Elizabeth King Weimar Culture Senior Seminar/ Honors Thesis

Berlin Dadaists and Charlie Chaplin: Medium, Mechanics and the Masses

The Berlin Dadaists developed an expansive and insightful understanding of the art of

Hollywood filmmaker and actor Charlie Chaplin, prior to seeing any of his films. The images and exhibition I contextualize point to Dada’s use of Chaplin as inspiration and subject. During

World War I, Germany remained under martial law and censorship was pervasive. Undoubtedly,

“tightening of control and a ban on imports went hand in hand with growing recognition of the vital propaganda and entertainment role of the cinema.”1 Hollywood films were banned until

1919 and feature-length Chaplin films until late 1923 with the release of the The Kid (1921) in

Berlin. 2 But beginning in 1921 and 1922, one or two act shorts appeared in Germany such as The

Tramp (1915), The Immigrant (1917), A Dog’s Life (1918), and The Rink (1916). 3 Leading up to these releases, Dada artists heard about Chaplin from traveling German film critics and notable

French cultural and film critics. The French often created or commented on the nationalistic fervor for Chaplin, turning Charlie into their very own Charlot .4 Although Chaplin films would continue to play in Germany until 1931, when war approached and German domestic production began to take off, this paper will take a more focused look at Dada works created within one to two years before Germany’s actual mass exposure to his films. 5 This window during which artistic output flourished, highlights German reliance on initial accounts from European cultural

1 Thomas J. Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin: American cinema and Weimar Germany , (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 26. 2 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 57, 296. 3 Ibid, 173. 4 Libby Murphy, "Charlot Français: Charlie Chaplin, The First World War, and the Construction of a National Hero," Contemporary French & Francophone Studies 14 (2010): 421-429. 5 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 222.

1 critics. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish the figure that the Dadaists sought out from the Charlot of the French.

Berlin Dadaists’ appeals to, and representations of Chaplin revealed a strong conviction in the power of cinema, in its ability to change perceptions across society and in the magnitude of the questions Chaplin’s work, and “mass culture,” raised in the aftermath of WWI. Cinema provided both an opportunity and outlet for the people. In the Reich in 1920, there were roughly

1,000 film theaters and by 1920 there were 3,731. 6 By the mid 1920s, theaters were visited by one to two million people daily. 7 The Dadaists did not want the government preventing cinema’s accessibility and potential. The opportunity to view what was considered a representation of

America was of interest to them, particularly the work of Chaplin who appeared to circumvent the capitalist system while working in it. “Berlin Dada’s radical redefinition of art, which negated the schism between ‘fine art’ and mass media, between ‘high’ culture and popular art” was initiated by an Americanism that Chaplin played a considerable role in. 8

French critics provided Germany’s first textual exposure to Chaplin in Ivan Goll’s cinema-poem, Die Chapliniade (1920).” 9 Cultural historian Sabine Hake writes that Goll

“speculates on his importance as a figure of reconciliation between art and technology, high culture and mass society.” 10 This conjecture, most importantly the bridge between art and technology, suggests Chaplin united the same poles the Berlin Dadaists sought to transcend and would have greatly appealed to their efforts. French film critic Louis Delluc offered a broader, yet more reflexive view of the possibilities posed by cinema. In 1917, he wrote in an article that

6 Ibid, 20, 23. 7 Ibid, 24. 8 Beeke Sell Tower, eds. Busch Reisinger Museum et al., Envisioning America: Prints, drawings, and photographs by George Grosz and his contemporaries, 1915-1933 (Cambridge, MA: Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, 1990), 65. 9 Sabine Hake, “Chaplin Reception in Weimar Germany,” New German Critique 51 (1990): 88. 10 Ibid, 89.

