Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times The Work of Life in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility

This book looks at Charlie Chaplin?s masterpiece, Modern Times (1936), through the lens of film aesthetics, structure, and post-modern perspective.

The naïve Tramp character of Modern Times is often seen as the embodiment of a revolutionary reaction to his age. However, this study of the film shows that it is not only difficult but also impossible to accept the long-established critical reception of Chaplin?s film and its characters in our own "Post-modern Times." Drawing from extensive research and bringing post-modern context to the film through a comparative analysis of Todd Phillips?s Joker (2019), the book introduces how exhilarating a comprehensive study of film can be for engaged viewers.

Illustrating that a detailed filmic reading of Modern Times can be a guide, or an extended case study, for analysing culture, this book will be of interest to students and teachers in film studies, literary studies, and the visual arts.

Preface: The Art of Seeing 1 Work 2 Life 3 A Comedian Sees the World Postscript: Meanwhile

Carl Peters is a scholar, curator, and author of bpNichol Comics (2002); textual vishyuns: image and text in the work of bill bissett (2011); and Studies in Description, the first annotated study of the entire text of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (2016).