Money and Machinery or People?

As previously stated by many fellow classmates, I too had never seen anything by Charlie Chaplin until watching Modern Times in this class. I found Chaplin hilarious but also very intriguing. “Stupid humor” isn’t really my cup of tea, so Chaplin’s well thought out and politically expressive humor suited my taste. I found the first segment of Modern Times to be the funnier of the two that we’ve seen in class so far. The fact that money and the machine are cared for more than the person is so true that it’s funny. But it also raises the more serious question, “How did America become like that?” I guess America was kind of built on the values of getting ahead instead of caring about people though. When Christopher Columbus first discovered America he lied to people in order to get them to come over and tried to get rid the Native Americans so that he could have the land for himself. We did it once again with the slavery period and now we do it with our factory workers. I’m not saying that Americans don’t care about people but I think as Chaplin’s work shows, we certainly don’t care enough for people. Chaplinesque hints at this mentality with the stanza saying,

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

I feel that the word ‘can’ reflects that America does not typically still “love the world” but states we do have the ability. Crane speaks in metaphors about the same thing that Chaplin pokes fun of in his silent film – America can create the opportunity to care about people but so often we choose to care about making money through our machines and work than we do about people. The famished kitten on the step seems to represent poor or poverty stricken people that people can take in to their homes to help or factories can take in to give jobs to in a rescue from “the fury of the street” –the actual streets to homeless people or the horrible job market for the unemployed. "The game”, referred to in line one of the last stanza in Chaplinesque refers to Charlie Chaplin’s humor of the world around us – it “enforces smirks.” Carter also refers back to the kitten that he spoke of earlier in the poem saying,

And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

Crane seems to be saying that Chaplin’s work (the ‘sound of gaiety and quest’) has forced people to hear ‘the kitten in the wilderness’ – or to recognize the people around them instead of keeping their focus only on money and machinery. The kitten in the wilderness could also be more specifically referring to the girl in the second section of Modern Times that we saw. She becomes an orphan in “the wilderness” of the city. Chaplin’s character represents the part of America that sees past the love of money and machinery and cares for this girl who is “famished… on the step.” Crane and Chaplin read together give a full view of the social issues – the humor that can be found within them and also the severity of them. Chaplin does a great job with getting people’s attention through his jokes and then giving his viewers something to talk about after they have finished watching the movie. So think about it, are you going to be the lover of money and machinery, or the lover of people?