2 dealt largely with Chaplin, “The cinema will make us all comprehend the things of this world as well as force us to recognize ourselves.” 11 As a foreign mediator, Chaplin offered a subtle, disseminated and international analysis on society, operating at a more removed distance than the

Dadaists. When finally available for viewing, German critics’ reception was varied, salutary and skeptical yet highly critical on all fronts, while admitting, “German audiences laughed hysterically.” 12

German Critic Hans Siemsen wrote the second article published on Chaplin in Germany titled “Two Postcards and a Book,” in 1920. 13 In many of his writings, he focused on Chaplin’s

“personal discovery and exploitation of the laws of the medium,” while also delighting in the playful and hopeful aspects of his films.14 He writes, “This funny little clown is the best a human being can be: a starry-eyed idealist. God Bless Him!” 15 Chaplin’s thorough development of writing, directing and acting merited him the title “first authentic artist of the cinema,” according to Siemsen. 16

The Dadaists personified a balance between the critical inquiry of, and public interest in

Chaplin. They sought to underscore the aspects of Chaplin’s manipulation of the film medium, and the resulting inflection and influence that could be generated in the mass audience. His screen persona was in the service of a greater whole, the way the shots taken and edited were in the service of the final film, and the way Dada built up its own montages in a piece-meal fashion.

Protesting the ban, Berlin Dadaists “elevated Chaplin to Ehrendada (Honorary Dada) and declared themselves ‘Chaplinists.’ To be a ‘Chaplinist’ meant a link, however tenuous, to an

11 Louis Delluc, “Beauty in the Cinema,” in French Film Theory and Criticism: A History and Anthology, 1907- 1939 , ed. Richard Abel, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 139. 12 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 174. 13 Sherwin Simmons, “Chaplin smiles on the wall: Berlin dada and wish-images of popular culture,” New German Critique 84 (2001): 9. 14 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 178. 15 Hans Siemsen, Charlie Chaplin, trans. Sabine Hake in New German Critique 51 (1990): 100. 16 Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin , 178.

3 international avant-garde, among whom Chaplin had already become something of a cult figure.” 17 This paper will point to those fractures in the link through its strict comparison of the qualities of Chaplin’s art that Dadaist art engaged with, as opposed to an attempt to ignite a nationalistic discourse characteristic of the international avant-garde. While critics focused on his persona, Dadaists saw him more as a vehicle; as exemplified by their own use of his face, name, and connotations in the works I chose for this paper. All the works highlight Chaplin’s affinities with, and appropriateness for Dada, through Dada’s discernment of both his acclaim and controversy.

Figure 1: Otto Schmalhausen, Cover of ‘DADA-ALMANACH’ Berlin, 1920 http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/artwork/huelsenbeck.shtm#null

On the cover of a 1920 issue of DADA-ALMANACHA is an image of a plastic bust of

Beethoven altered by Dadaist Otto Schmalhausen. Richard Huelsenbeck edited the publication,

“a summary of the group’s ideas.” 18 It is speculated the changes were made so the mask of a past, intellectual icon, would resemble Chaplin, an emerging, notably “physical,” cultural icon of

17 Tower, Envisioning America , 68. 18 Ibid.

4 contemporaneous times.19 (Figure 1) All Chaplin’s features were imposed on the reproduced photograph of the mask: “Schmalhausen added blue pupils within its heavily lined eyes, as well as a small, squarish mustache and unruly forelock of real hair, which resembled Charlie

Chaplin.” 20

The basic premise in each role Chaplin played in his early films contributed to his rise to an international symbol. While Germans respected and enjoyed notable Germanic actors,

Chaplin’s the “little tramp” was the same articulated and identifiable character in each film. “It afforded audiences a sense of security and intimacy that they could not experience with character actors, given their changing identities.” 21 Chaplin’s consistency was a stability that any European could have welcomed after WWI. He represented a lower class citizen in society who through caricature was made all the more real. The role social status played in relations between people was appropriately at the forefront of each film.

This work by Schmalhausen takes Chaplin’s representational qualities in another direction, as well. The Beethoven mask was a common prop for artists appropriated in numerous ways, by various artists prior to the Dada Fair and the DADA-ALMANACHA publication. Franz

Klein originally cast the mask in 1812, from Ludwig van Beethoven’s face. 22 The use of a copy of a mask that had already gained circulation within the art world, in order to appropriate and then reproduce it in an even more widely accessible form of dissemination, suggests a shift away from older forms of culture towards new technologies and likewise new forms and means of culture. This shift was taking place through the interest of critics, on the pages of international publications. The mask’s new reproduction would therefore occur in the same manner as the

19 Ibid, 82. 20 Simmons, “Chaplin smiles on the wall,” 7-8. 21 Hake, Chaplin Reception , 90. 22 Simmons, “Chaplin smiles on the wall,” 7.

