Notes on Charlie Chaplin's Closing Speech to 'The Great Dictator'

Charlie Chaplin as the Jewish Barber and 

Adenoid Hynkel in The Great Dictator (1941)

 

 

I. 

 

There's probably only one thing worse in the modern political imaginary than a great dictator and that's an evil tyrant. But even the former is bad enough in the eyes of those for whom power should belong to the people and not held by a single individual who, it is believed, will be invariably (and absolutely) corrupted by its possession. 

 

Any positive associations that the term may have had were lost once and for all during the 20th-century. Thanks to figures such as Hitler, Stalin, and Chairman Mao [1], dictators are now viewed by those within the liberal-democratic world as violent megalomaniacs who oppress their peoples and bring death and chaos in their wake [2]. 

Having said that, it seems they can also inspire laughter as well as moral hand-wringing and hypocrisy, as illustrated by the 2012 film starring Sacha Baron Cohen, The Dictator (dir. Larry Charles) and, seventy years prior, the equally unfunny work of satirical slapstick that many regard as Chaplin's masterpiece, The Great Dictator (1940) ...

 

 

II.  

I don't know why, but I've never liked Charlie Chaplin: this despite the fact that, according to Lawrence, "there is a greater essential beauty in Charlie Chaplin's odd face, than there ever was in Valentino's" [3]. For even if this gleam of something pure makes beautiful, that doesn't mean it makes good and true; and it certainly doesn't guarantee to make humorous. 

 

Chaplin is mostly remembered for playing an anonymous tramp figure - a character whom I regard as the antithesis of the bum as hobo-punk given us in the songs of Haywire Mac; for whereas the latter celebrates his life on the road and railways, the former is keen to improve his lot and dreams of one day living a comfortable middle-class existence.

 

But in the feature-length anti-fascist film of 1941 - which Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, and starred in - he plays both the nameless Jewish Barber and the Great Dictator of Tomainia, Adenoid Hynkel (a parody of Adolf Hitler that some find hilarious and uncannily accurate, others, like me, a bit lazy in that it perpetuates the idea that the latter was just a buffoon and an imposter).

 

Probably the most famous scene is the five-minute speech that Chaplin delivers at the end of the film [4]. Dropping his comic mask and appearing to speak directly to his global audience, he makes an earnest plea for human decency and human progress, encouraging people to rise up against dictators and unite in peace and brotherhood, whatever their race or religion. 

The thing with such romantic moralism is that it flies in the face of history and relies heavily on emotion and rhetoric for its effect, rather than argument - ironically, in much the same manner as fascist propaganda. 

 

"We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery We don't want to hate and despise one another." 

 

Is there any evidence for this ultra-optimistic belief that the "hate of men will pass"? 

 

I doubt it. 

 

I would dispute also that our cleverness has made us "hard and unkind" and what we need is to think less and feel more; again, such irrationalism and anti-intellectualism is ironically central to fascism.

 

Perhaps most interestingly, Chaplin echoes Oliver Mellors with his diatribe against "machine men with machine minds and machine hearts". But even Mellors knew that such people now make up the vast bulk of humanity, not just those who govern; that it is the fate of mankind to become-cyborg with rubber tubing for guts and legs made from tin; motor-cars and cinemas and aeroplanes sucking the vitality out of us all [5]. 

 

Chaplin rightly foresaw that the age of the great dictators would soon pass - in Western Europe at least - but has the triumph of liberal democracy resulted in a life that is free and beautiful and where science and progress "lead to all men's happiness" ...? 

 

Again, I don't think so. 

 

And, like Mellors, I increasingly find comfort not in the dream of a new human future, but in a post-human world: 

 

"Quite nice! To contemplate the extermination of the human species, and the long pause that follows before some other species crops up, it calms you more than anything else." [6]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For an earlier post on these three great dictators (and one mad poet), click here. 

 

[2] Unless they happen to be allies, in which case they are said to be strong leaders providing stability in their region of the world, but we won't get into that here.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 146.

