“Reading Chaplin as Text: Film Frames and the Crisis of the Twentieth Century”
Introduction
This blog forms part of a Thinking Activity assigned by Dr. Prof. Dilip Barad in connection with the screening of two landmark Charlie Chaplin films—Modern Times and The Great Dictator—as background texts for the study of Twentieth-Century Literature in English and the Zeitgeist of the Age.
Through this exercise, cinema becomes a critical lens through which the socio-economic anxieties, political tensions, and cultural transformations of the early twentieth century are examined. A close frame-by-frame analysis of these films enables me to read visual imagery as a historical and literary text, deepening my understanding of how the spirit of the time shaped artistic expression across mediums.
Frame Study of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940)
Background Study for 20th Century Literature in English
Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times and The Great Dictator stand as two of the most powerful cinematic responses to the socio-economic and political upheavals of the early twentieth century. Though produced as films, they function as cultural texts—deeply embedded in the historical realities of industrial capitalism, mass production, class inequality, and the rise of authoritarian regimes. Through carefully composed frames, Chaplin critiques modernity’s promises and exposes its failures.
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I. Modern Times (1936): Industrialization and the Dehumanized Worker
Selected Frame 1: The Factory Assembly Line
Description of the Frame:
The Tramp is positioned between massive machines, tightening bolts endlessly as the conveyor belt accelerates. His body moves mechanically, mimicking the rhythm of the machine.Analysis:
This frame visually captures the mechanization of human beings under industrial capitalism. The worker is reduced to an extension of the machine, reflecting the Fordist model of mass production prevalent in early 20th-century industrial economies. Individual identity, creativity, and craftsmanship are erased in favor of speed and efficiency. Chaplin’s exaggeration reveals how industrial progress paradoxically leads to human regression—turning workers into cogs within an impersonal system.This resonates with contemporary literary critiques of industrial modernity found in writers like D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot, who lamented the loss of spiritual and emotional wholeness in mechanized societies.
Selected Frame 2: The Feeding Machine Experiment
The presence of executives observing from a distance reinforces the rich–poor divide, highlighting how decisions affecting workers’ bodies and lives are made by unseen elites—an idea central to Marxist critiques of industrial capitalism circulating in the early 20th century.
Selected Frame 3: The Jail as a Place of Stability
This frame exposes the moral contradiction of modern economies: progress without social justice.
II. The Great Dictator (1940): Totalitarianism, Power, and Propaganda
Selected Frame 4: Adenoid Hynkel Dancing with the Globe
Chaplin visually critiques how authoritarian leaders reduce nations and human lives to objects of personal gratification, exposing the childish narcissism underlying political tyranny.
Selected Frame 5: Military Parades and Symbolic Imagery
Chaplin’s exaggerated staging unmasks the theatrical nature of political power, revealing how fear and spectacle replace ethical governance.
Selected Frame 6: The Final Speech
Description of the Frame:
The Jewish barber, mistaken for the dictator, delivers an impassioned plea for humanity, democracy, and compassion.
Analysis:
This frame marks a radical shift—from silence to speech, from comedy to moral urgency. Chaplin breaks cinematic convention to directly address the audience, transforming film into political intervention. The speech counters the dehumanization caused by both industrial capitalism and fascist authoritarianism, advocating for human values over machines, profits, and power.
It reflects the broader humanist impulse in 20th-century literature, echoing voices that resisted totalitarianism and moral collapse.
Works Cited
Fielding, Raymond. “Charlie Chaplin’s Films and American Culture Patterns.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 16, no. 4, 1958, pp. 471–479. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/426065.
Kerr, Walter. “The Social Philosophy of Charlie Chaplin.” College English, vol. 10, no. 8, 1949, pp. 427–432. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/371899.
Mast, Gerald. “Charlie Chaplin and the Comedy of Survival.” Film Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 3, 1969, pp. 2–11. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1210382.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, Schocken Books, 1968, pp. 217–251. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/778191.
Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment, Stanford UP, 2002, pp. 94–136. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/112939.
Hobsbawm, Eric. “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914.” Past & Present, no. 100, 1983, pp. 65–95. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/650749.
Gramsci, Antonio. “Hegemony, Intellectuals and the State.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, edited by John Storey, Pearson, 2009, pp. 43–50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/112939.
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