5 writings on Chaplin that would characterize him by those features. The physical mask was on display at the First International Dada Fair (Erste International Dada-Messe). In the exhibition catalogue, author Wieland Herzfelde, without mention of Chaplin, simply “stressed the way these additions rescued Beethoven from the bourgeois respectability of white plaster and suggest the difficult role of a living artist in society.”23 A move away from “bourgeois respectability” was a move the Dadaists openly and adamantly made. The catalogue text introduced a possible reading, similar to the way the textual reports and accounts of Chaplin by French critics introduced Chaplin’s character to the Dadaists.

French critic Louis Delluc made a comparison that may have proposed the concept’s relevance to Dada aims: “To the creative artist of the cinema, the mask of Charlie Chaplin has just the same importance of the mask of Beethoven has to the musician or composer.”24 Delluc then commented on the ability to transform oneself offered by cinema. Schmalhausen pinpointed this transformative quality through his alteration of the mask and Dada’s introduction to Chaplin.

From a removed, censored distance, Dadaists saw his importance, not as artists working in cinema, but as artists interested in mass-entertainment’s potential and in Chaplin’s importance to the masses. Furthermore, the thick use of make-up that magnified Chaplin’s features also points to Chaplin’s feminization, noted by critics such as Siemsen. 25 The mask therefore suggests, in a third way, the aspects of Chaplin that “were seen as atypical of male appearance and behavior.” 26

Atypicality was a theme in the work of Dadaists who visually highlighted the male adaptation to society, stunted by the effects of WWI on both physicality and behavior. For Chaplin as well, “to

23 Ibid, 8. 24 Louis Delluc, Charlie Chaplin , trans. Sherwin Simmons in “Chaplin smiles on the wall,” 9. 25 Simmon, “Chaplin smiles on the wall,” 12. 26 Ibid.

6 suffer love’s rejections, to fitfully move in circles rather than directly toward a goal, seemed to indicate…a condition of male hysteria.” 27

Hysteria, manifest in veterans, was also a preoccupation of Dada artists. They sought to both inflict in their audiences a shock that mimicked that feeling and to attest to the psychological aftermath of the war through mutilated bodies, brains, and male reproductive organs. The Dada-Messe (1920) was the most intense display of their work. Art historian Brigid

Doherty, describing an example of the kind of work on display, writes, “on a metal-legged slate table stands a tailor’s dummy with an illuminated lightbulb for a head, a metal pole for a leg, false teeth in place of genitals, a revolver on one shoulder, a doorbell on the other.” 28

Figure 2: Der Dada (3),1920 Cabaret voltaire, jg. 1, 1916 ; der dada, jg. 1-3, 1919/20 ; der ventilator, jg. 1, 1919 ; der zeltweg, jg. 1, 1919 1977. . Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint

27 Ibid. 28 Brigid Doherty, "See: "We Are All Neurasthenics"!" or, the Trauma of Dada Montage,” Critical Inquiry 24 (1997): 86.

7 Moving from a Dada journal cover, to a largely textual portrayal is a page from the third publication of the journal Der Dada in 1920. The text greets and applauds Chaplin, while protesting the ban of his films. (Figure 2) It also speaks to the effects of war, through its juxtaposition with its facing page that shows a reproduction of George Grosz’s Daum Marries

Her Pedantic Automaton George in May 1920, John Heartfield is Very Glad of It (1920). (Figure

3) Grosz’s piece, like Schmalhausen’s mask, was on display in the Dada-Messe. It can serve as a reflection on the interaction of men and women following the war and points to the contestable institution of marriage in the machine age.29 The journal spread speaks to an interest in

America’s lack of a war-stricken environment, as exemplified by Chaplin’s films. His films also brought attention to the gender dynamic and established gender relations and norms, to stress their nonsensicality.

