Part 19
Most of the great works of art have reference to our time only indirectly--as they and we are related to eternity. And we require arts which specifically refer to our moment, which create the image of our lives. There are some twenty workers in literature, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and the dance who are doing this for us now--and doing it in such a manner as to associate our modern existence with that extraordinary march of mankind which we like to call the progress of humanity. It is not enough. In addition to them--in addition, not in place of them--we must have arts which, we feel, are for ourselves alone, which no one before us could have cared for so much, which no one after us will wholly understand. The picture by Picasso could have been admired by an unprejudiced critic a thousand years ago, and will be a thousand years hence. We require, for nourishment, something fresh and transient. It is this which makes jazz so much the characteristic art of our time and Jolson a more typical figure than Chaplin, who also is outside of time. There must be ephemera. Let us see to it that they are good.
The characteristic of the great arts is high seriousness--it occurs in Mozart and Aristophanes and Rabelais and Molière as surely as in Æschylus and Racine. And the essence of the minor arts is high levity which existed in the _commedia dell’arte_ and exists in Chaplin, which you find in the music of Berlin and Kern (not “funny” in any case). It is a question of exaltation, of carrying a given theme to the “high” point. The reference in a great work of art is to something more profound; and no trivial theme has ever required, or had, or been able to bear, a high seriousness in treatment. Avoiding the question of creative genius, what impresses us in a work of art is the intensity or the pressure with which the theme, emotion, sentiment, even “idea” is rendered. Assuming that a blow from the butt of a revolver is not exactly artistic presentation, that “effectiveness” is not the only criterion, we have the beginning of a criticism of æsthetics. We know that the method does count, the creativeness, the construction, the form. We know also that while the part of humanity which is fully civilized will always care for high seriousness, it will be quick to appreciate the high levity of the minor arts. There is no conflict. The battle is only against solemnity which is not high, against ill-rendered profundity, against the shoddy and the dull.
I have allowed myself to catalogue my preferences; it is possible to set the basis of them down in impersonal terms, in propositions:
That there is no opposition between the great and the lively arts.
That both are opposed in the spirit to the middle or bogus arts.
That the bogus arts are easier to appreciate, appeal to low and mixed emotions, and jeopardize the purity of both the great and the minor arts.
That except in a period when the major arts flourish with exceptional vigour, the lively arts are likely to be the most intelligent phenomena of their day.
That the lively arts as they exist in America to-day are entertaining, interesting, and important.
That with a few exceptions these same arts are more interesting to the adult cultivated intelligence than most of the things which pass for art in cultured society.
That there exists a “genteel tradition” about the arts which has prevented any just appreciation of the popular arts, and that these have therefore missed the corrective criticism given to the serious arts, receiving instead only abuse.
That therefore the pretentious intellectual is as much responsible as any one for what is actually absurd and vulgar in the lively arts.
That the simple practitioners and simple admirers of the lively arts being uncorrupted by the bogus preserve a sure instinct for what is artistic in America.
And now a detour around two of the most disagreeable words in the language: high- and low-brow. Pretense about these words and what they signify makes all understanding of the lively arts impossible. The discomfort and envy which make these words vague, ambiguous, and contemptuous need not concern us; for they represent a real distinction, two separate ways of apprehending the world, as if it were palpable to one and visible to the other. In connexion with the lively arts the distinction is clear and involves the third division, for the lively arts are created and admired chiefly by the class known as lowbrows, are patronized and, to an extent enjoyed, by the highbrows; and are treated as impostors and as contemptible vulgarisms by the middle class, those who invariably are ill at ease in the presence of great art until it has been approved by authority, those whom Dante rejected from heaven and hell alike, who blow neither hot nor cold, the Laodiceans.
Be damned to these last and all their tribe! There exists a small number of people who care intensely for the major and the minor arts and they are always being accused of “not caring really” for the lively ones, of pretending to care, or of running away from “the ancient wisdom and austere control” of Greek architecture or from the intense passion of Dante, the purity of Bach, the great totality of what humankind has created in art. It is claimed, and here the professional lowbrow agrees, that these others _cannot_ care for the lively arts, unless they romanticize them and find things in them which aren’t there--at least not for the “real” patrons of those arts--those who observe them without thinking about them.
Aren’t they there, these secondary qualities? I take for example a sport instead of an art. Nothing about baseball interests me except the newspaper reports of the games, so I speak without prejudice. In the days of Babe Ruth I took the sun in the bleachers once and saw that heavy hitter do exactly what he had to do on his first appearance for the day--a straight, businesslike home run, much appreciated by the crowd, as any expert well-timed job is appreciated by Americans. The game that day went against the Yankees; they were two runs behind in the ninth, and with two men on base Ruth came up again. Again he hit a home run. And the crowd roaring its joy in victory exhaled two sighs, for the dramatic quality of the blow and for the lovely spiralling of the ball in its flight over the fence. “A beauty--a beauty”--you heard the expression a thousand times--and “He knows _when_ to hit them.” They would have roared, too, if he had hit a single, which, muffed, would have brought in the winning run. But they would not have said, “a beauty”--and as far as I am concerned that is proof enough that the appreciation of æsthetic qualities is universal. It isn’t, thank Heaven, always put into words.
