Mike Leader's Ondaatje Post (Silent Comedy, Charlie Chaplin, and the Silent Immigrant Worker)

My extract is on pg 43 of the Picador edition. As it is pretty short, I’ll paste it here:

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‘The event that will light the way for immigration in North America is the talking picture. The silent film brings nothing but entertainment – a pie in the face, a fop being dragged by a bear out of a department store – all events governed by fate and timing, not language and argument. The tramp never changes the opinion of the policeman. The truncheon swings, the tramp scuttles through a corner window and disturbs the fat lady’s ablutions. These comedies are nightmares. The audience emits horrified laughter as Chaplin, blindfolded, rollerskates near the edge of the unbalconied mezzanine. No one shouts to warn him. He cannot talk or listen. North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency.’

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I think this extract manages to pack a lot in; it manages to discuss cinematic history, social history, representational history, while still grounding the piece in the context of Temelcoff and the community’s ‘silenced stories’. It is also not without certain elements that can be incredibly overanalysed and blown up to absurd critical proportions. Please bear with me.

The shift from silent to sound pictures is very important in terms of the history of Hollywood and the history of American identity and Cultural influence. Before Hollywood made the first feature length sound film (The Jazz Singer, 1927), there was a greater equality in the international movie business, especially between the USA and major European countries (Germany, France). However, by 1931, Hollywood ‘commanded about 70 percent of screen time around the globe’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talkie#Commerce); it is around here that some say ‘the Golden Age of Hollywood’ begins, in which the studio system became hugely successful. One of the major ramifications of this was a great international popularisation (and romanticisation) of American culture and identity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States#Golden_Age_of_Hollywood). I do like how Ondaatje uses the frame of narration (‘This is a story a young girl gathers during the early hours of the morning’ – p.1), which otherwise rarely manifests, in order to give this general and retrospective social comment (we’re still stuck in a 1914-1919 timeframe, talkies were 1927).

But I’m getting sidetracked. I’m more interested in the symbol of the SILENT film.

One of the main issues behind In the Skin of a Lion is presenting ‘unspoken and unwritten stories – the “unhistorical” stories’ (quote from Hutcheon interview with Ondaatje, 198). The idea of the ‘unspoken’ and the ‘voiceless’ immigrant culture links with the silent film. Indeed, within the confines of the film, The Tramp is denied a voice with which to define himself or challenge oppressive forces (‘the tramp never changes the opinion of the policeman’). There is no discourse or rounded representation here. The silent comedy is ‘nothing but entertainment’. I feel the need to talk about Charlie Chaplin here. Chaplin was an immigrant (although he didn’t have the language barrier, and didn’t suffer poverty in America), and his films on a certain level do present both class and immigration issues. One short of his, The Immigrant (1917) has a provocative scene titled ‘Arrival in the Land of Liberty’, in which a boatload of immigrants, on their arrival in New York, see the Statue of Liberty, only to be immediately tied together and manhandled by immigration officers. The disparateness between the ideology/iconography of America and the treatment of immigrant workers is clear – and when this is considered, I think you can see a link between this veiled frustration and the ‘puppet show’ (around p116) put on by the immigrant community in ItSoaL. (I find it terrible that this short has been deleted from youtube for ‘violating fair usage’, when it’s in the public domain; it’s up here - http://www.archive.org/details/CC_1917_06_17_TheImmigrant).

Ondaatje also references the blindfolded roller-skating scene from Modern Times (1936), in which The Tramp struggles with the early 20th century working world. I’m not sure this fits with Ondaatje’s more celebratory approach to employment, but the reference is there. The roller-skating scene, however, is as The Tramp works as a Nightwatchman in a department store (clip - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ux9SRkHuZy4).

I also think that the Tramp is a social mimic, and there is a link to be drawn with how The Tramp and his lady-friend (Paulette Goddard) ‘play rich’ or ‘play house’ in the various departments of the store and the idea of assimilation into dominant culture (tenuous, I know). The Tramp often mimics a Gentleman (with comic effect), but the need for (and attraction of) mimicry is also shown in the English language lessons in Skin of a Lion, in which all the learners ‘[claim] their names were Ernest’ (p.138-9). Heble in particular finds the mimicry a ‘denial of space’ and an assimilation (p238).

(There’s also a point that, without the context, ‘voice’ and character given by Ondaatje, Temelcoff’s daredevil stunts at work could simply seem like a Harold Lloyd or Chaplin skit… Harold Lloyd in Safety Last! (1923) - http://www.jerrypippin.com/Harold%20Lloyd%20Help.jpg)

Wow, this is long. Enough about Chaplin.

I find the last sentence particularly interesting: ‘North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency.’ This could be linked to the notions of bloodline and the clann in No Great Mischief, as well as the celebration of labour.

Final point:

I think the extract shows a duality in the notion of language:

LANGUAGE as FREEDOM – as in ‘a voice’, ‘an argument’, discourse. (although, is this only given retrospectively, through post-colonial, contemporary literature, through reassessment of cultural artefacts and personal history?)

or

LANGUAGE as EXCLUSION – majority language inhibiting/silencing immigrants, marginalising their voices, assimilating their identities and cultures (made into cultural archetypes such as The Tramp, or going beyond Skin of a Lion, the ‘imaginary Indian’ in GGRR).