Modern Times, a story of industry, of individual enterprise,
humanity crusading in the pursuit of the American dream is, in Marxian times,
life envisioned as a “standing fight against the process of abstraction of
human labour by capital.” (Chakrabarty, 2000;60-61) It is a tramp’s life in the
face of unflinching odds, marked with the angst of hunger and the hope for
freedom, the domination of time and the tyranny of the machines. It is a narrative
of pitting forth the comforts of the confinement of prison life over the
uncertainties of societal life; therein lying the tramp’s critique of
capitalism.
Just
at the beginning of the film, a shot of a herd of sheep fades into a crowd of
men emerging out of the subway terminal onto the streets, rushing to the
factories. The dissolving of differences through the appropriation of a
worker’s will, energy and labour time dehumanizes their identities. However in
that herd of white sheep there’s a black sheep representing the unconventional
worker, our tramp Chaplin. Though he lives in the context of his times and is
bounded by the ‘framework of bourgeois relations,’ the hands of the clock
having a firm grasp over the proletariats, the tramp is hopeful of climbing up
the social ladder to a home of one’s own with a hungry, orphan girl he loves.
This hope of Chaplin sustains him and his companion till the very end, even
when they are both unemployed and absconding from juvenile authorities. Though
he satires the effects of industry and how it fails humanist concerns, the
tramp ‘maintains a unifying theme of survival in the industrial,
post-Depressionworld’.(Eggert,2008;http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/moderntimes.asp ) Thus, in spite of one among the herd, Chaplin, the
black sheep is not abstracted to being an interchangeable element in the
‘generalized other’ of the body of workers. In ignorance he defies the discipline,
the synchronization of labour time and the entire process of ‘capital absorbing
labour into itself as though it were by love possessed,’ to quote Marx. (Chakrabarty,
2000; 57)
With the onset of industrial revolution, machines got
bigger and much more than one person was needed to work on it. An enhanced
synchronization was needed to keep pace with the entire ‘motive force of
production.’ A reading of Marx in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s ‘Two Histories of
Capital’ echoes the same thing, “The machine
produces the technical subordination of the worker to the uniform motions of
the instruments of labour. It transfers the motive force of production from the
human or the animal to the machine, from living to dead labor. This can only
happen on two conditions: that the worker be first reduced to his or her
biological, and therefore, abstract body, and that the movements of this
abstract body be then broken up and individually designed into the very shape
and movement of the machine.” (Chakrabarty,2000;57)The effect of tightening
bolts on the boards moving continuously in conveyor belts of a particular
section at the assembly line production, has Chaplin’s entire body jerking
violently and his hands twitching to the movements of the wrench on the bolts.
Even when he’s off work, he unknowingly projects his bodily resistence to the
‘technical subordination’ and ‘uniform motions’ of the machinery. The pathos
is comically heightened when he is unable to keep pace with the increasing
speed of the assembly line. Driven mad by the monotony of the tightening bolts
he leaps into the moving conveyor belt, his body gliding through a clockwork of
gears, inside. His body effortlessly bending to fit every curvature, the
imagery depicts him to have become a cog in the wheels of industry.
But no more is he to remain a perfect fit
there. Soon we witness his affected critique of being subjected to the habit of
regularized work. As soon as he emerges on the factory floor, his madness sends
him into a whimsical frolic, twisting his wrenches on everything in sight that
resembles a bolt instead of tightening nuts and bolts at the line. He starts
pulling knobs and levers causing massive explosions at the control center. A
rebellion against discipline, machine and regimentation, he goes about
squirting oil in the face of workers, celebrating spontaneous living. An
ambulance arrives to carry him off to the asylum. In the above scenes is a
parody on Fordism. Henry Ford had introduced the automated assembly line in
1914, the device that led to unprecedented increases in productivity,
strengthening the efficiency of the industrial world. Later when other car
makers began to catch up with Ford, there was a general speed up of the
assembly lines and a tighter supervision of the workers who were unable to talk
to each other while working or walk at will to the washroom. [1] In
the film, when Chaplin takes a break to relieve himself followed by a puff, a
huge screen lights up with the booming voice of the President, ordering him to
get back to work.
