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). 

 

   

Just Because the Sky Has Turned a Pretty Shade of Orange and Red Doesn't Mean You Can Simply Point a Camera and Shoot ... Or Does It?

Golden sunset and red sunrise over Harold Hill 

(SA / Dec 2022) 

 

 

I. 

 

For many serious photographers, these two snaps taken from my bedroom window - a golden sunset and a red sunrise - constitute perfect examples of cliché. 

 

That enormous numbers of people enjoy looking at such pictures doesn't alter the fact that images of dusk and dawn have virtually zero aesthetic value; their mass production and popularity only confirming their banality. 

 

As one commentator notes: 

 

"Their very ubiquity is what seems to repel; photography has tainted what it sought to cherish through overuse. It miniaturises natural grandeur and renders it kitsch." [1]

 

If you're a reader of Walter Benjamin, you might explain how mechanical reproduction devalues the aura - by which is meant something like the uniqueness - of an object or event [2]; if you're a fan of D. H. Lawrence, you'll probably start shouting about Kodak vision and how this prevents us from seeing reality, just as cliché inhibits the forming of new perspectives [3].  

 

Now, whilst sympathetic to both of theses authors, I also want to be able to take my snaps and share them with others in good conscience. And so I feel obliged to challenge those who are hostile to photography per se - even if, on philosophical grounds, I share their concerns.

 

And I also feel obliged to challenge those who are dismissive of certain genres of amateur photography - pictures of flowers, or cats, or of the sun's risings and settings - out of cultural snobbery; i.e., those who sneer at aesthetically naive individuals and speak of the wrong kind of people making the wrong kind of images.

           

 

II. 

 

I'm thinking, for example, of the Marxist academic, writer, photographer and curator, Julian Stallabrass, who is interested in the relations between art, politics and popular culture and who sneeringly entitled a chapter of his 1996 work on the widespread popularity of amateur photography 'Sixty Billion Sunsets' [4].

 

As Annebella Pollen notes: 

 

"Stallabrass's denigration of mass photographic practice is based on what he perceives to be its overwhelmingly conventionalised sameness (unlike elite art practices, which are positively polarised as avant-garde, creative and distinctive)." [5]

 

In other words, because Stallabrass sees every sunset photograph as essentially the same, he dismisses them all as "sentimental visual confectionary indicative of limited aesthetic vision and an undeveloped practice" [6]; in other words, stereotypical shit. 

Unfortunately, this attitude is echoed by many other critics and theorists convinced of their own cultural superiority. If you thought postmodernism did away with such snobbery, you'd be mistaken - which is a pity. 

 

For whilst I may agree that just because the sky has turned a pretty shade of orange and red one is nevertheless required to do more than simply point a camera and shoot in order to produce an image that is also a work of art, there's nothing wrong with just taking a snap and plenty of snaps have genuine charm and, yes, even beauty. 

 

In the end, even a bad photograph can seduce and what Barthes calls the punctum - i.e., that which is most poignant (even nuanced) in a picture - is often the failure, fault, cliché, or imperfection. Perhaps, in this digital age of imagery shared via social media, we therefore need to rethink what constitutes a good or bad photograph.    

And, ultimately, Stallabrass is simply wrong: no two sunsets (or dawns) are ever the same and no two photographs of sunsets (or dawns) are ever the same; there is an eternal return of difference (not of the same or to the same). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Annebella Pollen, 'When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets', eitherand.org - click here. 

 

[2] See Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1935), which can be found in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn, (Bodley Head, 2015).

 

[3] See D. H. Lawrence's essay 'Art and Morality' (1925), which can be found in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 161-68. 

 

[4] Julian Stallabrass, Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture, (Verso, 1996). 

 

[5] Annebella Pollen, 'When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets', op. cit.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

 

All Change: Notes on Chapter 5 of Metamorphoses by Emanuele Coccia

 

Throughout this post, and at this very moment, 

I am thinking in you ...

 

 

I. 

 

Although Emanuele Coccia thinks every living being is already biodiverse, he favours extending this inner diversity outwards and amplifying the metamorphic force that animates us. He also supports creating spaces of metamorphic conspiracy, so that forms can combine and become-other, etc. 

 

And I'm with him in this, although I'd sooner slit my wrists than speak of imparting "a more intense and richer life" [a] to Gaia. The more animals and plants there are, the better as far as I'm concerned.

In fact, I wouldn't even object to large predators prowling the streets and gobbling up a few fat children; for what is this ultimately but an exchange of solar energy; "every act of feeding is nothing other than a secret and invisible exchange of extra-terrestrial light" [149].

 

Tyger tyger, burning bright / In the cities of the night ... [b]

 

 

II.

