COMEDY

THE BODY 91life’ (Bergson, 1980:117). This especially includes moments wherejudgement is overridden by the actions of the body, such as anysituation ‘that calls our attention to the physical in a person, where it isthe moral side that is concerned’ (Bergson, 1980:93). One of Chaplin’sgreatest films, Modern Times (1936), is extremely Bergsonian in thissense. Set against a backdrop of mass labour and industrialization, theunique and individuated body is contrasted with the faceless andautomated machines of production-line capitalism. Essentially, the filmasks whether it is possible for individuals to retain their sympatheticemotional qualities when their lives are controlled by the working weekand subservience to heartless institutions. The film opens in a steel millwith Chaplin performing repetitive tasks at a conveyor belt, an actionthat penetrates him so deeply he adopts its automated twitch. While,from one perspective, this is a dark comment on the reification oflabour, from a Bergsonian view it represents comedy in its purest form,insofar as ‘The attitudes, gestures and movements of the human bodyare laughable in exact proportion as the body reminds us of a meremachine’ (Bergson, 1980:79). The mechanized body is one of the keysymbols of the film, with two set pieces built around the uncomfortablemeeting of body and technology. The first features an automatic feedingdevice to which the worker is strapped and fed by robot arms, with theresult that the meal is smeared all over Chaplin’s face and clothes, as ifhe were an infant in a high chair. The second involves Chaplin’s coworkerbecoming stuck in the enormous cogs of a machine whileChaplin tries to feed him his packed lunch. In both predicaments,something particularly human—mealtimes, with their array of culturalmeanings, rituals, and strong associations of need and sensual enjoyment—ismarred through the intervention of something senseless,inorganic, and utterly unsympathetic. In fact, missed or frustrated mealsrecur throughout the film, underlining the extent to which the Tramp isalways at some distance from bodily satisfaction and that theavailability of sustenance is tied to economic success. The alternative tofaceless frustration is the ‘gamin’, Paulette Goddard, Chaplin’s wife atthe time, who plays a feral female representative of authentic vitality.After her father is killed in a labour riot, the gamin comes under theprotection of Chaplin who instantly assumes the overlapping roles ofprotector and uncertain mate. An absence of obvious sexual interest wastypical of Chaplin’s character, and his thin cane and voluminoustrousers have been taken as symbols of waning male sexuality (Segal,2001:432). For the new couple, respite from privation takes priorityover sex. In a scene in which Chaplin takes the job of night watchman