 

[4] Click here to play this scene (I would suggest having a sick bag at the ready). Even some fans of Chaplin's concede that this spoils the film as a work of art. 

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 217. 

 

[6] Ibid., p. 218. 

      This is similar to how Rupert Birkin felt in Women in Love; see pp. 127-128 of the Cambridge Edition (1987), ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Penetration, 'Don't Dictate', (Virgin Records, 1977): click here for the studio version and here for a fantastic live performance of the song at the Electric Circus, Manchester (August 1977). 

 

   

Notes on Byung-Chul Han's 'Non-things' (Part 2)

Byung-Chul Han: author of Non-things,

trans. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2022).

Page references given in the post refer to this work.

 

 

Note: This post is a continuation. To go to part one (sections I - VI), click here. We continue our reflections on Byung-Chul Han's new book by discussing things in their evil and magical aspects ...

 

 

VII.

 

Han argues that things have lost their malevolent or villainous character; that objects, if you like, no longer seek revenge upon subjects - even when those subjects are cartoon mice or silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin. Material reality has become a safe space and offers no resistance or dangers. 

 

Things, in short, are now subordinate to our control and "even Mickey Mouse leads a digital, smart and immaterial life [...] and no longer collides with physical reality" [47]. Now there's an app for everything and a quick solution to all life's problems. Objects behave themselves; even if we build our world upon their backs, they'll no longer attempt to shrug us off. 

 

But, just in case those pesky objects are still up to no good when we're not around to keep an eye on them, we have invented the Internet of Things: "The infosphere puts things in chains. [...] It tames things and turns them into servants catering to our needs." [49]

 

In the past, we accepted the independence of things; the kettle might start whistling before we were ready to make the tea; the door might start creaking or the window begin to rattle in the middle of the night, keeping us awake. 

 

Even Sartre remained familiar "with what it means to be touched by things" [50] and this filled the protagonist of Nausea (1938) with terror. On the other hand, for Rilke things emanated warmth and he fantasised about sleeping with his beloved objects. 

 

But then things cooled down and no longer warmed us, touched us, or seduced us. And now, things are not even frigid: 

 

"They have neither cold nor warmth; they are worn out. All their vitality is waning. They no longer represent a counterpart to humans. They are not opposing bodies. Who, today, feels looked at, or spoken to, by things? [...] Who feels threatened or enchanted by things?" [52].

Perhaps a handful of object-oriented philosophers and a small number of objectum sexuals - but that's about it. It's a bit depressing to realise just how poor in world we have become as we sit staring at screens (and this has nothing to do with the so-called cost of living crisis or rising inflation):

"The digital screen determines our experience of the world and shields us from reality. [...] Things lose their gravity, their independent life and their waywardness" [52], says Han. And he's right. 

 

Right also to argue the impossibility of forming a genuine relation with a world that consists more and more of digital objects (or non-things). People talk about a mental health crisis, but depression is "nothing other than a pathologically intensified poverty in world" [53].   

 

VIII.

Han argues that we perceive the world primarily through (and as) information. Information not only covers the world, but "undermines the thing level of reality" [56] in all its intensity of presence. 

 

One way to counter this would be to establish a magical relationship with the world that is not characterised by representation, but by touch (an idea that will appeal to witches and Lawrentians alike). This is really just a question of greater attentiveness paid to things as things and forgetting of self for a moment or two: "When the ego gets weak, it is able to hear that mute thing language." [57] 

 

This may of course be disturbing, but Han wants human beings to be disturbed by the world; to be "moved by something singular" [58], to be penetrated from behind and below, so that we are thrown into a condition of radical passivity and presence is allowed to burst in. This is what creates epiphanic moments (as well as erotic joy). 

Apart from magic, there's also art ... At its best, art creates things, or material realities that are born of handwork, as Rilke says. 

