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). 

 

   

My Sister and I

My Sister and I (Dec 1967)

 

"The warm and lovely world we knew, has been struck by a bitter frost.

But my sister and I, recall with a sigh, the world we knew, and loved, and lost." [1]

 

 

Like Herr Nietzsche, I also have a sister called Elizabeth (named after a princess). And like Herr Nietzsche, I also have a somewhat troubled relationship with my sibling who, for the record, is eleven years my senior. 

 

But whereas Nietzsche's sister was keen to take control of her brother's archive after his collapse and capitalise upon his growing fame throughout Europe [2], it seems that my sister would rather eradicate all traces of my existence.

 

Thus, for example, not only did she remove and destroy all of my childhood toys, games, and treasured possessions from our parental home (with my mother's acquiescence, but without my knowledge or consent), but she has now searched through all of her family photograph albums in order to find any pictures of me, so that these too might be removed. 

 

To be fair, she didn't burn or bin these pictures (or try to sell them on eBay). Rather, she presented the images to me so that I may do with them as I please; this includes the photo above, taken in December 1967.    

 

This censorship of images and editing (or falsification) of the past is reminiscent of what went on in the Soviet Union under Stalin, although my sister is driven by sibling resentment rather than political expediency; i.e., it's an act of spite rather than propaganda.  

But whatever the motivation, it's all a bit of shame, really. But there you go - all families operate with a degree of dysfunction, don't they? And, to be honest, I don't feel inclined to apologise for having been born (I'm just pleased to have the pictures).     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from My Sister and I, a song written by Hy Zaret, Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer, recorded by Jimmy Dorsey, with vocals by Bob Eberly. It hit number one on the Billboard charts on June 7, 1941. Click here to play on YouTube.

[2] In 1889, aged 45, Nietzsche suffered a collapse in Turin and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, until his death in 1900. 

      As curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts, Elisabeth used her brother's unpublished writings to promote her own agenda, wilfully overlooking his philosophical views when they conflicted with her nationalism and antisemitism. 

      Readers who are interested in this topic should see Carol Diethe's Nietzsche's Sister and the Will to Power, (University of Illinois Press, 2003), in which she demonstrates how Elisabeth's desire to place herself - not her brother - at the center of German cultural life damaged his reputation for many years.

      Readers might also enjoy the apocryphal work attributed to Nietzsche entitled My Sister and I, trans. Oscar Levy (1951). This book - which most scholars consider a forgery - was supposedly written in 1889-90, during Nietzsche's time in a mental asylum. If legitimate, My Sister and I would be Nietzsche's final text, chronologically following his Wahnbriefe. Amongst several highly contentious (and otherwise unreported) biographical claims, the book details an incestuous relationship between Nietzsche and his sister Elisabeth. 

On Bolshevism and Immortality: the Case of Arseny Tarkovsky

What I know about the twentieth century Russian poet and translator Arseny Tarkovsky can pretty much be written on the back of a postage stamp - such as this commemorative one issued in 2007 to mark the centenary of his birth:

The fact that he featured on a stamp issued by the new regime whilst also having been posthumously awarded the Soviet Union's State Prize in 1989, shows how admired Tarkovsky was across the political spectrum.  

Where he positioned himself on this spectrum is interesting to speculate. Revolutionary-minded, one wonders for example what Tarkovsky made of the way things developed, politically and in the arts, under Stalin.

He obviously didn't feel all that uncomfortable as he volunteered to work as a correspondent for an official Soviet Army publication during the war years and never seriously considered the life of an exile or dissident - not even after his own writing fell foul of the new guidelines established by Andrei Zhdanov.

(It wasn't until 1962, when he was aged 55, that Tarkovsky was finally able to publish a volume of original verse.)

However, one would like to believe that Tarkovsky secretly recognised communism for what it is; a form of political idealism doomed, like fascism, to end in tears, tyranny and state terror.

One perhaps finds a clue to his thinking on this question in a poem whose title is usually translated into English as Earthly; a work in which the fantasy of being an immortal and transcending limitations is decisively rejected.

In other words, it's the moment when Tarkovsky realises like Tommy Dukes that one has to be human, and have a heart and a penis if one is going to escape being either a god or a Bolshevist ... for they are the same thing: they're both too good to be true. 

Below is a brilliant and startling new translation by Simon Solomon; his alternative title emphasizing the irreverence of the verse:


Soiled Song (after Arseny Tarkovsky)

Were our lives innately fated
to play in gods’ eternal laps
we’d all have guzzled ambrosia
from some Olympian nurse’s baps

and I’d be a river deity or worse,
guarding tombs or blowing corn.
Instead I’m mortal and have no time
for eternity’s celestial porn.

Happy the man whose blistered lips
are not sewn into a ready smile.
So take your polytheologies
and leave me to earth’s salt and bile.


Notes 

Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas) is a poet, translator, critic and tutor. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He blogs at: simonsolomon.ink 

The Tommy Dukes line can be found in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983). 

  

Three Great Dictators and One Mad Poet

 

One thing that the great dictators of the twentieth century had in common was an ability to articulate their own philosophical pessimism with as much memorable brutality as they exercised their political and military power. They also shared a startling level of candour. 

Thus Hitler, for example, reveals all that we need to know about his paranoia and sociopathology in the following remark: There will only be peace on earth when the last man has killed the last but one. 

Whilst Stalin betrays the Machiavellian and murderous nature of his thinking with this chilling declaration: If you want to get rid of the problem, get rid of the man. 

Even Mao will be long remembered for his observation that: Political power grows from the barrel of a gun.  

But what of Mussolini? Try as I might, I really can't recall anything he ever said. Apart from the following, which, ironically, explains why this might be the case: I was never a great dictator; always a mad poet.