A company offering a new device, a
feeding machine which’ll feed workers while they work at the line, approaches
the President of the Electro Steel Corporation with the promise that by cutting
off on lunch hours the feeding machine will ensure increased productivity,
guaranteeing to be ahead of competition. Charlie is chosen to be the subject of
the machine’s demonstration. At first things go smoothly and one by one food is
shoved into his mouth by a mechanical arm, interspersed by the actions of an
automatic mouth wiper. However the machine goes haywire; soup is flung into the
air, the cob of corn rotates wildly from one end to another under Charlie’s
nose and while the engineer goes to work on the motor, the machine shoves two
iron nuts in his mouth, the very bolts with which he works all day. The
President disapproves of the feeding machine commenting that, “Its not
practical.” But the question is… would it have been practical even if it had
functioned as intended? In the interest of increased efficiency of production
the activities of human beings are becoming more like machines, such that even
the lunch hours have to be automated. ‘Moments’ Marx writes are ‘the elements
of profit’ and this capitalist system ensures that not a single moment is
wasted.(Conklin,2014; http://www.theperipherymag.com/modern-times/ ) Time is money, it is no longer
‘passed’ but ‘spent’ as E.P Thompson projects in his essay on Time Discipline, tracing the trajectory
from pre-capitalist times of ‘task orientation’ to the capitalist’s notion of
‘time thrift.’[2]
No longer do work schedules determine the succession of ‘moments’… It is the
employer’s time and the machine’s speed which controls labour time. But in the
figure of the tramp even this notion of spent time is critiqued in the way he
sneaks in his companion in the departmental store and indulges in the luxuries
of the store on the first night there as night guard. He skates away to glory
with his companion, exploring the different floors in his ‘labour time.’ When
he is reminded of having to ‘punch the time clocks’ at the store he meets with
a few men breaking in the store. They say they aren’t burglars but are simply
looking to eat and drink something at the store. His duties at the store give
way to night long drinking and reveling with these starving burglars, only to
be sacked next morning.
The
American dream is like an elusive mirage Chaplin is crusading against. Its root
cause is the hegemony of bourgeois relations making workers believe in the
‘formal freedom’ granted by the contract. Though till the very end he boosts
his own morale and his companion’s saying, “Buck up, we’ll get along,” we see
he has had to move out of several jobs and even the last one, a singer in a
café, which had at last tapped his abilities to entertain and mimic society.
But the capitalist times wouldn’t let him be himself for long. The tramp and
his companion is in deep faith of better times but in the air hangs a sense of
eternal escapades, in contrary to their yearning for a constancy, domestic
bliss and a surety of never going hungry.
REFERENCES
1)
Stephens,
Gregory. 2011. Biting back at the
machine: Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. senses of cinema. No: 60
2)
Eggert, Brian.
2008. Deep Focus Review: The Definitives-
Modern Times(1936). http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/moderntimes.asp
3) Conklin, Philips.2014.
A Marxist Reading of Charlie
Chaplin’s Modern Times. http://www.theperipherymag.com/modern-times/
4) K. Bramann, Jorn.2009. Marx: Capitalism and Alienation- Modern Times in Educating Rita and
other Philosophical movies. U.S.A: Nightsun Books
5) Chakrabarty, Dipesh.2009 Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical difference.
U.K: Princeton University Press
6)
Thompson, E.P. 1967. Time,
Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. OUP.
No:38
[1] For further insight on the manner in which
assembly line production alienated the worker from his work and his own self
see Jorn K. Bramman’s ‘Marx: Capitalism
and Alienation- Modern Times’ in Educating Rita and other Philosophical
movies, 2009.
[2]
For further insight see E.P Thompson’s Thompson’s “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial
Capitalism,”1967; pg 56-97
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