 

A poem, for example, has a "sensual-physical dimension that eludes its sense" [60]. And it is because a poem exceeds the signifier and isn't exhausted by its meaning, that it constitutes a thing. One doesn't simply read a poem - any more than one simply drinks a glass of fine wine - both invite one to experience and enjoy them (to know their body, as it were).

 

Unfortunately, art is - according to Byung-Chul Han - moving away from this materialist understanding of its own practice. And what is particularly depressing about today's art "is its inclination to communicate a preconceived opinion, a moral or political conviction: that is, its inclination to communicate information" [64].  

 

In brief: "Art is seized by a forgetfulness of things [...] It wants to instruct rather than seduce." [64]  

 

Artworks today lack silence, lack stillness, lack secrecy; instead, they shout and insist that we interact with them. This probably explains why I would now rather sit in my backgarden amongst the daisies, than visit a bookshop, gallery, or theatre.   

 

 

IX.

I'm going to refrain from commenting at length or in detail upon sections in Han's new book dealing with Kakfa's struggle against ghosts and the philosophical importance of the hand in the work of Martin Heidegger (something I have previously discussed in a couple of posts published in June of 2019: click here and here).   

 

However, I very much like Han's observation that, were he alive today, the former would reluctantly resign himself to the fact that "by inventing the internet, email and the smartphone, the ghosts had won their final victory over mankind" [54] [a]. 

 

And it's always good to be reminded how the latter raised his hand (and stomped his foot) in a vain attempt to defend the terrestrial world against the digital order. He was a bit of a Nazi, but it's hard not to admire many aspects of Heidegger's thinking. But, as Han concedes, human beings have long since stopped dwelling between Earth and Sky:

 

"Human beings soar up towards the un-thinged [unbedingtheit], the unconditioned [...] towards a transhuman and post-human age in which human life will be a pure exchange of information. [...] Digitilization is a resolute step along the way towards the abolition of the humanum. The future of humans seems mapped out: humans will abolish themselves in order to posit themselves as the absolute." [72]

 

There will be no things close to our hearts - but that won't matter, for we won't have hearts, nor hands, feet, or genitals in the disembodied time to come. 

 

What was that line from Proverbs again ...? [b]

 

 

X.      

 

Why do so many people have headaches today? (I have one now.)

 

Could it be because the world is so restless and noisy; because no one knows how to keep still and stay silent; because no one can close their eyes or shut their fucking mouths for a moment?

 

As Arthur Fleck says: "Everybody is awful these days. It's enough to make anyone crazy. [...] Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy." [c] 

 

But you don't have to be a mentally ill loner to recognise this - Byung-Chul Han pretty much tells us the same thing: "Hypercommunication, the noise of communication, desecrates the world, profanes it." [76] 

 

Learning to listen is a crucial skill; as is learning to be still if you wish to know the transcendent joy of the Greater Day and gaze with wonder upon the immensity of blue (this includes the blue of the sky, the blue of the sea, or the blue of a butterfly's wing, for example). 

 

But, paradoxically, learning to gaze also involves learning how to close one's eyes and look away, because gazing has an imaginative component. And that's important, for as Han writes:

 

"Without imagination, there is only pornography. Today, perception itself has something pornographic about it. It has the form of immediate contact, almost of a copulation of image and eye. The erotic takes place when we close our eyes. [...]

      What is so ruinous about digital communication is that it means we no longer have time to close our eyes. The eyes are forced into a 'continuous voracity'. They lose the capacity for stillness, for deep attentiveness." [79]

 

Staring at a screen is not the same as gazing at the sky; if the latter produces wonder, the former results only in eyestrain and a slavish inability not to react to every stimulus (which, as Nietzsche pointed out, is symptomatic of exhaustion and spiritual decline). Noble and healthy souls know that doing nothing is better than being hyperactive; that philosophy, for example, is born from idleness. 

