Analyze the relationship between the working class and the owner represented in the movie ‘Modern Times’.

Analyze the relationship between the working class and the owner represented in the movie 'Modern Times'.

''Modern Times. A story of industry, of individual enterprise- humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness''. This is the opening sequence of one of the most successful works of Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin's critique of the Industrial Age kicks off in a famous opening sequence that finds The Tramp scrambling frantically to turn bolts on a factory assembly line and coming away so frazzled that he chases after a woman with bolt-shaped buttons on her dress. There's never any indication of what this factory produces, but Modern Times makes a comedy out of its relentless quest for efficiency as well as The Tramp's accidental instigation of a Communist riot. In perhaps the film's most savage irony, The Tramp eventually tries to get back in jail, because life on the inside is easier than making an honest living.

Factory

The Tramp working on the giant machine in the film...

NRC Modern Times 6

At the core of the film are two characters trying to reclaim their humanity in an industrial world. The first character is "A Factory Worker" second is "A Gamin". Within these two characters are a sense of Marxist Alienation and Durkheimian Anomie (A sense of normlessness and or hopelessness). Under capitalism workers have little or no overall control over the production process which is often based upon the division of labour involving the breaking down of the production process into a series of simple repetitive and boring tasks which give no opportunity for worker creativity. While A Factory Worker begins with Alienation, his alienation transforms into Anomie throughout the course of the film. What distinguishes man from animal according to Marx is that our faculties, capacities and tastes are shaped by society Therefore each individual by this logic is a product of the culture he was born...