit of uninterrupted film footage) that focuses closely on the
representational subject’s head (face and neck). Such a framing helps highlight a character’s
emotions/expressions and accentuate other minute details of the scene’s setting.
Closing Credits
Also known as the end credits, closing credits are displayed once the film is over and include
extensive details about the cast and crew.
Communism
A socio-economic system based on the absence of classes and the joint ownership of the
means of production by the community. Marx conceptualised communism as an antidote to
the concentration of wealth and power under capitalism.
Contemplative Immersion
A mode of perceiving art that is premised on concentration, absorption and identification.
Editing (in film)
Editing in the context of film production involves assembling shots into a coherent narrative.
This is a critical and painstaking process: the teleological development of a film – with a

19
recognisable beginning, middle and end – is an effect achieved through editing interventions.
The film, as Benjamin reminds us in the essay, is not originally shot in a linear fashion.
Fascism
Fascism is a dictatorial, ultra-right-wing form of government that thrives on hyper-
nationalism, majoritarianism and the suppression of individual liberties and rights. Two
prominent twentieth-century fascists were Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in Germany and Benito
Mussolini (1883-1945) in Italy.
Great Depression
A period of global economic crisis, roughly between 1929 to 1939, that originated in the
United States. The Great Depression adversely impacted industrial production, employment
levels, income levels and domestic and international trade in various parts of the world.
Introductory Credits
The opening credits, compared to the closing credits, feature the more prominent names
associated with the production of a particular film.
Liberal Humanism (in literary criticism and theory)
An approach of literary and cultural analysis that places a universalised, depoliticised notion
of humanity or “humanness” at its centre.
Long Shot
The long-shot provides a view of the representational subject, usually a film’s character,
framed within a background. Alternatively, the long shot can also offer an exclusive view of
a landscape/setting.
Marxist Perspective (in literary criticism and theory)
A “school” or “movement” of criticism and theory – based on the economic and cultural
teachings of nineteenth-century German intellectuals Karl Marx (1881-1883) and Friedrich
Engels (1820-1895) – that is dedicated to a materialist analysis of society, with a special
focus on class-based relations and conflicts and the role of ideology in the shaping of human
consciousness.
McCarthy Era
A period in the history of the United States of America, ranging between the late 1940s and
the mid-1950s, that was dominated by the presence of Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy,
who became infamous for his paranoid efforts to check the growth of the threat – both real
and perceived – of communism and socialism in the country.
Musical
A distinctive film genre where music plays a prominent role in propelling the narrative
forward. Musicals also typically feature dance, romance and happy endings. A good recent
example is the 2016 American film, La La Land. A lot of conventional “Bollywood” films
are termed “melodramatic musicals” by Western scholars, although it’s significant that Indian
filmmakers do not use that term to describe their own films as such.

20
Narrative Cinema
Narrative cinema, the most popular and widespread form of filmmaking, tells a particular
story that is either fictional or based on real events. In general, narrative cinema is the least
artistically experimental; in the established traditions of realism and naturalism, it attempts to
convey an impression that the film is a slice of life.
Ontological
The branch of philosophy concerned with the fundamental or the basic nature of something.
For example, understanding photography ontologically will involve the study of its inherent
properties as well its uniqueness based on comparisons with other visual arts such as painting
and drawing.
Organicist Ideal of Art
The view that art is a “natural,” living entity that emerges spontaneously from the depths of
the artist’s “inner” vision. From such a perspective, which goes back to Romanticism,
technology is the very antithesis of creative spontaneity: technologically-mediated forms of
art such as photography and cinema are inferior to the organicity of, for instance, music and
painting.
Picasso
Pablo Picasso (181-1973) was a famous Spanish painter associated with avant-garde
movements in art such as Cubism and Surrealism. His most-well known works include Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, 1907) and Guernica (1937).
Proletarian
A term used in Marxist theory to refer to members of the working class. These are typically
wage earners and labourers who are exploited by capitalists, the privileged owners of the
means of production.
Slow Motion
A technique of film projection at a slower speed than it is recorded, often by way of
emphasising the significance of a particular shot/scene to the narrative.
Subaltern
A term used in academic discourse to refer to those who are socio-politically marginalised
and oppressed based on their class, race, gender, caste, sexuality and so on.
Synchronic and Diachronic
In linguistics, synchronic and diachronic are methods of analysis: a synchronic approach
studies a phenomenon at a given point of time whereas the diachronic approach seeks to
understand a phenomenon as it develops over a period of time, thus taking into account its
history.
Talkies
A colloquial term for a film that contains synchronised sound, including spoken dialogues,
and is distinct from silent films. The era of the ‘talkies’ began in the 1920s.