 

Han terms this ability to do nothing negative potentiality:

 

"It is not a negation of positive potential but a potential of its own. It enables spirit to to engage in still, contemplative lingering, that is, deep attentiveness. [...] Stillness can be restored only by a strengthening of negative potentiality." [82] 

And where is all this leading? Towards the loss of identity - the surrender of self - towards happy anonymity: "Only in stillness, in the great silence, do we enter into a relation with the nameless, which exceeds us [...]" [83]

 

 

XI.

Byung-Chul Han closes his book with an excurses which begins with him falling off his bicycle (talk about the villainy of things) and then falling in love with a jukebox (talk about things close to the heart).  

Han likes old jukeboxes from the 1950s; they are erotico-magical things to him which "makes listening to music a highly enjoyable visual, acoustic and tactile experience" [87]. The records played on the jukebox give him "a vague sense that the world back then must have been somehow more romantic and dream-like than it is today" [88].  

Admitting that Heidegger would probably not have been a fan of the jukebox, Han insists nevertheless that apart from playing tunes, it imparts presence and intensifies being, which is something Alexa can never do.

 

This does kind of hint at the fact that Han awards thing status to whatever objects he happens to favour: J’aime, je n’aime pas - Oh, Miss Brodie, you are Barthesian ...

 

  

Notes

 

[a] I keep telling members of the D. H. Lawrence Society that whilst Zoom is extensive it lacks intensity and that being connected is not the same as being in an actual relation. Like it or not, digital communication negates physical presence and "accelerates the disappearance of the other" [55]. 

      Unfortunately, they either do not listen, do not understand, or do not seem to care. To read my post on this subject: click here. 

[b] I'm referring to Proverbs 4:23: "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." According to Byung-Chul Han, this was placed above the front door to Heidegger's house. 

[c] Joaquin Phoenix in the role of Arthur Fleck (Joker) speaking to Robert De Niro's character Murray Franklin (shortly before shooting him) in Joker (dir. Todd Philips, 2019): click here to watch on YouTube. 

 

 

Musical bonus: as Byung-Chul Han loves French singers and jukeboxes so much, here's Serge Gainsbourg on TV in 1965 performing Le claquer de doigts.

 

    

On Those Who Have Been Refused Entry Into the Land of the Free ...

Photo by John Tiberi of the Sex Pistols 

(Steve Jones / Johnny Rotten / Sid Vicious / Paul Cook) 

on the eve of their first American tour (January 1978)

 

 

I. 

 

As might be imagined, there exists a fairly extensive list of notable persons who have been deported from the United States for one reason or another, often on the grounds that they are aliens who are hostile to the American way of life defined in terms of motherhood and apple pie [1].  

 

It's a list that includes, for example, the English comic actor and director Charlie Chaplin and the Russian political activist and writer Emma Goldman; the latter described by J. Edgar Hoover shortly before her removal in 1919, as one of the most dangerous women alive.

 

II. 

 

But it's not this list or the figures upon it which interests me here: I am, rather, concerned with the list of notable people who have been refused entry into the Land of the Free ...

 

This a list that includes Kurt Blome, the high-ranking Nazi scientist who performed illicit medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein President and IRA sympathiser, and, rather more surprisingly, footballer Diego Maradona, domestic goddess Nigella Lawson, and singer-songwriter Lily Allen [2].    

I think my favourite entry on the list, however, is Sebastian Horsley, who, after arriving at Newwark Airport in March 2008, was denied entry into the United States on the grounds of moral turpitude. 

 

After eight hours of questioning - and despite the fact that he had removed his nail polish as a concession to American sensibilities - Horsley was placed on a plane and sent back to London; his planned book tour and six-month stay in the US over before it had even begun [3]. 

 

In failing to enter and tour America, Horsley actually goes one better than his heroes the Sex Pistols, who, seen above in passport photos taken at the time, were initially denied visas by the US Embassy in London on the eve of their first American tour (members of the band having committed a number of criminal misdemeanours).   