Take as another instance the fame of the Rath Brothers. They are acrobats who do difficult things, but there are others doing much the same sort of thing without approaching the _réclame_ of these two. Their appearance of ease is a delight; there is no strain, no swelling muscles, no visible exploitation of strength. The Hellenic philosopher who held that the arrow shot from the bow is never in motion, but at rest from second to second at the succeeding points of its trajectory, might have seen some ancient forerunners of these athletes, for each of their movements seems at once a sculptured rest and a passage into another pose. And that is precisely the quality which vaudeville and revue audiences care for, and in a groping way recognize as distinctive and fine. They may think that Greeks have been candy-vendors since the beginning of time and that Marathon was a racecourse; but they _know_ what they like.
I do not see, therefore, that recognition of these aspects of the gay arts can in any way detract from actual enjoyment--on the contrary it adds. You see Charlie about to throw a mop; the boss enters; without breaking the line of his movement Charlie swoops to the floor and begins to scrub. The first, the essential thing, is the fun in the dramatic turn; but what makes it funny is that there is no jerk, no break in the line--the two things are so interwoven that you cannot separate them. And if anyone were actually entirely unconscious of the line, the fun would be lost; it would be Ham and Bud, not Charlie, for such a spectator. The question is only to what degree one can be conscious of it--for I have known intellectuals who so reduced Charlie to angles that the angles no longer made them laugh. They have done the same with Massine and Nijinsky; they have followed the score so closely that they haven’t heard the music and they correspond exactly to the man who bets on the game and doesn’t see the play.
The life of the mind is supposed to be a terrible burden, ruining all the pleasures of the senses. This idea is carefully supported by “mental workers” (as they call themselves) and by the brainless. The truth is, of course, that when the mind isn’t afflicted by a desire to be superior, it does nothing but multiply all the pleasures, and the intelligent spectator, in all conscience, feels and experiences more than the dull one. To such a spectator the lively arts have a validity of their own. He cares for them for themselves, and their relation to the other arts does not matter. It is only because the place of the common arts in decent society is always being called into question that the answer needs to be given. I do not suppose that my answer is final; but I feel sure that it must be given, as mine is, from the outside.[31]
It happens that what we call folk music, folk dance, and the folk arts in general have only a precarious existence among us; the “reasons” are fairly obvious. And the popular substitutes for these arts are so much under our eyes and in our ears that we fail to recognize them as decent contributions to the richness and intensity of our lives. The result, strange as it may appear to devotees of culture, is that our major arts suffer. The poets, painters, composers who withdraw equally from the main stream of European tradition and from the untraditional natural expressions of America, have no sources of strength, no material to work with, no background against which they can see their shadows; they feel themselves disinherited of the future as well as the past.
At the same time the contempt we have for the lively arts hurts them as much as it hurts us. We have all heard of the “great artist of the speaking stage” who will not lower himself by appearing on the screen; as familiar is the vaudevillian who will call himself an artist and has hankerings for the legit; we have seen good dancers become bad actors, good black-face comedians develop alarming tendencies toward singing sentimental ballads in whisky-tenor voices, good comic-strip artists beginning to do bad book illustrations. The “step upward” is never in the direction of superior work, but toward a more rarefied acclaim. They are like a notable novelist who has for years tried unsuccessfully to write a failure, because he has only one standard of artistic success: popularity--but in reverse.
As these artists suffer under opprobrium and try to avoid it by touching the field of the _faux bon_, their work becomes more and more refined and genteel. The broadness, rough play, vitality, diminish gradually until a sort of Drama League seriousness and church-sociable good form are both satisfied. And all the more’s the pity, for the thinning out of our lives goes on from day to day and these lively arts are the only things which can keep us hard and robust and gay. In America, where there is no recognized upper class to please, no official academic requirements to meet, the one tradition of gentility is as lethal as all the conventions of European society, and unlike those of Europe our tradition provides no nourishment for the artist. It is negative all the way through.
In spite of gentility the lively arts have held to something a little richer and gayer than the polite ones. They haven’t dared to be frank, for a spurious sense of decency is backed by the police, and this limitation has hurt them; but it has made them sharp and clever by forcing their wit into deeper channels. There still exists a broadness in slap-stick comedy and in burlesque, and once in a while vast figures of Rabelaisian comedy occur. For the most part the lively arts are inhibited by the necessity to provide “nice clean fun for the whole family”--a regrettable, but inevitable penalty for their universal appeal. For myself, I should like to see a touch more of grossness and of license in these arts; it would be a sign that the blood hadn’t gone altogether pale, and that we can still roar cheerfully at dirty jokes, when they are funny.
