all around him bride after bride gathers until the room is filled, all without his noting a thing. Chaplin is far more aware of his surroundings even if unable to control them, and Keaton's lack of control begins with his blithe ignorance of what is happening to him.
For both characters though, the slapstick derives from the way their characters find themselves in the middle of situations where they cannot control what happens and where they are buffeted by the inanimate world as well as by actions of other human beings.
Gunning, Tom. "Buster Keaton or the Work Comedy in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Cineaste 23(5) (1995), 14-16.
Musser, Charles. "Work, Ideology and Chaplin's Tramp." In Resisting Images: Essays on Cinema and History, Charles Musser and Robert Sklar (eds.), 36-67.. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
2. Oscar Micheaux was part of a phenomenon of filmmaking in the first half of this century, the ability of certain groups to make a cinema for other members of that group. There was a thriving
...