 

Although obliged to cancel several shows, the band were, of course, eventually allowed in to the States, thanks to the efforts of their American record company, Warner Bros., and the lawyers acting on their behalf. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, things did not go well - which is not to say they didn't go as Malcolm hoped; the plan being not to sell tickets or records, but incite mayhem and disillusion [4]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It might be noted that only those designated as aliens are subject to removal from the United States. In other words, a U.S. citizen or a U.S. national cannot be removed from the United States under any circumstances.  

[2] Maradona had numerous criminal convictions in Argentina, Italy, and elsewhere; Nigella was barred from boarding a flight leaving London for LA in 2014, having recently confessed to a cocaine habit; Lily Allen was refused a U.S. visa for having assaulted a photographer in 2007 and for singing in a mockney accent. 

 

[3] Torpedophiles will be aware that I have already written a post on the idea of moral turpitude with reference to the case of Sebastian Horsley: click here.   

[4] At the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, on the 14th of January, 1978, the Sex Pistols self-imploded before the eyes of the world and exposed rock music as a dying beast that needed putting out of its misery. To watch the show in full, click here. 

It's the Lad Himself (In Memory of Mssrs. Hancock and Hill)

Benny Hill and Tony Hancock pop art style
available from artandhue.com

I.

I suppose because I was a child of the '70s rather than the 1950s, I always thought that the lad himself was Benny Hill - that's certainly how I remember him being introduced (by the brilliant Henry McGee) at the start of each show.

But, as it turns out, this was just a borrowing from Tony Hancock, who died five years prior to Hill's appropriation of the phrase. Doubtless this was intended as a tribute to the man born in the same year as him (1924), in much the same way as the name 'Benny' was adopted in homage to another favourite comedian, Jack Benny. 



II.

What's interesting when you think about Mssrs. Hancock and Hill, is how the former's reputation and standing has only increased since his suicide in 1968; whereas following his death in 1992 - having been stabbed-in-the-back by ITV executives three years prior and had his comedy career rubbished by figures like Ben Elton - the latter has found himself unceremoniously dumped in a deep, dark memory hole.  

Now, whilst I'm pleased that Hancock has remained a much-loved figure within the British cultural imagination - for he fully deserves to be remembered fondly -  I do think that the fate which has befallen Hill is unfair and shameful.

It should be remembered that Hill was a huge star in Britain for almost forty years. And, at its peak, The Benny Hill Show was among the most-watched programmes in the UK, gaining an audience of over 20 million viewers. It was also, one might note, exported to nearly 100 countries around the world, earning Thames Television shit loads of money.  

Sadly, the world being as it is, there seems little chance of the show being repeated anytime soon - even though Hill does retain a number of loyal fans and even though some commentators place him in the top ten of greatest British comedians, alongside his childhood idols Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.

To be honest, I was never a great lover of the show: it wasn't that I had any objection as a child to the pervy elements and dubious sexual politics of some of the sketches; rather, it was that I found some of the silent clowing and slapstick boring.

Having said that, I do have a soft spot for Benny if only because Ernie (the Fastest Milkman in the West) was the first single I ever bought (helping it reach the Christmas number 1 spot in 1971): click here to watch the promo video, starring Hill in the eponymous role and featuring Henry McGee as Two-Ton Ted from Teddington who drove the baker's van and Jan Butlin as Sue, a widow living all alone in Linley Lane, at number 22. 

On Dalí's Queer Fascination with Hitler

Salvador Dalí: The Enigma of Hitler (1939)

Oil on canvas (95 x 141 cm)

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

I.

A lot of comedians find the figure of the Führer funny; from Charlie Chaplin to Mel Brooks there's a long tradition of laughing at Hitler and the Nazis. But some artists and aristocrats have a queer fascination with fascism and find the Führer rather sexy with his neat mustache and Aryan eye, bright blue.

This is certainly true of the great Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí. He had a thing for Hitler, whom he identified with the misanthropic, misotheistic figure of Maldoror and wasn't shy about admitting so in openly erotic terms: 

"I often dreamed of Hitler as a woman. His flesh, which I had imagined whiter than white, ravished me..."
  