What Europeans feel about American art is exactly the opposite of what they feel about American life. Our life is energetic, varied, constantly changing; our art is imitative, anæmic (exceptions in both cases being assumed). The explanation is that few Europeans see our lively arts, which are almost secret to us, like the mysteries of a cult. Here the energy of America does break out and finds artistic expression for itself. Here a wholly unrealistic, imaginative presentation of the way we think and feel is accomplished. No single artist has yet been great enough to do the whole thing--but together the minor artists of America have created the American art. And if we could for a moment stop wanting our artistic expression to be _necessarily_ in the great arts--it will be that in time--we should gain infinitely.
Because, in the first place, the lively arts have never had criticism. The box-office is gross; it detects no errors, nor does it sufficiently encourage improvement. Nor does abuse help. There is good professional criticism in journals like _Variety_, _The Billboard_, and the moving-picture magazines--some of them. But the lively arts can bear the same continuous criticism which we give to the major, and if the criticism itself isn’t bogus there is no reason why these arts should become self-conscious in any pejorative sense. In the second place the lively arts which require little intellectual effort will more rapidly destroy the bogus than the major arts ever can. The close intimacy between high seriousness and high levity, the thing that brings together the extremes touching at the points of honesty and simplicity and intensity--will act like the convergence of two armies to squeeze out the bogus. And the moment we recognize in the lively arts our actual form of expression, we will derive from them the same satisfaction which people have always derived from an art which was relevant to their existence. The nature of that satisfaction is not easily described. One thing we know of it--that it is pure. And in the extraordinarily confused and chaotic world we live in we are becoming accustomed to demand one thing, if nothing else--that the elements presented to us however they are later confounded with others, shall be of the highest degree in their kind, of an impeccable purity.
_Appendices_
APPENDIX TO “I AM HERE TO-DAY”
“The egregious merit of Chaplin,” says T. S. Eliot, “is that he has escaped in his own way from the realism of the cinema and invented a _rhythm_. Of course the unexplored opportunities of the cinema for eluding realism must be very great.”
It amused me once, after seeing _The Pawnshop_, to write down exactly what had happened. Later I checked up the list, and I print it here. I believe that Chaplin is so great on the screen, his effect so complete, that few people are aware, afterward, of how much he has done. Nor can they be aware of how much of Chaplin’s work is “in his own way”--even when he does something which another could have done he adds to it a touch of his own. I do not pretend that the following analysis is funny; it may be useful:
Charlot enters the pawnshop; it is evident that he is late. He compares his watch with the calendar pad hanging on the wall, and hastily begins to make up for lost time by entering the back room and going busily to work. He takes a duster out of a valise and meticulously dusts his walking-stick. Then proceeding to other objects, he fills the room with clouds of dust, and when he begins to dust the electric fan, looking at something else, the feathers are blown all over the room. He turns and sees the plucked butt of the duster--and carefully puts it away for to-morrow.
With the other assistant he takes a ladder and a bucket of water and goes out to polish the three balls and the shop sign. After some horseplay he rises to the top of the ladder and reaches over to polish the sign; the ladder sways, teeters, with Charlot on top of it. A policeman down the street looks aghast, and sways sympathetically with the ladder. Yet struggling to keep his balance, Charlot is intent on his work, and every time the ladder brings him near the sign he dabs frantically at it until he falls.
A quarrel with his fellow-worker follows. The man is caught between the rungs of the ladder, his arms imprisoned. Charlot calls a boy over to hold the other end of the ladder and begins a boxing match. Although his adversary is incapable of moving his arms, Charlot sidesteps, feints, and guards, leaping nimbly away from imaginary blows. The policeman interferes and both assistants run into the shop. By a toss of a coin Charlot is compelled to go back to fetch the bucket. He tiptoes behind the policeman, snatches the bucket, and with a wide swing and a swirling motion evades the policeman and returns. He is then caught by the boss in another fight and is discharged.
He makes a tragic appeal to be reinstated. He says he has eleven children, so high, and so high, and so high--until the fourth one is about a foot taller than himself. The boss relents only as Charlot’s stricken figure is at the door. As he is pardoned, Charlot leaps upon the old boss, twining his legs around his abdomen; he is thrown off and surreptitiously kisses the old man’s hand. He goes into the kitchen to help the daughter and passes dishes through the clothes wringer to dry them--passes a cup twice, as it seems not to be dry the first time. Then his hands. The jealous assistant provokes a fight; Charlot has a handful of dough and is about to throw it when the boss appears. With the same motion Charlot flings the dough into the wringer, passes it through as a pie crust, seizes a pie plate, trims the crust over it, and goes out to work.
