Modern Times

          There are so many moments in this movie that are humorous as well as timeless.  There are a few that stood out to me more than others did.  The reason these examples made an impression on me were for various reasons. Those reasons were mainly as follows: they were funny, I remembered them from other comedic works, and or, they related to everyday life even to the day; which is impressive for a movie that was made in 1936.

          The movie starts out with an early scene that is very similar to one of the more memorable episodes in the TV show “I Love Lucy”.  A lot of people will remember Lucy shoving chocolates into her mouth because she could not package and wrap them quickly enough.  When watching this opening scene, one cannot help but be taken to this moment in “I Love Lucy” and think that that joke was taken from this movie.  This helps to prove the timelessness of the joke, and the genius of Chaplin’s comedic mind.  There are a lot of other jokes that are fairly common in comedies of the present.  It seems that Chaplin was able to capture what was known to be funny and translate it into film where it is still funny even to the day. 

          The “feeding machine” was an area of particular interest to me.  I found this interesting because it was of the idea of capitalism and the willingness to do anything to make more money and stay ahead of the competitors is still very much alive today and Chaplin seems to have captured this as early as 1936.  Chaplin was able to capture the essence of comedy in the human condition that is very much present in the world today.  Chaplin of course take it a step further by showing everything that could have possibly gone wrong with the machine.  His misery while being strapped into the machine is a hilarious portion of the movie, as we seem to enjoy other peoples’ misery and discomfort (along with slapstick comedy).

         Throughout this movie, Chaplin was able to find the humor in every day life.  This was especially apparent in the scene where Chaplin and the preacher’s wife are sitting together and their stomachs keep making the gurgling noise.  This is something that all people can relate to, everyone can point to a time where this (or something similar has happened to them.  It is the ability to relate to this situation that makes this kind of humor so appealing and humorous to people. 

           Things that were funny in 1936 are still funny today; comedy and humor appear to be timeless.  The human mind has changed very little when it comes to comedy.  We still like the same things, we still enjoy discomfort (so long as it is not our own), we still like things that we can relate to, and of course, we still love to laugh. Chaplin was able to capture just exactly what humor was in 1936 and it still holds true for what humor is today in 2013.