(A film is being shown in a basement. There is a 16mm projector at the back of the room and maybe a half-dozen rows made up of about 70 or 80 folding chairs, though less than half are occupied. The film being watched is silent, a hybrid of narrative and documentary, of theatrical features, comedy shorts and cartoons, newsreels, found footage and Hollywood outtakes. It will run for days. The filmmaker claims that it is a cinematic adaptation of Professor Sea Gull’s Oral History of the Contemporary World. All acknowledge that it is true that said history filled many, many notebooks, but some, if not most, now believe they were mostly empty. All of this is neither here nor there. I am waiting for a certain moment in the film, which, after days, finally is shown.)
Setting Up the Metaphor: Modern Times, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, was released in 1936. Although this was close to a decade after sound was introduced, the film was silent. It did have a musical score, composed by Chaplin, and also used sound effects. The film is anti-machine-age and against assembly-line work but more out of an almost gentle, Luddite dislike and distrust than a strident, ideological stance.
Interesting but Irrelevant Background: Chaplin’s politics were controversial, though they were always rather vaguely construed from moments in his movies and certain of his actions. Chaplin had been called a Bolshevik as early as the 1920s, so the McCarthyism of the late 1940s and early 1950s was especially inhospitable. In 1947, Chaplin’s politics were the subject of a violent debate between two congressmen. The same year, the House Un-American Activities Committee turned to Hollywood to investigate the extent of Communist infiltration into the Hollywood film community and its assumed subsequent insidious influence on films.
The film in the cellar is a celebration of detours and meandering down side streets. Almost as soon as the part I wanted to see begins, there is a whole interesting side discussion on “premature anti-fascists” – those who had turned on the Nazis too early – as well as of certain Hollywood-produced, Soviet-friendly films made when that country was our ally.
The committee subpoenaed 19 “unfriendly” witnesses but ended up interrogating only 11. Ten of them refused to answer the committee’s questions (the 11th was Bertolt Brecht, who told them he was not a Communist and soon left the U.S. to return to Europe). These were the well-known “Hollywood Ten”: Charged by the committee with contempt, they were all eventually jailed. Two served six months, the rest a year. After getting out of prison, most of them were blacklisted, unable to work in the industry for years. They were by no means the only ones – or even a majority of the many creative talents – that were blacklisted during this period.
In this atmosphere, the accusations against and suspicions of Chaplin accelerated. Some of this had to do with his very casual flirtation with certain leftist beliefs, though one can be certain that any redistribution of wealth he imagined did not include his own. A predilection for marrying very young girls, as well as a paternity suit, probably also played a part. This sense of his immorality was not assuaged when, in June 1943, the 54-year-old Chaplin married 18-year-old Oona O’Neill, his fourth wife and the daughter of Eugene O’Neill. At least some of the ruckus had to do with Chaplin’s citizenship: Though he had lived in the States for decades, he had never become a naturalized American and had retained his British citizenship.
In 1952, Chaplin left for a trip to Europe on the Queen Elizabeth. While he was still at sea, the U.S. attorney general rescinded his permit to return to the U.S., announcing that hearings would be held on the issue. Chaplin did not return from Europe (except briefly two decades later).
This section is completely irrelevant to the overall point, but such detail is offered so that now ancient, inappropriate charges and rumors about Chaplin are not needlessly cited as though they prove some point.
(I have always loved not the very first but the still-early to middle films of Wim Wenders, especially The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971), Alice in the Cities (1973), and Kings of the Road (1976), because they tell such gentle stories at such great length. One can take not just one but even two naps during the course of these films and not miss anything. I hope my columns sometimes function in much the same way.)
As his famous tramp character in Modern Times, Chaplin has many misadventures, including the classic scene of his interaction with a modern machine designed to feed workers so that they could continue to work on the assembly line through meals.
In one scene he is walking down a road.
Arriving at the Metaphor: Chaplin hops on the back of a truck loaded with explosives to get away from a cop. A bounce in the road throws him off the truck, as it does the red danger flag attached to the back. Although the film is black and white, we know the flag is red, as it clearly cautions of potential danger. Chaplin picks up the red flag, starts waving it while running after the truck, trying to attract the driver’s attention. As he goes down one street, he suddenly is at the front of a large march of people emerging from another street. It is a Communist protest. Quite inadvertently, Chaplin is in the front of this large gathering of Reds, waving the red flag as though he is the leader of the protest, the head of the march. The police arrest him and throw him in a paddy wagon.
