Enter the Tramp

After seeing the big boss who is running this whole show, we then see the Tramp, the person who is subjected to this modern machine, appearing as a factory worker. Remember we said part of the way that the Tramp works is in each film, the Tramp appears in a new setting and is subjected to the environment that he's working in. Here, he is subjected to this mechanized environment. And what happens to him, in a sense, is what Chaplin believes is happening to mankind in industrial modernity.

What is the Tramp up to in the next clip? Like the others, the Tramp is a slave to the work day clock, the same clock that Chaplin showed us in the framing montage in the beginning. The speed of the machine dominates over him. And what we see here is something that Chaplin had read about, which is the deleterious nature of repetitive work, the kind of work associated with industrialism. It's shown here to have a direct impact on his body.

Chaplin is commenting not only on the nature of industrial work, but on how the Tramp, as the embodiment of the human spirit, is incompatible with the demands of modern industrial work. Not only do we look at what is done to him as an individual or the body, but also what it does to social relations, both the inner and inter-relations between the different characters.

Video 2.16: Assembly line scene from Modern Times.

In this clip, we have all the same elements of the sound being used for impact without having the voice. But, still the main information is conveyed through the pantomime. Here we have the human versus the machine. If the Tramp is meant to embody something profoundly human, we see that his human needs are at odds with the assembly line production. For instance, when we see in that scene, the need to itch, or swat a bee, or stretch, which we might say are all supremely human needs, clash with the need for increased speed and production. When he does pause, he literally halts production and brings on punishment from management. Management here seems to be only about surveilling others work, instead of working themselves.

The rest of the men here are set at odds with one another. They have all been trained to submit to the machine rhythms. And they resent the Tramp, in a sense, for his humanity.

Chaplin is showing us that men are set at odds with one another by the bosses who subject them to this type of alienating form of labor. The Tramp immediately then, after this scene, shows the physical signs of this struggle against the machine.