Paper Summary:

This paper examines the way that Chaplin was treated by U.S. officials and the American public as a result of his political views, focusing on his work in 'City Lights", "Modern Times", and "The Great Dictator".

From the Paper:

"Chaplin was an essential element in the life of the early 20th-century cinema. The earliest films shown in the United States (where so many of all early films were shown) were meant to be seen and laughed at by audiences made up of immigrants speaking a dozen different languages and with as many different cultural traditions of what was funny and what was sacrosanct. Chaplin at least initially created a comfortable place for himself in this world by using the universal language of slapstick to communicate with his audiences. As Chaplin (as well as other early comic actors in the then-new medium of film) used it, slapstick provided a common visual vocabulary of humor for these immigrant American audiences. It reminded them of their common humanity and in doing so both gave them something to laugh at and reminded them that, after all, they were not so very different from each other. Politics serves to divide different groups of people from each other, and this was not the intent of the early silent movies. The content of these early films was essentially apolitical, meant to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and meant more as an exploration of the medium of film than anything else."

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