The UK does not share
America's view of communism as we see it as just another political system, and
we know by bitter recent history that the average Russian citizen is no
different from you or me... The Russian Bear was our true allies during WW2, and
we in the UK owe them a great debt for the suffering they endured... What
follows here are not my words... but an article well written that explains the
position in America at that time.. I have many more of these that Lola has
supplied and you will see as you read through them that American democracy is a
very thin veneer that can be so easily taken away If they can do
this to that famous Icon...Ordinary people are at risk....
Beginning as early as the 1920s, rumors that Charles Chaplin was a
Communistor Bolshevik sympathizer were shrugged off at first and, in the
character of Charlie, even satirized. The power of the icon was such that,
even though Chaplin was fairly liberal, the types of witch-hunters who would
destroy all but themselves were unable to squelch his fame or destroy him
personally. It was upon attempting to fuse a new unity between his icon and
his rather disparate self, in The Great Dictator, that Chaplin opened a rift
between himself and his audience. After that film, by removing the Tramp
(or, finally, barber) as the most important image of himself, Chaplin left
bigots easily able to twist misrememberings of his pleas for the common man
into anti-American attitudes, his pledges of allegiance to
international citizenship into false pro-foreigner zealotry. I will claim
that it was only when the power of the icon faded that such character-based
attacks were made possible.
"No,"
he replied.
"Then why are you going to Europe?"
"For a
holiday."
"What holiday?"
At this point he changed the
subject, doing it sooner the second time: "I am an artist, not a politician."
The same excuse was used in 1927: when Chaplin was pursued for tax evasion,
he pointed out that no political motive was involved (although a political
cartoon parodied the situation anyway).
A few years
later Chaplin produced Modern Times (1936), which if one was really searching
for socialism, one might interpret as an assault on capitalism. Personally,
the present author shares the view of critics he has read in finding it more
a comment on the machine age in general; Chaplin's character has been
described as anarchic (1985: 459), but not in a realistic, politically aware
sense. Charlie's environment, which forces Charlie to live, breathe, and even
eat machines (an automatic feeder forces grommets down his throat) with him
completely out of control, is less realistic than an example in which he
might have retained some control. How revolutionary Chaplin might have been
at the time can be gauged by his employ of Alf Reeves to work on the ensuing
Great Dictator; Reeves suspected that because "I was a declared Communist . .
. my background and political preoccupations would keep me from selling him
out for money" (1985: 488). In general, Chaplin seemed willing to tolerate
Communism, but only because he supported humanity in general. "The Communists
are no different from anyone else," he said in 1942; "when [the Communist
mother] receives the tragic news that her sons will not return, she weeps as
other mothers weep" (1985: 515). One can only applaud such an honest
statement.
Trouble started in earnest when Chaplin was producing Monsieur
Verdoux (1947) a few years later, a film which raised censorial ire for
having its main character (not the icon Charlie, in this case) liken his
murder of rich widows to "the authorized operation of murder as a business by
the state, in the form of war" (Robinson 1984: 141). False accusations of
impregnation had been fired at Chaplin by Joan Barry a few years before; as
Hitler had it, if you tell enough lies, people are bound to believe at least
a few of them, and now the ill-will generated by that event (and related
ones), together with the lingering fascist attitudes that had caused
opposition to The Great Dictator, mixed with the Verdoux outrage and led to
Chaplin's first questionings for un-American activities. It was, as Michel de
Certeau would have it, a classic power relationship of strong and weak,
exploiter and exploited (De Certeau 1984: 34).
In these situations,
Chaplin found that anything he said could be used against him, much as in the
casual 1921 interview quoted above. His statements that he had never
"belonged to any political party" and never voted simply told jingoistic
James W. Fay (of the Catholic War Veterans) that, if not necessarily the
enemy, he certainly wasn't "patriotic" enough. Fay even attacked Chaplin for
having sold American war bonds a few years earlier rather than having fought
for Britain (where he was still officially a citizen) on European soil.
Finally, a specific enemy was identified whom, it was suspected, Chaplin was
involved in suspicious activity with: he had, it was said, attempted to
prevent the deportation of Hanns Eisler (a friend of Chaplin's who was indeed
a communist). De Certeau points out how in politics, "each party dervices its
credibility from what it believes and makes others believe about its . . .
adversary" (1984: 188): Fay and others gained power, De Certeau might say, by
ravaging "the enemy," and when there wasn't one, forcing an innocent (due to
his social, not political, acts of less-than-innocence) to fit the mold. It
would not have been surprising had Fay brought in as evidence a scene from
Modern Times in which Charlie sees a red flag fall from a truck and, by
attempting to carry it back to its owner, inadvertantly causes a labor union
to fall into step behind him!
Where, indeed, was Charlie as this
hubbub began to break out? After The Great Dictator, the Tramp had been
retired for some years, and it had not worked well on Chaplin's public image
to have the icon's most potent era behind. Chaplin by himself was never an
icon, never sacrosanct unless the lucky star he had devised was in his heaven
as well. The 1947 questioners -- and Red-baiting film journalist Hedda Hopper
-- suggested what route Chaplin might have taken to get out of the mess had
he been less an experimenter in film: "Was he going to make more pictures
with the tramp," the group asked, "or more pictures with a message?" One can
feel the implicity threat of the last statement, blasting through the shield
that a powerful icon once afforded. And in 1953, while on a trip to Europe to
join the premiere celebrations of his latest film Limelight, Chaplin was
officially barred from re-entry to the United States. Referring to "powerful
reactionary groups," Chaplin clearly understood what had gone on, but it
was unfortunately too late to do anything about it (Cotes and Niklaus 1965:
83).
When the country got over its Red Scare and, decades later,
Chaplin returned to the United States to receive a special Academy Award, it
was once again the ineffable power of the icon that enabled him to return:
while jingoism fell in upon itself over the Vietnam War, the accusations
against Chaplin softened, poor receptions accorded his last films (released
as imports here) vanished along with recollections of those films, and,
once again, the famous Tramp stood out as the Chaplin everyone
remembered, everyone knew. It is as if a single figure stood out, waiting for
the tumult and the shouting to die so that he could make himself known again
with his antics, his thoughts, and his humanism. Waiting for years. Icons are
like
that.
-- David
Gerstein