Figure 3: Der Dada (3), 1920 Cabaret voltaire, jg. 1, 1916 ; der dada, jg. 1-3, 1919/20 ; der ventilator, jg. 1, 1919 ; der zeltweg, jg. 1, 1919 1977. . Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint

29 Wieland Herzfelde, “Introduction to the First International Dada Fair,” trans. Brigid Doherty October 105 (2003): 102.

8 The surrounding manifesto is titled DADA in Europa , while the appeal in the middle of the page is positioned at a diagonal in a rectangular outline and welcomes the international phenomenon: “The International Dada Company, Berlin, sends Charlie Chaplin world’s greatest artist and a good Dadaist, friendly greetings. We protest against the banning of Chaplin movies in Germany.” 30

In the accompanying text that surrounds the appeal, an open invitation to join Dada is announced. It includes, “Become a Dada and you will start to share our delight in the attack and in the unconquerable power of irony.” 31 The invitation can additionally be read as further appeal to Chaplin. Dadaism was predicated on visual attack and the layering in photomontage, three- dimensional works and detailed paintings suggested finality in representational decision that could not be overcome. It also mimics the layering in meaning and association in their texts.

The Dadists saw the sovereignty that Hollywood provided Chaplin as he both entertained, and satirized society, social institutions and norms, and trivialized the actions of both the wealthy and the crooks. Also part of DADA in Europa, the following excerpt provides a description of

Dada’s principles and aspirations: “DaDa organizes the world according to its own criteria, it uses all the existing forms and habits in order to beat the moralistic, self-righteous bourgeois world at its own game.” 32 Dada established its resistance through repurposing existing materials.

Chaplin also manipulates his respective medium and communicates through physical messages to achieve an irony. Chaplin’s appropriations and representations of common bourgeois activities are undermined through simple, yet exaggerated movements and expressions. Dadaist “Raoul

30 Dawn Ades, ed., The Dada Reader: A Critical Anthology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid.

9 Hausmann called him a physiognist labeling every expression of Chaplin physical instead of psychological.” 33

A picture of Dadaists George Grosz, in the top left corner of the page and of John

Heartfield, in the bottom right corner also help to frame their artistic alignment with Chaplin.

The text continues, “What’s the point of a mind in a world that just goes on mechanically? What is a human being in all this? By turns a silly, a sad thing, sung and played by its own products.” 34

Chaplin’s “little tramp” creates situations for himself that result in the distortion of his limbs and facial features and evoke both laughter and pity. Grosz’s self-representation, the pedantic automoton , points again to the changes, tragedy and manipulations in the physicality of the modern age.

In addition to their own identification with Chaplin, the Berlin Dadaists were attracted to the public’s response. Hake opens her essay Chaplin Reception in Weimar Germany, with an excerpt from a fictional letter film critic Bela Balazs wrote to Chaplin the late 1920s. 35 The enamored quantification of Chaplin’s appeal, and the equation to universal “types” of influence point to the foresight of Dadaist Johannes Baader in his Honorary Portrait of Charlie Chaplin, also titled , Commemoritive Sheet for Gutenberg (1919 ). (Figure 4):

If you take, very modestly, only half of the movie audiences in all the countries where your films have produced laughter and tears, you’ll probably reach well over half a billion. The tender and enthusiastic love of half a billion people! Do you know that there has never been a hero or a prophet of mankind who was able to accumulate such an enormous capital during his lifetime? 36

In Baader’s work, strips of text in various fonts layer over one another and large, black, block letters are scattered on top. Although the work pays homage to both Chaplin and

33 K. Beekman and Jan de Vries, Avant-garde and criticism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 61-62. 34 Ades, ed. The Dada Reader . 35 Hake, Chaplin Reception , 87. 36 Ibid.

