Social Issues: Charlie Chaplin in modern times

 

Social Issues: Charlie Chaplin in modern times

 

 Unemployment = The movie showed massive unemployment, the job opportunities were very scarce in comparison to the demand for employment. Two particular scenes that represented this massive unemployment were-:

The father of the female lead committed suicide, apparently, he was unable to find a job and had 3 daughters to raise, the stressed look on his face could be easily studied when he got home and sat on the chair. The stress and depression of not being able to earn money to raise his children resulted in him making a decision of taking his own life. 

        Another scene was where Charlie Chaplin ran to get a job in the factory after reading the newspaper article; there were hundreds of people crowded up for the same job. 2 people standing inside the gate did let in a certain no. of people, who managed to break through the crowd. Those people were literally random guys whose ability to work was not known. The level of unemployment can be figured out by how One job vacancy in any part of the city managed to attract a very huge crowd of unemployed people.

 

 

Poverty = A large section of the population was poor, the main reason to which was off course the severe scarcity of jobs. The people accepted any kind of job that was available irrespective of their inability to do it. Charlie Chaplin himself worked as the assistant of a mechanic and signed up for the job of a singer when he absolutely had no idea how to perform both of these jobs.

 

Poor working conditions = The opening scene where the first factory where Charlie Chaplin worked is shown describes the incredibly poor working conditions. Charlie Chaplin and his coworkers in that scene were dressed in dirty clothes and seemed like they haven’t taken a break from their jobs since days. Charlie Chaplin’s act of working his hands as if he is fixing the bolts even after leaving the tool depicted how overworked the workers were.

 

 

 

 Hunger and crime because of poverty = Poverty and constant unemployment were so severe that people found it difficult to earn enough money to buy food and thus it, in a way or the other, promoted crime.

The girl could be seen stealing bananas in her introduction scene which was not her only attempt at theft, she also attempted to steal bread when she was hungry in the later part of the film.

Other than the girl, Charlie Chaplin’s co-worker, with whom he worked in the very first factory, seemed to have lost his job and with a bunch of other people attempted to steal from a departmental store. He also clarified that he wasn’t a burglar, he was just hungry and broke in to find some food.

The urgency and significance of security depicted that activities like robbery were common in the city, however, most of these activities were encouraged due to hunger.

 

To conclude, unemployment and poverty were two major issues which in turn led to hunger and encouraged petty thefts and suicides. Also, since the job opportunities were scarce, the available jobs had very poor working conditions.