Take a look at Chaplin's "Modern Times" and you can see how crazy this "modern" is. The black and white silent film simplifies everything. There is no enjoyment of color, no rich light and dark changes, no extra words to express, only Chaplin's exaggerated and funny actions and the background music that fluctuates with people's emotions. The simplest elements can often trigger rich thinking and touch people's most vulnerable nerves. This comedy film was created in the United States in the 1930s. It was during the Great Depression, when a large number of workers were unemployed, families broke up, women and children starved, and crime rates rose... That was the United States entering the capitalist economy. The first economic crisis experienced after the era. From Marx’s point of view today, this is the law of capitalist development. It is like a growing baby who has a disease every once in a while, and the whole body needs to be repaired if it is ill. It also spreads everywhere, causing children everywhere to suffer together. Perhaps this is the only way to the so-called communism, and the human beings who live on this long and necessary way have to immerse their extremely small and short life in an era of mixed flavors. People today may have more conditions to find sweet happiness in these five flavors, and the group of workers and homeless people in the film may only get sweetness in fantasy, more with the coldness of the machine and the relationship with the sky. The haze, accompanied by the crowded and indifferent kind.
This is the modern era. Light and darkness are in the same body, civilization and barbarism coexist. The alienation of mankind has been vividly manifested.
Marx pointed out in the "Paris Manuscript" that alienation is a social phenomenon in which people's material and spiritual production and their products become alien forces, which in turn dominate people. Private ownership is the main source of alienation, and the immobilization of social division of labor is its ultimate source. In the activities of alienation, people's initiative is lost and they are enslaved by alien material or spiritual forces. As a result, people's personality cannot develop in an all-round way, but can only develop one-sidedly or even abnormally. In capitalist society, alienation has reached its most serious degree. Marx criticized the non-scientific alienation theory of predecessors and revealed the most typical alienation nature of capitalist society-alienated labor.
Chaplin always loves to make the audience cry with a smile. The beginning of the film is a montage shot, with the surge of a group of pigs and the surge of a group of people, and the audience is shot. The scenes from 70 years ago are still being staged over and over again today. Isn’t it the same for office workers in the city and migrant workers returning home during the festival? Isn't the crowd in Benjamin's writings also in this indifferent, rushed, and even numb demeanor? There is a lack of emotional communication between people. Workers are just a cooperative relationship between work procedures. When the gears are stopped, they do not know each other. Workers and capitalists are not only indifferent and can be described. Capitalists simply do not regard workers as human beings. From the moment they start the machine, the workers are under the supervision and manipulation of the capitalist, accelerating the speed of the machine over and over again, and compressing it little by little. They want to take up their rest time, even lunch time. The relationship between people is dependent on things, and a social network is connected through things. When this material disappears, the relationship is also broken. And where is the emotional collision between people? Where is the exchange of ideas? Everyone lives in his own iron house, longing for someone to walk into the house, but expelling out those who accidentally break into the house. The only touching thing in the film is the feelings between the worker and the heroine played by Chaplin. It is difficult for me to determine whether it is love or not, but it is not important. The important thing is that they make the audience feel warm and feel the existence of humanity that has not been alienated. In that era full of suffering, the two of them were struggling with each other, dreaming of a wealthy home, looking for a home that could shelter from the wind and rain, and supported each other to walk down. At the end of the film, the two escaped from the police, holding hands, smiling and walking towards the far end where there is no end in sight. Although Chaplin showed us the cruelty of so many times, in the end, he still did not obliterate the longing for beauty. This is also his insistence on the good faith of human nature. We also want to believe that there will be a real comedy ahead of them.
In addition to the alienation between people, other aspects of labor alienation are also fully reflected in the film. Workers are different from the products they produce and from the production process. Marx pointed out: "The more wealth a worker produces, the greater the power and quantity of his products, the poorer he is. The more commodities a worker creates, the more cheap he becomes. The value-added of the world of things is the same as the world of human In the film, workers are enslaved by the machine. If the machine does not stop, they cannot rest. Even if the machine stops, the worker is still repeating an action mechanically under the influence of inertia. The brain seems to be short-circuited, and the mind is in a trance. A machine that was supposed to be controlled by humans has become the master of humans. And the products they produce are not used by them. They just sell their labor as commodities in exchange for the little material needed to survive, and even this demand may be difficult to satisfy. The most sad and shocking thing is that the machine used to work and eat at the same time squeezed the freedom of human existence to the point where it is hard to breathe. Who made this machine? Is it also the workers themselves? Workers produce shackles to shackle themselves, and eventually die in shackles. In order to escape such an unspeakable life, Chaplin was willing to go to jail. Prisons were originally narrow and cramped places that bound people’s freedom, but the freedom of the modern era is not as good as prisons. The prison has food for nothing, and there is plenty of free time. In order to obtain all of this, you only need to follow the unified management of the prison, and the management of the prison does not seem to be much harsher than the management of the factory, or even easier.
This is the distortion of people and labor in the modern era. Labor should be a necessity for people's survival. People get the joy of life from labor and feel the essence of life. In the alienated labor force, everyone is afraid to avoid it. Escape, or even escape to prison, to get happiness.
It is worth noting that Chaplin seems to have had a happy "work" in the film, which may not be considered work for him. When he was looking after the clothing store, he happily paddled rollerblading; he sang and performed in the hotel. Seeing the happiness in his raised moustache and the joy trembling between his twisted waist, they all seem to show us the joy of the times he has enjoyed. Although this job is still squeezed by capitalists, it can do its best. He treats this work as art. In his artistic creation activities, he temporarily forgot all worries, close his eyes, and he can see a big stage and hear countless applause. In this case, art can still play its aesthetic role.
Lukács also analyzed this materialization phenomenon in "History and Class Consciousness", and emphasized the division of labor between workers, and human beings have lost their totality. He pointed out that the labor process is increasingly decomposed into some abstract and reasonable partial operations, the connection between the worker and the product as a whole is severed, and his work is reduced to a mechanically repeated specialized function. This division of labor also enters the "soul" of the whole person, combining their souls into a special system in a reasonable manner. In this way, both the mind and the objective labor of man have become a part of mechanization. The essence of man’s life does not exist as a human being, but only as a part of a mechanical system. He must obey this system that is born with him. Whether happy or unhappy. Isn't every worker in the factory in the film a part of this mechanical process? Don't stop, don't escape, otherwise you will face the fate of starving to death on the street. My mother used to be a spinner. She told me that once the spinning machine is turned on, it will keep running until the machine is scrapped. Therefore, workers have to take turns to work beside the machine, whether it is day or night. In today's era of highly developed industries, this kind of hard work is indeed becoming less and less, and is gradually being replaced by advanced machines. However, the division of labor has not disappeared, but has gradually intensified. There are more and more specialized technicians, and a complete product is completed by tens of thousands of people with the division of labor; the more experts there are, the fewer generalists. This may greatly improve the efficiency of production, which is conducive to the fine development of various industries. But in a lifetime of effort on a small leaf, the entire forest has been lost. But what will be the consequences of not seeing the complete product and not feeling the whole? If the local development is in the wrong direction, how can we know where to go?
Today, we have seen the modern era, and we are truly living in the modern era, and we are still pursuing modernity. But I really feel powerless to resist and powerless to break free. As Lukács said: "People find that this mechanical system is ready-made and does not depend on people to operate. Whether he wants it or not, he must obey its laws." Then we also learn from Chaplin, Look for artistic figures in work and life, and rush to unknown distances with a smile.
View more about Modern Times reviews