10 Gutenberg, neither is shown. Instead, the media they worked in are on display in intersection.

The godfather and inventor of the printing press in the 15 th century, Johannes Gutenberg’s work is signified by the black type, “used for the setting of texts of spiritual content or cultural value, such as literature and scholarly writings.” 37 His work led, centuries later, to the creation of other fonts such as sans serif, used in popular media and signage of the 1920s. Gutenberg invented the medium of the mechanically printed word and this of course facilitated its appropriation in contexts much unlike his seminal Guttenberg Bible. Typical of Dada photomontage technique, these fragments of text are also appropriated from their original context.

Figure 4: Johannes Baader, Honorary Portrait of Charlie Chaplin; Commemoritive Sheet for Gutenberg; Ehrenporträt von Charlie Chaplin; Gutenberggedenkblatt , 1919 (Artstor)

The placement of the strips of texts on top of one another result in hidden fragments that are void of original meaning and lost to the totality of the picture, rather they pay homage to its ultimate creator. Dadaists working in montage appropriated texts from publications they sought

37 Torben Jelsbak, “Visual language: the graphic signifier in avant-garde literature,” Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 42 (2010): 186.

11 to critique in other works, as well. In those instances, the powers behind the original messages were also often the subject of the appropriation, though usually in a critically negative manner.

Baader, who had on numerous occasions declared himself “Jesus Christ” and held the name

Oberdada, meaning “head Dada—a choice of nickname that typified Baader’s grandiose, often megalomaniacal authority,” inserted a picture of himself in the bottom left corner of the piece. 38

As the only image he appears to also assert his role, through the spiritual undertones of the black text, as “creator” of the montage or rather this visual expression of the development of mass produced messages. This suggestion of divine presence further points to Chaplin’s creative work as both actor and producer that led to the “cult” like fascination with his persona:

The text reads: the ‘clergymen of Berlin are invited to come . . . and solve this question’ (“Berlins Geistliche sindeingeladen zu kommen . . . und diese Frage zu beantworten”). The ‘question’ is cut out of the original context, but the following fragment of what might be a quotation from the Bible, ‘Jesus Christ . . . came among the people . . . the living . . . ’ (”Christus der . . . kam in den Wolken . . . die lebendigen”), suggests that ‘the question’ might be the question of the union of divinity with humanity in Jesus Christ. 39

The text could additionally refer to Baader’s interest in the ability of mass medias such as printed text and motion pictures, to reach a maximum people, embodying an element of “reach” or “belief” that was up until this point dominated by spirituality and religiosity. Chaplin had certainly come “among the people,” and reached international audiences in a short period of time. The “question” could also be meant for figures in government responsible for the censorship. The work shows an already in-depth knowledge of the structure of Chaplin’s work, ultimately made possible, if traced back far enough, by Guttenberg, and now via the reviews and

38 “National Gallery of Art-DADA – Artists-Baader,” accessed December 4, 2011, http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/artists/baader.shtm 39 Jelsbak, “Visual language,” 186.

12 impressions written in published articles that could travel to Germany with ease. Motion pictures were the new language capable of mass production to an even greater degree than once posed by the printing press, but the printing press would aid their travel in text when unpermitted on film.

Chaplin was not only an actor exercising his craft for the camera, realized through his on- screen persona alone. He served as director, writer, and producer as mentioned earlier. His total engagement with the process of making movies was an attribute the Dadaists may have sought for two reasons. First, Dadaists worked in a variety of media including, but not limited to, photomontage, painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, posters, exhibition design and fashion.

Their preoccupation with the potential of visual experience to create not only shocking, physiological effects, and changes in perception, but also provide a constructive awareness of society, may have drawn them to cinema’s “total experience.” Chaplin manipulated his medium through the many roles he played in each film’s construction. In one instance, the media itself was inherently constructed in a piecemeal fashion. The action was not filmed continuously or from one standpoint. Slapstick, Chaplin’s main genre, stretched, exaggerated, expanded and emphasized the physical in each frame, thereby mimicking film’s ability to alter each shot.

Furthermore, Chaplin’s cult figure as the “little tramp” was appropriately embraced within the culture of “typecasting” seen in other Dada works. Typecasting brought to the forefront the use of easily identifiable classes of people and workers. The “little tramp’s” juxtaposition in social settings of bourgeois culture caused him to stand out as a figure of the downtrodden proletariat. His dress was too large, overemphasizing its characteristics, and his character’s social encounters were magnified.

