The Chaplin Machine, or Americanism in Soviet Russia
Przemysław Strożek
kwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.plInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
Abstract
Book review of Owen Hatherley’s The Chaplin Machine: Slapstick, Fordism and the Communist Avant-Garde (2016). Strożek discusses the main ideas of Hatherley’s work, who, using the term “Chaplin (slapstick) Machine (taylorism-fordism)” examines the visions of Americanism and American dream in the left-wing avant-garde culture, paying attention to the importance of how America was imagined in the shaping of a new proletarian culture in a constructive spirit. The reviewer shows how in a con- sistent manner the British author analyses the relationship between two great triads: slapstick - taylorism-fordism - americanism = circus - communism - constructivism, drawing interesting links between the American and the Russian elements in the area of new thinking about culture of the 1920s and 1930s.
Keywords:
Charlie Chaplin, Owen Hatherley, slapstickReferences
Nolan, Mary. Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany, New York, Oxford University Press 1994.
Google Scholar
Saunders, Thomas J. Hollywood in Berlin: American Cinema and Weimar Germany, University of California Press, Berkeley 1994.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520914162
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Hatherley, Owen “The Chaplin Machine. Slapstick, Fordism and the Communist Avant-Garde” (2016).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1c2crd1
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Authors
Przemysław Strożekkwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
Adiunkt w Instytucie Sztuki PAN, stypendysta Fulbright Senior Research Awards na University of Georgia, członek European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernist Studies. Autor licznych publikacji na temat awangardy historycznej i jej związków z kulturą popularną, członek rady redakcyjnej International Yearbook of Futurism Studies (De Gruyter). Autor monografii Marinetti i futuryzm w Polsce 1909-1939. Obecność - kontakty - wydarzenia (2012) oraz Nic, to znaczy wszystko. Interpretacje niemieckiego dada (2016).
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