 

Coccia's argument in this fifth and final chapter is, simply, we need one another. That is to say, all beings - be they plant, animal, or human - fundamentally rely on (and live off the lives of) other beings in an interspecies community. Interdependence is the name of the game and this interdependence is, for Coccia, primarily "of a cognitive and speculative order" [157]. 

 

Intellect - or mind - is not a property of the individual; it's a relation between species. Thus, the intelligence of the wolf, for example, has developed due to (and within) the relationship large predators have with those animals they prey upon. And in some cases, the intellect of one species is actually embodied in another:

 

"With the flower, the plant [...] entrusts another species belonging to another kingdom with the task of making a decision on the genetic and biological destiny of its own species. It entrusts them with the task of directing the metamorphosis of its species. In a certain sense, the flower transfers the plant's species-mind into the body of the bee." [158]

 

Coccia continues: 

 

"It is not simply a collaboration, it is the constitution of a cognitive and speculative interspecific organ. This means not only that all evolutionary development is co-evolution [...] but also that [...] co-evolution is what we normally call agriculture or husbandry. Each species decides, in its own way, the evolutionary fate of others. What we call evolution is nothing more than a kind of generalized interspecies agriculture, a cosmic crossbreeding - which is not necessarily designed for the benefit of one or the other. The world as a whole thus becomes a kind of purely relational reality [...]" [158]         

 

As a reader of Lawrence, one would be tempted to call this a democracy of touch ... [c]

 

 

III.

For Coccia, the form taken by each species is neither a destiny nor something that has necessarily arisen through chance or the mechanism of natural selection obliging them to adapt to their environment. 

 

For Coccia, there is a will of some kind at work:

 

"The shapes of living bodies - their colours, decorative patterns, etc. - are not only expressions of the individual's adaptation to the world around them. They are also and above all the expression of a taste, of a sort of artistic will that drives the individual of a species to prefer one form over the other." [162]

 

Darwin described this in terms of sexual selection, but I suspect Coccia has also been influenced in his thinking here by Nietzsche, who wrote of art as an organic function of the the will to power and as the "great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the greatest stimulant of life" [d]. 

 

And this is true in both man and animal, between whom there is no cardinal distinction. 

 

Indeed, art, says Nietzsche, is ultimately a form of animal vigour; "an excess and overflow of blooming physicality into the world of images and desires" [e]. We see this for ourselves each spring, when animals produce "new weapons, pigments, colours, and forms; above all, new movements, new rhythms, new love calls and seductions" [f]. 

 

Ultimately, for Coccia, species are "nothing more than expressions of  a 'biotic art', a sort of aesthetic performance conducted on an anatomical level" [163], and ecology should reinvent itself in terms of art rather than good housekeeping, accepting that nothing is natural and there are no areas of wilderness to conserve; that all is cultivated and artificial. 

 

Anthropologists and ethnologists long ago stopped talking about primitive peoples and noble savages. Now, ecologists and environmentalists should stop pretending there are primitive species and savage beasts, who are somehow more authentic - more natural - than us. As Coccia writes: 

 

"Everything that constitutes us derives from the non-human and has the same nature, but the reverse is also true: everything that defines humanity, beginning with error, art, artifice, and moral arbitration, also defines the totality of living species." [167]    

 

 

IV.

 

In the final section of Chapter 5, Coccia continues to make some striking claims, including for example, that evolution should be considered as "the production of [...] contemporary nature" [168]. Fortunately, he explains what he means by this:

 

"From the beginning of the twentieth century, when art established itself as avant-garde, it ceased to fulfil an aesthetic function. It freed itself from the task of producing beauty, or decorating what already exists and bringing it into harmony. In claiming to be contemporary [...] art became a collective practice of the divination of the future [...] an attempt [by society] to reproduce itself differently from what it is [...] Art embodies a society's desire for and project of metamorphosis." [168-69]     

 

Thus evolution - as Coccia understands it - is the mode of life "that corresponds to what contemporary art is for culture" [169]. He continues:

"Nature is not only the immemorial prehistory of culture, but its unrealized future; its surrealistic anticipation. Contemporary nature is the scene where life enters into the avant-garde of its future. It is life as natural avant-garde. It is the surrealistic reproduction of forms of life." [169]

Thus, cities shouldn't just become eco-friendly and sustainable, but contemporary nature galleries in which the future is reimagined and engineered: 

 

"Bringing together artists, scientists, designers, architects, and farmers, it will be a matter of building multispecies associations somewhere between city, garden, plantation, and stable, where each living being produces works for others and for themselves." [170] [g]

 

To be honest, I don't know how seriously to take this virtuous exercise of the imagination - or whether I find it appealing or appalling. 