Baader’s piece used the medium created by Guttenberg to represent the spiritual “type” of language it stood for. He then used the medium of photomontage created by the Dadaists, to

13 represent the invasive “type” of construction Chaplin used in the process of filmmaking. Looking back over the course of Chaplin’s influence in Germany, Hake writes “the iconographic status of

Chaplin’s screen persona stands at the end of a long chain of displacements and projections involving texts as well as contexts, visions as well as projections.”40 The far-sighted Oberdada

Baader, was able to mold the effect of that persona into a single work of chronological and technological significance. Chaplin “offers the possibility of a new unity, no longer based on organic forms but artificial mixtures,” and Baader succeeds in constructing its representation. 41

The last example of a Dada work with suggestive ties to an affinity with Chaplin is the

First International Dada Fair (Erste Internationale Dada-Messe) in 1920, due its strong emphasis on creating a shocking environment. The Dada-Messe disrupted customary exhibition design that relied on sparse walls and ample floor space for reflective travel from piece of art to piece of art, either alone or in a small group. A view of the exhibition room reveals a dog dressed as a police officer hanging overhead, posters pasted near the floorboards and sculptures activated by electric wires. (Figure 4) The Dada-Messe aimed to confront the viewer both visually and psychologically. Demanding attention, “the faces of the Dada Fair’s organizers…are featured on large-scale photographic posters and surrounded by, and sometimes shouting out, agitational slogans in bold typography”42 Chaplin films were also occasionally punctured by a black screen of a short line of white text that drew attention to a specific circumstance or expressions. Though they were comedic, rather than demanding, these interruptions also told viewers what to think at that moment of perception.

40 Hake, Chaplin Reception , 104. 41 Ibid. 42 Doherty, "See: "We Are All Neurasthenics"!", 87.

14 In the cinema, Chaplin was consumed by a large room full of viewers, seated as a mass, facing forward, totally immersed in the unfolding drama, though physically removed from the screen. Chaplin’s slapstick did this most effectively because the genre engaged with the everyday issues encountered by the working class: interaction of human and machine, worker and bourgeoisie, man and woman. Chaplin’s eyebrow raises, continual defiance and mocking gestures provided an easily consumable yet critical representation of the bourgeoisie that finally provided German masses the opportunity to laugh. Film theorist Rudolf Arheim wrote in 1929 in the essay “Chaplin’s Early Films”:

If someone mournfully sets his elbows on the dining table, they are bound to land in a plate full of food. And table manners lead to all manner of comic manipulation when one makes exclusive use of forbidden ones. Here someone can stir coffee with a knife, wipe the knife on some bread, and the bread will taste like coffee. It also proves difficult to carry a ladder without bowling over passersby. 43

The accessibility of cinema and the option to laugh out loud provided each individual a unique experience, one they were able to embrace in the company of others.

The Dada-Messe was also directed to the individual due to the plethora of routes available to viewers as well as to a clearly self-defined reaction to the war subject matter and wartime imitation. But, it relied on a room full of shocking art that did not offer any point of concentration, and rather emphasized the individual viewer’s strained physical engagement and perception. Viewers were bombarded with an intensification of the modern-day situation and were forced to grapple with their environment.

43 Rudolf Arheim, “Chaplin’s Early Films,” trans. John MacKay The Yale Journal of Criticism 9 (1996): 312.

15

Figure 5: First International Dada Fair, 1920 (Erste Internationale Dada-Messe) http://www.dada-companion.com/dada-messe/

Since the exhibition was designed without a pre-determined, specific route or order by which to consume the works, the experience of walking through it may actually have signaled similarities with Chaplin’s peculiar, walk, that “marks his body as a site of resistance.” 44

Here, Chaplin’s adaptability, which originates in a great innocence, seems less a sign of weakness than an indication of his willingness to deal with all aspects of human existence…The feet that are pointed sideward instead of forward attest to a problematic relationship between the self and the world; they are the symbol for the unresolved tensions between desire and repression. 45