Nuances: Over the years, I have seen many people end up at the head of a march that they had nothing to do with instigating. Sometimes, as with Chaplin, it is an accident, and they are actually unaware that they are in front. Sometimes, though inadvertently ending up at the front, they assume and proudly accept leadership as soon as they realize where they are.
At other times, this position is taken by people with solipsistic views; the world only exists as they see it, coming out of them and unto them. Therefore, neither protest nor march supporting it existed until they came to believe in this cause. Even if there is a long history of such protests, it is just the dreaming of others. Their only reality is their vision of reality. Since the protest originated with them, naturally they lead.
There are times when the one in front is a leader, some accepting that responsibility and others humbly denying it. Famous are the times when one from the marching crowds has emerged as a leader.
There are all kinds of leaders and all kinds of leadership. There is no moral authority implicit in these roles. It is just about one person or another at the head of a march.
(In the dankness, I watch the film, which is now showing Buster Keaton in his classic two-reel comedy Cops. In a scene similar to the one in Chaplin’s Modern Times, Keaton, driving a horse-drawn wagon of furniture, accidentally joins a march – only it is a civic one, featuring all the city’s police. Looking to light a cigarette, he searches his pockets for a match. An anarchist tosses a bomb at the parade; it lands next to Keaton. His search rewarded, Keaton uses the bomb to light the cigarette, then tosses it behind him. It explodes among the ranks of the police. During the rest of the film, massive numbers of cops chase Keaton all over the city. At one point, he is walking down an empty street alone; suddenly, behind him, the street fills with police.
In 1969, at Boston University during a campuswide anti-war protest, there were literally thousands of students in the streets. There was one long block filled with hundreds of protesters standing and listening to speakers who loudly declared that it was time for resistance and revolution. At the far end of the block from where I was standing, a sole policeman came around the corner. The angry crowd immediately dispersed, as though in unison with Keaton four decades earlier. More police joined the first one, but they were facing a now completely deserted street.)
Ancillary: There are times when it seems that some folks ignore established, monolithic history for a more impressionistic take that allows them to arrange it to complement their political beliefs. As the past transcends history, the Constitution is far removed from its actual words and intentions. Instead, its parts are treated as jigsaw pieces to be fitted into the predetermined picture puzzle of established personal philosophies. The enormity of history invites ambiguity and nurtures mystery, which too often prove inconvenient in light of certain beliefs. Consequently, many pure idealists and absolute true believers, feeling that the past must serve the present, negate any restraints by rendering it as flat and two-dimensional, with belief and imagination trumping its limitations.
This country is a constitutional republic because some of the founding fathers didn’t trust the masses, feeling that quickly shifting mob passions were not to be trusted. In a pure democracy, they might actually do far more harm than good. Democratic empowerment is not inherently healthy but can instead be diseased, aberrant, and crippled.
Don’t tell this to the vast number of people who declare the U.S. a democracy where the majority rules (despite the Constitution’s clear intentions). Not surprisingly, those demanding majority rule are certain that most citizens absolutely agree with them. In this view, if the government does not adhere to the majority’s “espoused” positions, then the politicians running it are traitors who are betraying the Constitution.
In this deep-opium-dream democracy, almost any group of a few people or more is granted legitimacy as a valid political movement, because everyone’s views count. The consequent sense of entitlement often allows the same people to discount and ignore the politics of those holding different views.
Perception and Reality: It is easy to imagine oneself as brave; it is far harder to be brave. It is simple to believe oneself a truly loyal patriot, even if one isn’t. Thinking of action, plotting radical maneuvers, and imagining political activities is often mistaken for actual participation. Resisting authority in and of itself confers no nobility nor inherently grants righteousness. There is an enormous difference between speaking back to power and speaking truth to power that is frequently ignored by those doing only the former. Just marching does not validate. Rather than representing a truth or some variant of legitimate protest, all too often a crowd of people is about as ideologically and/or politically meaningful as a tramp running after a truck waving a flag.
Paraphrasing Leonard Cohen:
An opinion (march) is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a God.
Name of subject: U.S. Constitution
This article appears in April 17 • 2009.