 

It's certainly a more sophisticated proposal than my suggestion made earlier to simply release the wolves, but it's also - like all utopian fantasies of the ideal society - inherently fascistic. It's as if Coccia wishes to build a multispecies labour camp overseen by (presumably human) artists and scientists who will, as it were, attempt to take control of evolution. 

 

It seems an odd note on which to finish - one that essentially defeats the whole point and purpose (and central argument) of the book: that metamorphosis is the essential, unstoppable, and inhuman law of life; one that is unfolding all of the time and everwhere, including in our cities, without any need for human direction (as if it were even possible for man to stand outside, as it were, and control events).

 

I know that Coccia knows this: knows that the future cannot be determined, because it's "the pure force of metamorphosis" [180]; knows that life is not something that belongs to any of us, "either as individuals, as a nation, or as a species" [180] - so I don't know quite why he ends his work where and how he does. 

 

Maybe he's been hanging around with artists for too long ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Emanuele Coccia, Metamorphoses, trans. Robin MacKay, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 147. Future page references to this book will be given directly in the main text. 

 

[b] This is not quite Coccia's hope for cities of the future; for his far-grander and more utopian vision see pp. 169-70 of Metamorphoses (which I discuss in section IV of this post).

 

[c] I very much regret the fact that Coccia chooses to conclude his work on interspecies relationship in terms of a cosmic mind produced by "an infinite series of arbitrary and rational encounters and decisions taken by different species at different times, according to the strangest of intentions" [161]. 

      For me, what's crucial about this relationship is that the encounters are libidinal rather than rational, involving a politics of desire: "The touch of the feet on the earth, the touch of the fingers on a tree, on a creature, the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love: it is life itself, and in the touch, we are all alive."

      See D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 323. This line is from the second version of the novel.

      I have written several posts on Lawrence's notion of a democracy of touch here on Torpedo the Ark and readers who are interested can go to labels and click on the term. 

 

[d] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), note 853 (II), p. 452. 

      I would encourage readers to familiarise themselves with all of Nietzsche's notes on the will to power as art; see Book III, Part IV, notes 794-853, pp. 419-453. And for a fascinating philosophical discussion of Nietzsche's thinking on animality, art, and will to power (in relation to Darwin), see Keith Ansell-Pearson's essay, 'Nietzsche contra Darwin', in Viroid Life, (Routledge 1997), pp. 85-122.      

[e] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, note 802, p. 422. 

[f] Ibid., note 808, p. 426. 

[g] Apparently, this vision of a museum for contemporary nature is inspired by Stefano Boeri's Vertical Forest project (2007-14), in Milan. Visit Boeri's website for more information on this and on his latest work involving trees: click here. 

 

 

To read my notes on the Introduction and first chapter of Emanuele Coccia's Metamorphoses, click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter two ... click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter three ... click here. 

 

To read notes on chapter four ... click here.

Irezumi: Notes on D. H. Lawrence's Fascination with Japanese Male Bodies

入れ墨 
Getting ink done Japanese style

Children born with congenital abnormalities are relatively few in number and the mortality rate amongst such infants is very high. It's for this reason that most sideshow freaks are in fact individuals who have gone to great lengths to place themselves outside of the norm and make themselves exceptional.

This includes those who have enhanced their appearance with extensive tattooing, such as John Rutherford, for example, who became the first professional tattooed Englishman after returning home in 1828 from New Zealand, where he'd had his body covered with Maori designs. Rutherford would regale his audience with tall tales of having been shipwrecked and then abducted by native peoples, who only accepted him once his flesh was decorated like their own.        

Or like the Albanian Greek known as Captain George Constentenus, a 19th-century circus performer and famous travelling attraction, who claimed to have been kidnapped by Chinese Tartars and tattooed from top to toe - including hands, neck and face - against his will. His almost 400 tattoos included many animal designs and Constentenus became the most popular (and wealthiest) of all the tattooed exhibit-performers.     

Or, finally, like the anonymous Japanese character in D. H. Lawrence's little-read novel The Lost Girl (1920), whom Alvina Houghton takes something of a shine to, along with other circus types:

"Alvina was more fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did marvellous things with six ferrets, or the Jap who was tattooed all over, and had the most amazing strong wrists [...] Queer cuts these! - but just a little bit beyond her. She watched them rather from a distance.
      She wished she could jump across the distance. Particularly with the Jap, who was almost quite naked, but clothed with the most exquisite tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle that flew with terrible spread wings between his shoulders, or the strange mazy pattern that netted the roundness of his buttocks. He was not very large, but nicely shaped, and with no hair on his smooth, tattooed body. He was almost blue in colour - that is, his tattooing was blue, with pickings of brilliant vermillion: as for instance round the nipples, and in a strange red serpent's jaws over the navel. A serpent went round his loins and haunches. - He told her how many times he had had blood-poisoning, during the process of his tattooing. He was a queer, black-eyed creature, with a look of silence and toad-like lewdness. He frightened her." 