Much of the sculpture and paintings on display in the Dada-Messe highlighted man’s emasculation during WWI that was magnified upon returning home to a wife or the availability of women. The body was also resistant to the demands placed upon it by the mechanization of the workplace. When viewers entered the exhibition space, they too were forced to deal with all of these “aspects.” The exhibition space mirrors Chaplin cinema in this way. Both spaces were

44 Hake, Chaplin Reception , 106. 45 Ibid.

16 used to address similar issues, but the communal nature of the cinema won out in garnering what cultural critic Walter Benjamin would call, in The Work of Art and its Age of Technological

Reproducibility (1931), a “massive reaction of the audience, determined by the imminent concentration of reactions into a mass.” 46 The absurd physical adventurous of the characters in slapsticks, which fail dramatically and repeatedly, stimulated a favorable massive reaction as intended.

Limited in access and more forceful in assault, Benjamin viewed the work of the Dadaists and their emphasis on both experience and distraction, as a precursor to the cinema. His argument suggests Chaplin films embodied some of the qualities of cinema that he referred to.

He wrote, “The technological reproducibility of the artwork changes the relation of the masses to art. The extremely backward attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into a highly progressive reaction to a Chaplin film.” 47 The ability to share the experience with others, the ability to relate to the subject matter first hand, and the inclusive, relatively inexpensive venue of the cinema provided this.

Dada’s photomontages, simple appropriations, and exhibitions, all created through material reproductions, point to a strong relationship with the films of Charlie Chaplin. Both

Chaplin and Dada make cuts and reorganize reproductions and realities in hopes of causing a reaction in the masses, as constructive as the work and agenda injected in the art itself.

46 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version,” in The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 36. 47 Ibid.

17 References

Ades, Dawn, ed. The Dada Reader: A Critical Anthology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Arheim, Rudolf. “Chaplin’s Early Films.” trans. John MacKay The Yale Journal of Criticism 9 (1996): 311-314.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version.” In The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media, Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings and Brigid Doherty, 19- 55. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Beekman, K., and Jan de Vries. Avant-garde and criticism . Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.

Delluc, Louis. “Beauty in the Cinema.” In French Film Theory and Criticism: A History and Anthology, 1907-1939 , edited by Richard Abel, 137-139. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Doherty, Brigid. "See: "We Are All Neurasthenics"!" or, the Trauma of Dada Montage.” Critical Inquiry 24 (1997): 82-132.

Hake, Sabine. “Chaplin Reception in Weimar Germany.” New German Critique 51, Special Issue on Weimar Mass Culture (1990): 87-111.

Herzfelde, Wieland. “Introduction to the First International Dada Fair.” Translated by Brigid Doherty October 105 (2003): 93-104.

Jelsbak, Torben. “Visual language: the graphic signifier in avant-garde literature.” Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 42 (2010): 177-188.

Kaes. Anoton, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Murphy, Libby. "Charlot Français: Charlie Chaplin, The First World War, and the Construction of a National Hero." Contemporary French & Francophone Studies 14 (2010): 421-429.

National Gallery of Art. “NGA-DADA – Artists-Baader.” Accessed December 4, 2011. http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/artists/baader.shtm

Saunders, Thomas J. Hollywood in Berlin: American cinema and Weimar Germany . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Simmons, Sherwin. “Chaplin smiles on the wall: Berlin dada and wish-images of popular culture.” New German Critique 84 (2001): 3-34.

18 Speck, Oliver C. “The Joy of Anti-Art: Subversion through Humour in Dada.” In Comic Gender and Laughter. Comic Affirmation and Subversion in Traditional and Modern Media, edited by Gaby Pailer, Andreas Böhn, Stefan Horlacher, and Ulrich Scheck, 371-381. Amsterdam/New York, NY: Rodopi, 2009.

Tower, Beeke Sell, eds. Busch Reisinger Museum John Czaplicka, Peter Nisbet and Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Envisioning America: Prints, drawings, and photographs by George Grosz and his contemporaries, 1915-1933. Cambridge, MA: Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, 1990.

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