At the pawnshop counter pass a variety of human beings. Charlot is taken in by a sob story about a wedding ring; he tries to test the genuineness of goldfish by dropping acid on them. Sent to the back room, he takes his lunch out of the safe, gets into another fight, in which he is almost beating his rival to death when the girl enters. Charlot falls whimpering to the floor and is made much of. He returns to the counter and the episode of the clock begins.
A sinister figure enters, offering a clock in pawn. Charlot looks at it; then takes an auscultator and listens to its heart-beat; then taps it over crossed fingers for its pulmonary action; then taps it with a little hammer to see the quality, as with porcelain; then snaps his thumb on the bell. He takes an augur and bores a hole in it; then a can-opener, and when he has pried the lid off he smells the contents and with a disparaging gesture makes the owner smell them, too. He then does dentistry on it, with forceps; then plumbing. Finally he screws a jeweler’s magnifying glass into his eye and hammers what is left in the clock, shakes out the contents, measures the mainspring from the tip of his nose to arm’s length, like cloth, squirts oil on the debris to keep it quiet, and, lifting the man’s hat from his head, sweeps the whole mess into it and returns it with a sad shake of the head.
A pearl-buyer has meanwhile come in and Charlot retraces his steps to the back room (carefully stepping over the buyer’s hat) and begins to sweep. His broom becomes entangled with a piece of tape, which fights back and gets longer and longer. Suddenly Charlot begins to tight-rope upon it, balancing with the broom, and making a quick turn, coming forward for applause. A final quarrel with the other assistant ensues. As they are swarming round the legs of the kitchen table, the boss comes in and Charlot flees, leaps into a trunk, and is hidden. As the others enter the room, the pearl-buyer, who has stolen all the valuables, holds them up with a revolver. Charlot leaps from the trunk, fells the robber, and embraces the lovely maiden for a fade-out.
All of this takes about thirty minutes. I have put down nearly everything, for Chaplin is on the scene virtually all of the time. I am fairly certain that ninety per cent. of this film could not have been made, even badly, by anyone else. Analysis of _A Dog’s Life_ would give the same result: the arrival at the climax being a little more certain and the drama of the climax (the curtain scene--compared with the clock scene above) being more involved in the course of action.
Here follows a complete list of all of the pictures in which Charlie Chaplin has appeared--all of those officially recognized by him:
_Keystone_--1914: Making a Living, Mabel’s Strange Predicament, The Kid Auto Racers, His Favorite Pastime, The Film Johnny, The Cruel Cruel Love, The Dogcatcher, Mabel at the Wheel, The Star Boarder, Twenty Minutes of Love, Caught in the Rain, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, The Rounders, The Knockout, Caught in the Cabaret, A Gentleman of Nerve, Mabel’s Busy Day, Mabel’s Married Life, Dough & Dynamite, His Trysting Place, Laughing Gas, His Prehistoric Past, Half Reel--Scenic Yosemite Valley.
_Essanay Film Company_--1915–16: His New Job, A Night Out, The Champion, The Tramp, The Jitney Elopement, In the Park, By the Sea, The Woman, The Bank, Work, A Night in the Show, Shanghaied, Carmen, Police.
_Mutual Film Company_--1916–17: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, The Vagabond, One A. M., The Count, Behind the Screen, The Rink, The Pawnshop, Easy Street, The Cure, The Immigrant, The Adventurer.
_First National_--1918–23: Shoulder Arms, Sunnyside, The Idle Class, Pay Day, A Dog’s Life, The Kid, A Day’s Pleasure, The Pilgrim.
“BANANAS” AND OTHER SONGS
It was not my happiness to have heard _Yes; We Have No Bananas_ first in America: and to understand phenomena one must know them in their natural setting. The phrase itself was created, or brought to notice, by Tad; as I have said in my wholly inadequate reference to his work, he is a master of slang and a creator of it; some acknowledgment to him might well appear on the cover of the song. His use of it was immeasurably more delicate and more amusing than the song, because he used it as a contradiction of all the blah and high-hat nonsense in the world; it is in his hands fantastic, funny, and impertinently pertinent. In the song I can’t see it; nor am I exceptionally taken with the music, which is largely synthetic.
However, if I cannot understand the success of the song (or misunderstand it, for it seems to me to be “merely” popular) there are those who understand better. I do not think that my quite secondary powers of analysis would have risen to the following, by J. W. T. Mason, correspondent of the London _Daily Express_, in New York:
New York slang usually changes monthly. Of late there has been a falling off in inspiration, and picturesque argot culled from the city’s polyglot interminglings has fallen sadly behind New York’s quick-witted reputation. At last, however, after months of waiting a creative effort has been made, and one of the most effective phrases descriptive of life in New York has resulted.