Status Updates From Why Literature Still Matters

Chaplin gives her his seat and he stands. She cries and he gives her a hanky. They fall out of the paddy wagon right before it wrecks. He helps her escape. They walk a long time and are in a neighborhood where the grass is long. They flirt and he realizes they are both homeless. He proposes to her and they imagine what it would be like to live in a house with a self-milking car.

Rom coms have not changed in 90 years. The baker accuses her of theft but Chaplin takes the blame. She is accused anyway. He eats a huge meal while the cops carry her away. He has a cop watch him as he says to the waitress he has no money for the bill. He steals cigars and gives them to some boys while the cop makes a phone call. He finds himself in the paddy wagon with the gamin who looks like Molly Shannon.

He shuts it off; there are more awkward sounds. The pastor and his wife leave. The warden tells him he is a free man but he is happy in jail. He gives him a letter to help him get work. He gets a job building boats but it is a disaster. The man lacks common sense. He and Mr. Bean would get along well. LOL The barefoot gamin’s clothes are tattered. Her face is dirty. She steals a loaf of bread and knocks over Chaplin.

She runs off. Meanwhile Chaplin enjoys life in his comfy cell getting three square meals a day. He is number seven and he is called to the overseer of the jail. The minister and his wife show up for his weekly visit. Chaplin sits and drinks tea with the wife while the minister visits the men. Someone’s stomach growls and her dog barks. I think it is his. Very awkward. He turns on the radio. An ad plays for gastritis.

He single-handedly takes out the prisoners and frees the guards. Outside the unemployed get restless. The timeframe is 1936 when unemployment was coming down but not fast enough for people who needed to feed their families. The gamin and her sisters are gathering wood from the side of the docks during the march. She hears a gunshot and her father is shot. They are now orphans. The younger sisters are taken.

Powder flies and he rubs his nose. OH MY! He acts weird and becomes bolder in fighting over food with his cellmate. The cops blow the whistle and all rise and line up. He spins as he walks in line. He goes the wrong way and ends up in the courtyard. Then he tries to get back in his cell but some prisoners have held up the guards who are locked up. Chaplin interferes and prisoners shoot at him.

Prisoners are marched in single file like plebes and sit for a meal. He and his cellmate scuffle over the bread which is supposed to be shared. Detectives search them for drugs. The real druggie pours his powder into a salt shaker (this sounds like what a sailor told me when he was up for court martial). After the druggie is hauled out, Chaplin puts salt on his food. What should happen is that his mouth goes numb.

Chaplin is held in prison as a communist. Quicksilver? A barefoot gamin on a boat cuts bananas and throws them to hungry children. The owner chases after her but she escapes. She is the eldest sister. Their mother is dead and their father is unemployed. She cheers him up with the stolen bananas.Meanwhile, Chaplin’s gruff cellmate sews, embroidery hoop and all. They almost get into a fight but are saved by a bell.

He has lost his job. The doctor tells him to take it easy and avoid excitement. He leaves in his classic tramp outfit. Then scenes of hustle and bustle at weird angles are shown. Freedom does not last long. He strolls around town and a flag drops off a truck. He picks it up to take to the truck and ends up at the head of a union march with signs in English and Spanish. The police accuse him of being the ringleader.

He prances back to his work. The conveyor belt continues but nobody has replaced him. Now workers are chasing him. He runs up stairs and grabs onto a hook and travels by air through the factory. He lands in a circle of workers, the boss, and two officers and begins squirting people. They carry him to the ambulance which hauls him away. He stays at the psych ward long enough to recover from his nervous breakdown.

He chases her outside and she goes back in. He tightens the nuts of a fire hydrant while this horsey woman walks by. He chases her into the arms of a police officer and then he does a 180. He runs back into the building and shifts the arms of equipment run by a manager. He’s causing major chaos and the explosions begin. The camera keeps flashing so that the boss can’t see what is happening.

Work starts again and the pace is too fast. Chaplin jumps on the conveyor belt and his coworker accuses him of being crazy. In a dream sequence he travels through the gears of the machinery with sleepy type music. Someone reverses the machinery to bring him back. He acts like a fairy dancing his way through his work, tweaking the noses of his coworkers. Then he makes donkey ears at the pretty secretary. He’s an ass?

Adding to the frantic music is electrical noise. Someone puts steel nuts on his plate and two get shoved into his mouth. A plate of whipped cream dessert covers his face and shirt. Then the mouth wiper starts beating his face. He falls out of his chair as the machine smokes. Think of all the products that are supposed to make things better and they don’t! The factory is ruled by bells (why we don’t have them at HCS).