Such statements, along with his 1939 work, The Enigma of Hitler, were the final straw for André Breton and his fellow Surrealists: it was one thing Dalí airing his dirty laundry in public - including a pair of shit-stained underpants - but to confess an attraction for the German leader on the eve of war, that was beyond the pale.

Thus, Dalí was (finally) expelled from the group with whom he had been affiliated for a decade. His argument that Hitler was merely a manifestation of his own decadent aestheticism didn't really wash. Nor did his insistence that Hitler might himself be regarded as a kind of Surrealist, prepared to launch a war solely for the pleasure of losing and seeing the world in ruins - the ultimate act of gratuitous violence.


II.

Dalí would in later years paint two more pictures of Hitler: Metamorphosis of Hitler's Face into a Moonlit Landscape with Accompaniment (1958) and the charming watercolour entitled Hitler Masturbating (1973). But it's the Engima work, reproduced above, that shows Dalí at his best and most recognisable; many of his favourite themes, symbols and motifs are on display here.   

Critics who like to approach art from a psychoanalytic perspective suggest the picture is all about Dalí's fear of domineering authority figures, or his anxious concerns to do with impotence. And, who knows, maybe they're on to something. However, such readings don't exhaust the work and, intriguing as the psychosexual elements are, I think it's the political nature of the painting that most interests.

For whilst Breton and company insist it glorifies the German dictator, it seems to me far more ambiguous (as all art should be). Thus, one could just as reasonably argue that the painting seems humorously critical of the fact that Hitler threatens to land us all in the soup ...       

Note: readers interested in other recent posts on Dalí can click here and here.

Prisoners of Fashion

A convict uniform 1830-49

Copyright National Library of Australia

(nla.pic-anc6393471)

I don't know if anybody has ever actually been convicted for crimes against fashion, but it might not be a bad idea for certain individuals to spend some time locked behind bars in solitary confinement, so they might better think through their sartorial choices.

For prison has long been an environment that subjects people to discipline and detail exercised via clothing. Well-known examples would include the classic striped-look, seen for example on Charlie Chaplin in The Adventurer, the heavy-denim outfit worn by Elvis in Jailhouse Rock, and the contemporary bright orange jumpsuits popularized by Guantánamo detainees.

Personally, I've always liked the use of broad black arrows stamped onto a heavy woollen outfit consisting of jacket, trousers and pillbox hat. Often worn by British convicts transported to Australia to work on chain gangs, the arrows signified that they remained subjects of the Crown even when Down Under. Uncompromising hob-nail boots completed a look which was still being used as late as 1922.

I suppose the point is that inmates are expected to reflect upon what they've done and where they find themselves and the wearing of distinctive uniforms designed to shame and stigmatize is meant to assist with this process; that clothes maketh the convict just as much as the chains that are sometimes worn as accessories. But, paradoxically, the uniforms can also produce a feeling of pride and outlaw swagger, which is why many young people often adopt and adapt looks that first arise from within Her Majesty's prisons or American penitentiaries (such as sagging).

Thus, I rather regret the findings of the research conducted during the more liberal periods of the twentieth century which indicated that inmates respond better to the rules governing prison life if they are allowed to wear their own clothes and which led to the phasing out of distinctive prison garb in the UK and elsewhere.

On the other hand, I'm happy to hear that in the United States many wardens are choosing to revive traditional looks, such as the striped-outfit of yesteryear. I'm not sure it will help with rehabilitation, but it will certainly help with giving back to prisoners a distinctive and stylish criminal identity.


Note: the picture shows a lovely magpie style black-and-yellow, hand-stitched convict uniform from Tasmania. The jacket is front-buttoning with a high stand-up collar and long sleeves. The trousers are marked with the famous arrow design mentioned above. It is made from rough woollen Paramatta cloth manufactured in Sydney, Australia.