Concrete Irrationality 89

Chaplin explores the possibilities for dialogue with the audience and with objects. He uses his dialogue with the audience to humanise the Tramp as he refers to himself as other in the Tramp’s effort to regain dignity. Chaplin does not relate to objects, but to himself as other through the dialogue that connects himself with objects. In this section, I will compare and contrast Chaplin’s method with Buster Keaton and his style of comedy and transformative use of objects. I will argue that Chaplin’s work with objects is more of a dialogue than the sentimentality that Keaton proponents use to contrast the two performers. While Buster Keaton is an exceptionally dextrous actor who takes bold risks in performing all of his own stunts, attention focuses on his character’s overcoming of obstacles or making an escape, and not on his gait. Keaton’s footwork is remarkable in silent films such as Cops (Keaton/Cline 1922), in which his

character manages to outrun dozens of policemen with great velocity and intensity. Though Keaton’s gait style and body movements reflect precision and technical skill, his communication style is more a restrained questioning than Chaplin’s striving for dignity. Spanish surrealists in the 1920s, admirers of slapstick comedy in general, preferred Keaton to Chaplin for Keaton’s stoicism and lack of sentimentality (Bohn 2005:126).87 Robert Knopf describes Keaton as a comedian who “questions the logic of the world,” challenging “logic, reason and causality” (Knopf 1999:17;112). Keaton tends to challenge large issues such as gravity, while seesawing on a ladder three stories above the street in Cops or weather, as he stands leaning against gale-force winds in Steamboat Bill Jr. (Riesener 1928). Keaton, a comedian with a deadpan, serious face – “...I’ve got a blank pan” (Keaton 1920)88 – questions the impossible situations he finds himself in. Why gravity, he asks. Why a cyclone? Why a speeding locomotive? While Keaton questions the logic of things, Chaplin exchanges polite banter with animate and inanimate objects. Yet, if Keaton were to pause for a moment to adjust his own hat, he would risk letting the logic, reason and causality of things get the better of him.89

87 _{Especially Federico Garcia Lorca, who wrote a play, ‘El paseo de Buster} Keaton’ or ‘Buster Keaton Goes for a Ride’ in 1925, and published in 1928 in

Gallo (Bohn 2005:126-127).

88 _{Kingsley, Grace, 1920. “Buster Bursts Into Stardom,” In: Los Angeles Times,} May 16, 1920. http://www.public.asu.edu/~bruce/Taylor68.txt

89 _{Not until the 1930s, would the talkies become a force that even Keaton could} not stare down. Keaton had huge success as an actor and director in the 1910s and 1920s, but once talkies were instilled, he, like many others, lost his position in Hollywood. Keaton’s downfall came when he signed a contract with MGM, which severely limited his creative freedom and drove him to alcohol abuse.

Salvador Dalí refers to Keaton’s use of objects in his slapstick as ‘concrete irrationality’ (Knopf 1999:112). Keaton takes objects from everyday reality and transforms their inherent features and functions. By using a clip-on tie as a moustache and a waterwheel as a treadmill, he challenges the audience’s expectations of how an object is supposed to function in the real world (Knopf 1999:128). In contrast to Keaton, Chaplin appropriates objects as his partners in dialogue. This dialogue is a key ingredient in Chaplin’s blend of pathos and comedy that Dalí disapproved of as overt sentimentality.

One such scene is the “Oceana Roll,” also known as “the dance of the dinner rolls” in The Gold Rush (Chaplin 1925). The scene takes place on New Years Eve. Chaplin’s character has prepared a special meal for invited dinner guests, including love interest Georgia. His guests, however, have forgotten about the invitation, leaving the Tramp crestfallen and alone at the dinner table. While seated there, he imagines that he is entertaining his guests and they are dancing. He enacts his fantasy dance using two forks stabbed into two bread rolls. Manipulating the forks with his hands, the bread rolls approximate his oversized clown shoes and the forks function as legs. Though his hand movements are simple, Chaplin’s dreamy facial expressions animate the bread rolls’ simple ‘steps’. He does not merely play with his food; by appropriating objects from the dinner table through which he converses, he makes his daydream listened to via a voice otherwise conveyed through his feet.

Noël Carroll contrasts his analysis of The General (Bruckman/Keaton 1926) with

The Gold Rush (Carroll 2007:124-135). Carroll argues while Keaton alters the

Tramp sees the world differently, and thus he transforms objects into other things (Carroll 2007:56). Carroll draws a connection between this original thinking and what he sees as the Tramp’s alienation from society. “The Tramp seems an outcast partly because he thinks differently” (Carroll 2007:133). Carroll classifies a type of gag in which the Tramp uses objects in a way society typically does not use them. The Tramp uses objects differently because he invents new uses for them. For example, in The Gold Rush, the Tramp uses his cane to lift up his trousers, which start to fall down as he dances with Georgia. By thinking differently, he does not adapt to his environment but is alienated, becoming “an apt object of pathos” (Carroll 2007:133-134).

Carroll contrasts this theme of alienation that he sees in Chaplin with Keaton’s theme of concreteness as I discussed in the above example of his changing the function of a clip-on tie to a moustache. Chaplin, Carroll feels, does not attempt to make the world intelligible or concrete. The audience’s experience is not intelligibility, but pathos for this outcast from society who cannot think in a conventional way (Carroll 2007:131).

I do not agree that the Tramp is an alienated individual because he thinks differently. If he does see the possibilities in objects such as forks and rolls, he appropriates these objects and their possibilities as his partners in dialogue to humanise the Tramp rather than alienate him. His dialogue with the audience via these objects expresses his referring to himself as other. He relates not to an object, but to himself as other. This dialogue communicates the Tramp’s efforts to regain dignity, which works to humanise the Tramp.