Of course, Chaplin is the guinea pig. The soup and cubes of meat go well. About halfway through the corn on the cob, the machine goes crazy and corn flies everywhere. It’s like the whole impossible meat gambit being shoved on us by marketers. The machine starts sparking and smoking. He’s locked in the chair and cannot escape the nightmare. They try again and he gets soup poured down his front shirt.

It’s time to eat and these people bring in what looks like the classic Rube Goldberg feeding machine. It is designed to feed workers and make them more efficient. A spokesperson speaks like a commercial and it reminds me of Sayers’ “Murder Must Advertise.” Chaplin’s character has tics because of the stress that the factory puts on his body. Of course, lunch without this fabulous machine is rough.

Watching Charlie at the factory brings to mind Lucy and Ethel! The speed of production certainly is our modern life today. No wonder we have a society of people who rage at one another. So far, the only one with a voice is the boss who has a camera in the bathroom so when Chaplin takes a smoke break in the bathroom he gets chewed out. When he comes back, he bosses the overseer.

The movie starts with a closeup of a clock with Roman numerals ticking one second at a time. I love the jump cut between a flock of sheep running together with the flock of factory workers going to work to the cogs and gears in the machinery. I don’t know about then but my dh was upper management and he worked hard and didn’t have time for jigsaw puzzles. How modern! The boss has a camera to check on the workers!

A better ending might have been slowing the tempo and morphing into videos of themselves in nature. I am going to watch “Modern Times” and I decided to watch the credits. Notice that people are first. The real people who helped make this movie are listed first. Today they are an afterthought at the end of the movie. Maybe that is why actors and actresses feel like they have to push themselves forward.

The hectic pace and jump cuts mirror today’s fragmented life. We are trying to transform ourselves from bits and pieces to bits and pixels. Oooo, I think I just did a thing. My dh’s parents used to complain about how fast movies became and they could no longer enjoy modern movies. This music video shows the accelerated pace even more. It does leave one with hope because they are in nature without phones at the end.

I created a playlist on Youtube to have all the references in one place. Yes, more screen time. LOL The OneRepublic song is catchy and the Scooby-Doo effect definitely catches people who are on the bridge between Boomer and Gen X. One can see how they have gone from 3D to 2D versions to cartoons and we can wonder what comes next in the smoothing of this band into Emoji land and the frenetic pace.

I have the book of lost words and the postcards that go with it. We are fighting it at our school, and it is lovely to see their wonderful whirlygig beetles and helicopter maple seeds. Kids who miss out on nature also miss awe, wonder, and God's general revelation. I can't help but wonder if luring us with technology is a diabolical plot. Nature is rich in metaphor and creativity.

I have a Gen Z friend and he is mindful of his brain, knowing it is not fully developed. Last year, he switched to a flip phone that has no social media. He still uses it but he said the biggest difference idols how much more time he has. The younger generation has so much mental health issues and I do wonder what smoothing emotions by use of emojis is part of it. More time on screens is less time outdoors.

He talks about what social media has done to us. Free is not free. Data is collected that can be turned over to marketers so that they can better understand and influence their customers. Our ability to express emotion can be limited in FB by six emoji, which smooth our reaction. We provide free entertainment when we upload pictures of our new and improved selves. He talks about a song by One Republic.

I’m not sure I have time for Chaplin’s movie, “Modern Times,” right now. Maybe some day. I know that Baxter is not a mathematician and he is correct about graphs. To develop a formula that can be graphed, one often has to study the situation and make assumptions that simplify the situation enough to fit the line or curve to the data. We can measure productivity but we cannot measure aesthetic or the soul.

Baxter is right. Zuck has a utilitarian view of personhood. It’s as if he is describing his daughter in terms of productivity and what she can do not who she is. For his own sake, I hope one daughter becomes an avid reader who writes poetry, the other is an artist who specializes in naturalistic art, and the other is a musician and composer who revives old school ways (non-digital, non-synthesized) to make music.

I listened to “Lark Ascending” by Ralph Vaughn Williams again (Hillary Hahn as violinist) and Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides Overture.” We studied Lizst last year BUT he was so prolific that I did not choose “Jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este.” I don’t speak French so I simply listened and heard water. This is definitely program music. I was delighted to learn that it means the fountain. Today’s music lacks this sense of nature.

I am versed in the book of nature because of my upbringing and of Charlotte Mason. I don't spend as much time in nature as I would like but I enjoy nature. I just don't enjoy extremes in weather or being gawked at by neighbors. I can at least find metaphors in nature and understand them and I wonder if these tech geniuses can read the book of nature. Am I a hypocrite like Thoreau? I like comfort!