In this piece from our January 2015 issue, John Berger considers Chaplin a century after The Tramp first strolled on to cinema screens, and finds that his early films have lost none of their surprise or humour or bite or illumination.
He sees what’s happening in the world as something both pitiless and inexplicable. And he takes this for granted. His energy is concentrated on the immediate, on getting by and on finding a way out to something a bit brighter. He has observed that there are many circumstances and situations in life which occur and reoccur and are therefore, despite their strangeness, familiar. Since early childhood he has been familiar with dictums, jokes, hints of advice, tricks of the trade, dodges, which refer to these recurrent daily puzzles of life. And so he faces them with a proverbial foreknowledge of what he’s up against. He’s seldom nonplussed.
Here are some of the axioms of the proverbial foreknowledge he has acquired:
o The arse is the centre of the male body; it’s where you first kick your opponent, and it’s what you most frequently fall on when knocked down.
o Women are another army. Watch above all their eyes.
o The powerful are always hefty and nervous.
o Preachers love only their own voices.
o There are so many disabled around that wheelchairs may need a traffic controller.
o The words are missing to name or explain the daily run of trouble, unmet needs and frustrated desire.
o Most people have no time of their own yet they don’t realise this. Pursued, they pursue their lives.
o You, like them, count for nothing, until you step aside and stick your neck out; then your companions will stop short and gaze in wonder. And in the silence of that wonder there is every conceivable word of every mother tongue. You’ve created a hiatus of recognition.
o The ranks of men and women possessing nothing or almost nothing can offer a spare hole of exactly the right size for a little fellow to hide in.
o The digestive system is often beyond our control.
o A hat is not a protection from the weather; it’s a mark of rank.
o When a man’s trousers fall down it’s a humiliation; when a woman’s skirts are uplifted it’s an illumination.
o In a pitiless world a walking stick may be a companion.
Other axioms apply to location and settings.
o To enter most buildings money – or evidence of money – is required.
o Staircases are slides.
o Windows are for throwing things or climbing through.
o Balconies are posts from which to scramble down or from which to drop things.
o Wild nature is a hiding place.
o All chases are circular.
o Any step taken is likely to be a mistake, so take it with style to distract from the probable shit.
Something like this was part of the proverbial knowledge of a kid, around ten years old – ten the first time your age has two numerals – hanging out in South London, in Lambeth, at the very beginning of the 20th century.
A lot of this childhood was spent in public institutions, first a workhouse and then a school for destitute children. Hannah, his mother, to whom he was deeply attached, was incapable of looking after him. During much of her life she was confined to a lunatic asylum. She came from a South London milieu of music-hall performers.
by John Berger