21
Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect)
A theatrical technique devised by the early twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt
Brecht (1898-1956) that is geared towards “alienating” the audiences of a play by making
them conscious of the illusory and artificial nature of the dramatic spectacle. In this way,
Brecht opined, spectators could be brought to critically engage with what they saw rather
than absorbing it unthinkingly. Such an attitude of scepticism and detachment would
motivate them to take action against the status-quo reflected on the stage.

Works Cited
Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. Schocken Books, 1968.
217- 251.
Deb, Sandipan. “The Tramp’s Spirit is Immortal.” 2014.
URL: https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/5Te3M4ZvhnMafudAOPOq5K/The-Tramps-
spirit-is-immortal.html
Kuhn, Annette and Guy Westwell. A Dictionary of Film Studies, First Edition. OUP,
2012.
Mieszkowski, Jan. “Art Forms.” The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin. Ed.
David S. Ferris. CUP, 2004. 35-53.
Modern Times. Film. Directed by Charlie Chaplin, screenplay by Charlie Chaplin,
performances by Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard and Henry Bergman. United
Artists, 1936.
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. The History of Cinema: A Very Short Introduction. OUP, 2017.
Robinson, David. “Filming Modern Times.” 2004.
URL: https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/6-Filming-Modern-Times
Vance, Jeffrey. “Modern Times.” Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema. Harry N Abrams, 2003.
Wexman, Virginia Wright. A History of Film, Sixth Edition. Pearson Education, 2006.

Further Reading/Viewing
Books
Film as a Field of Study
Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings,
Sixth Edition. Oxford University Press, 2004.
Dix, Andrew. Beginning Film Studies. Viva Books, 2010.
Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, Third Edition. Routledge, 2006.

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Hollow, Joanne, Peter Hutchings and Mark Jancovich, eds. The Film Studies Reader. Arnold,
2000.
Miller, Toby and Robert Stam, eds. A Companion to Film Theory. Blackwell, 1999.
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, ed. Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford University Press,
1997.
Sarris, Andrew. You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet: The American Talking Film – History and
Memory, 1927–1949. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Turner, Graeme, ed. The Film Cultures Reader. Routledge, 2002.
Walter Benjamin
Benjamin, Andrew, ed. The Problems of Modernity: Adorno and Benjamin. Routledge, 1989.
Broderson, Momme. Walter Benjamin: A Biography. Trans. Malcolm R. Green and
Ingrida Ligers. Ed. Verso, 1996.
Eagleton, Terry. Walter Benjamin, or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism. Verso Editions
and New Left Books, 1981.
Gilloch, Graeme. Walter Benjamin, Critical Constellations. Polity Press, 2002.
Koepnick, Lutz. Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power. University of Nebraska, 1999.
Patt, Lise, ed. Benjamin’s Blind Spot: Walter Benjamin and the Premature Death of
Aura. Institute of Cultural Inquiry, 2001.
Smith, Gary, ed. On Walter Benjamin: Critical Essays and Recollections. MIT Press, 1988.
Charlie Chaplin
Brownlow, Kevin. The Search for Charlie Chaplin. UKA Press, 2010.
Chaplin, Charles. My Autobiography. Penguin Classics, 2003.
Dale, Alan S. Comedy is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies. University of
Minnesota Press, 2000.
Epstein, Jerry. Remembering Charlie. Bloomsbury, 1988.
Kamin, Dan. The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin: Artistry in Motion. Scarecrow Press, 2011.
Larcher, Jérôme. Masters of Cinema: Charlie Chaplin. Cahiers du Cinéma, 2011.
Louvish, Simon. Chaplin: The Tramp's Odyssey. Faber and Faber, 2010.
Lynn, Kenneth S. Charlie Chaplin and His Times. Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Maland, Charles J. Chaplin and American Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1989.
Robinson, David. Chaplin: His Life and Art. London: Paladin, 1986.
Schickel, Richard, ed. The Essential Chaplin – Perspectives on the Life and Art of the Great
Comedian. Ivan R. Dee, 2006.

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 Films
City Lights. Film. Directed by Charlie Chaplin, screenplay by Charlie Chaplin, performances
by Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill and Florence Lee. United Artists, 1931.
Monsieur Verdoux. Film. Directed by Charlie Chaplin, screenplay by Charlie Chaplin,
performances by Charlie Chaplin, Martha Raye and William Frawley. United Artists,
1947.
The Circus. Film. Directed by Charlie Chaplin, screenplay by Charlie Chaplin, performances
by Charlie Chaplin, Al Ernest Garcia and Merna Kennedy. United Artists, 1928.
The Gold Rush. Film. Directed by Charlie Chaplin, screenplay by Charlie Chaplin,
performances by Charlie Chaplin, Georgia Hale and Mac Swain. United Artists, 1925.
The Great Dictator. Film. Directed by Charlie Chaplin, screenplay by Charlie Chaplin,
performances by Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard and Jack Oakie. United Artists,
1940.

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