COMEDY

88 THE BODYFirst, movie performers cannot project, but are projected. Second,photographs are of the world, in which human beings are notontologically favoured over the rest of nature, in which objectsare not props but natural allies (or enemies) of human character.The first necessity—projected visibility—permits the sublimecomprehensibility of Chaplin’s natural choreography; the second—ontological equality—permits his Proustian and Jamesianrelationships with Murphy beds and flights of stairs and withvases on runners on tables on rollers.(Cavell, 1979:36–37)Thus we are presented with the projected body that draws attention toits surface and movements, placed among a world of things over whichit cannot claim superiority. Ironically for silent film, the term ‘slapstick’is onomatopoeically derived from the sound made by the woodenpaddles clowns used to beat one another with in the burlesque touringtheatres. These were in turn versions of the inflated sheep bladders filledwith dried peas that accompanied clowns on the early modern stage,themselves an echo of the tools used to beat the ritual scapegoat inancient ritual. The scapegoat, a person onto whom the accumulatedevils of the community were transferred prior to his or her expulsion,might be a useful way of understanding the hero of slapstick comedy.Slapstick comedians generally played the role of outsider, such asChaplin’s Tramp character, awkward, if physically gifted, loners whofound themselves swimming against the tide of modern living. Thrust asinnocents into a world they had never apparently encountered before,their hapless bodies suffered the misfortunes that might befall us in ourdaily lives so that we did not have to. Yet however often the body wasassaulted it was largely indestructible, rendering concern or sympathyfor a character’s pain irrelevant. In this sense, slapstick may be said torepresent a socially acceptable expression of masochism, as the viewertakes no sadistic pleasure in the pain induced, or, perhaps, a liberationfrom the compulsion to empathize.The slapstick protagonist is continually prone to attack through eithera bodily revolt or loss of self-control, or from an external source thataims to dismantle his dignity. In both slapstick movies and the cartoonsthey inspired, the body is utterly malleable and infinitely resourceful. Atthe heart of slapstick is the conceit that the laws of physics are locallymutable, that the world can rebel against you, or that a person can besuddenly stripped of their ability to control their environment oranticipate how it will behave. The body in slapstick is often at odds with