“A manner or spirit employing any number of [cinematic] devices that expose human institutional vices and in which a corrective is either implied of directly proposed”
Perhaps only Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille stand on the same plane as the talent, humanity and understanding of motion pictures and their audience that was Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin realized that motion picture are an inherently “mass” audience form of entertainment/education. As such, he knew the majority of members of the audience in a capitalistic society belonged to the “have-nots” and not the “haves”. Born into the utmost deplorable conditions it was a lesson he never forgot, and one he was able to exploit for its full satirical potential in the classic Modern Times. Like Willa Cather or Walt Whitman, Chaplin lived during a time when industry, mechanization and capitalism transformed a rural, placid America into a bustling, economically-driven urban machine. Like these authors, in his heart and soul Chaplin knew the very character of the American people had been dehumanized somehow in the process. Replacing agriculture with industry threatened to separate Americans from their connection with nature and the self in a mad pursuit for mechanization and material profit. In Modern Times Chaplin exaggerates the scenario to a level where all the inherent dangers in adopting such a lifestyle, as an individual and as a nation, become laughably and poignantly apparent at the same time.
The leaders of Chaplin’s capitalistic society are far from the philosopher-kings recommended by Plato for national and individual wholeness and well-being. Instead, they seem more like the leaders in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World where individuals are psychologically and physically altered to value three things only: Henry Ford, their idol; Soma, a wonder drug; and sex. The drugs and sex make them content they are sacrificing their lives...