There are two things I'd like to comment on in relation to this astonishing passage - neither of which, surprisingly, are picked up on in the explanatory notes provided by the editor of the Cambridge edition of the text, John Worthen. 

Firstly, it's interesting that Lawrence seems to have some knowledge of (and fascination with) irezumi, i.e., the traditional Japanese art of tattooing with a distinct style evolved over many centuries.

Indeed, tattooing for spiritual as well as aesthetic purposes in Japan can be traced back to the Paleolithic era, though it only assumed the advanced decorative form we know today during the Edo period (1603-1868), thanks in part to a popular Chinese novel illustrated with colourful woodblock prints showing heroic figures decorated with flowers, tigers, and mythical creatures. 

Amusingly, scholars are divided over who first wore these elaborate tattoos; some argue that it was the lower classes who defiantly flaunted such designs; others claim that the fashion for irezumi originated with wealthy members of the merchant class, who, prohibited by law from displaying their weath, secretly wore their expensive tattoos beneath their clothing.  

Either way, the fact remains that irezumi is a slow, painful and expensive method of tattooing, that uses metal needles attached with silk thread to wooden handles and a special ink, called Nara ink, that famously turns blue-green under the skin. Irezumi is performed by a small number of specialists (known as Hori-shi) who are revered figures within the skin-inking community.

Usually, a person skilled in the art of Japanese tattooing will have trained for many years under a master; observing, practicing (on their own skin), making the tools, mixing the inks, etc. Only when they have mastered all the skills required and learnt to copy their master's technique in every detail, will they be allowed to tattoo clients.

Finally, it's worth noting that during the Meiji period (1868-1912) the Japanese government outlawed tattooing and irezumi was forced underground, becoming associated with criminality; yakuzi gangsters have always had a penchant for traditional all-over body designs - just like Alvina Houghton.  

Indeed - and this is my second point - Lawrence, who, as a writer, often indulges in racial fetishism, also seems to have a thing for the flesh of Japanese men, whether tattooed or untattooed, as we learn from the famous wrestling scene in Women in Love (1920) ...  

Gerald suggests to Birkin that they might indulge in a round or two of boxing. The latter, however, isn't so keen on the idea of being punched in the face by his physically bigger and much stronger friend and suggests, alternatively, that they might do some Japanese wrestling (by which he seems to mean jiu-jitsu).

He explains to Gerald that he once shared a house with a Jap in Heidelberg who taught him a few martial art moves. Gerald is excited by the idea and immediately agrees to it, suggesting - with a queer smile on his face - that they strip naked in order to be able to properly get to grip with one another, man-to-man.    

Of course, Birkin doesn't take much convincing of the need for this; quickly conceding that you can't wrestle in a starched shirt. Besides, he sometimes fought with his Japanese opponent naked, so it was no big deal.

This piece of information piques Gerald's bi-curiosity and he asks Birkin for details. The latter explains that the man was "'very quick and slippery and full of electric fire'", before adding: "'It is a remarkable thing, what a curious sort of fluid force they seem to have in them, those people - not like a human grip - like a polyp.'"

Gerald nods, as if he understands perfectly what Birkin means: "'I should imagine so,' he said, 'to look at them. They repel me, rather.'"

To which, Birkin replies: "'Repel and attract both. They are very repulsive when they are cold, and they look grey. But when they are hot and roused, there is a definite attraction - a curious kind of full electric fluid - like eels.'"

Again, to me, this is an astonishing exchange in which there is so much to unpack in terms of racial and sexual politics, that it's quite laughable that the editors of the Cambridge edition only think to inform us in an explanatory note that electric eels, whilst certainly capable of giving a shock, do not, in fact, contain 'fluid'.

I mean, I'm as interested in the biology of the Gymnotus as the next man, but, as a reader of Lawrence, I'm rather more interested to know whether Birkin's vital being interpenetrated his Japanese opponent in the same way it interpenetrated Gerald's; "as if his fine, sublimated energy entered into the flesh of the [other] man, like some potency".

Did Birkin entwine his body with the body of his Japanese opponent with a "strange, octopus-like knotting and flashing of limbs" until the two bodies were clinched into oneness?

Did Alvina ever jump across the pathos of distance that lay between her and the tattooed Oriental  who looked so shabby dressed in cheap, ill-fitting European clothes, but so beautiful naked: "Who could have imagined the terrible eagle of his shoulders, the serpent of his loins, his supple, magic skin?"

I think we should be told ...

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 119, 120.

D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 268-69, 270.