Quarterly Review of Film and Video

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The Location of Silent Comedy: Charlie Chaplin's

Outsider and Buster Keaton's Insider

Todd McGowan

To cite this article: Todd McGowan (2016) The Location of Silent Comedy: Charlie Chaplin's
Outsider and Buster Keaton's Insider, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 33:7, 602-619, DOI:
10.1080/10509208.2015.1094335

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2015.1094335

Published online: 03 Mar 2016.

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QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO
2016, VOL. 33, NO. 7, 602–619
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2015.1094335

The Location of Silent Comedy: Charlie Chaplin’s Outsider

and Buster Keaton’s Insider
Todd McGowan

The impossibility of comparisons

Comedy is always excessive. Comic excess always occurs in relation to the social
order, but the position that it takes relative to the social order can vary widely. The
two great comedians in the history of cinema, Charlie Chapin and Buster Keaton,
embody the two extremes of comic excess. Despite their contemporaneousness,
Chaplin and Keaton produce opposing forms of comedy, and in this way, they
show how comedy can emerge through exclusion from the social order or through
that order’s internal contradictions. Chaplin embodies exclusion, while Keaton
exposes an internal excess within society.
Chaplin and Keaton have two competing ideas of where the comic excess
resides. For Chaplin, it exists at the point of exclusion from the social order. The
figure of exclusion functions as an excess for the social order that excludes him or
her. For Keaton, the terrain of excess is internal to society. It is precisely by fitting
in that one finds oneself out of place. The opposition between Chaplin and Keaton
is necessary rather than contingent. Though of course one or both might not have
been born, the form of comedy that each develops had to find a figure to become
its representative.
The competing comic styles of Chaplin and Keaton—and the fact that their
careers overlap—invites a comparison of the two. Chaplin is certainly the more
famous, and most critics and popular observers agree that he is the greater comic
genius. Film historian Gerald Mast goes so far as to compare him as an artist with
Shakespeare. Mast writes, “Charles Chaplin is the greatest film artist in motion-
picture history. He is to the movies what Shakespeare is to drama.”1 Even if we
consider this description to be hyperbolic, it does capture Chaplin’s lasting popu-
larity, a popularity that transcends cinema itself. Just as Shakespeare resonates for
people who have no particular interest in the theater, Chaplin appeals to those
who do not love the cinema. His comedy, like Shakespeare’s tragedy, captures the
foundation of subjectivity—or at least the subject’s relation to society—and this

Todd McGowan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Vermont, where he teaches
film studies. His books include Out of Time: Desire in Atemporal Cinema, The Impossible David Lynch, and The Real Gaze:
Film Theory After Lacan, among other works.
© 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 603

approach creates a widespread appreciation that far outstrips that which Keaton
garners.
In one sense, it seems unfair and completely arbitrary to compare Keaton and
Chaplin. One could just as easily talk about Chaplin and Harold Lloyd or about
Keaton and the Marx Brothers. Indeed, such comparisons are usually just a matter
of personal taste: some spectators prefer Chaplin’s emphasis on the development
of a comic persona, while others have more appreciation for Keaton’s more cine-
matic form of comedy. The reasons for these preferences could be as numerous as
the people who hold them, and as a result, the preferences have no theoretical
weight at all. However, the difference between the two transcends the question of
taste and of personal preference. It concerns the status that we accord to the comic
object in a way that the comparison between Chaplin and Lloyd or between Keaton
and the Marx Brothers does not. In this sense, Dan Callahan’s claim that “there is
no pressing reason to choose between them, any more than there is a reason to
choose between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly” is not quite accurate.2 Comparing
Chaplin and Keaton uniquely raises the question of the theory of comedy and
what is at stake in the creation of a comic object.
For Chaplin, the comic object is what society produces and yet cannot incorpo-
rate within its structure. His films depict society’s struggles with this excess that it
can never fully integrate. Spectators might identify with Chaplin’s character, but in
doing so, they identify with what does not fit within their own social order. He is
comic insofar as he is excluded. Chaplin’s own status as in exile from the United
States for the last decades of his life for political and sexual reasons functions as a
metaphor for his form of comedy. Even if he could return to the United States in
1972 to receive a belated Oscar, he remained an excess that American society could
not integrate. In his films, Chaplin functions precisely as he does off-screen, as he
takes up a position that the social order cannot accommodate.
Although Keaton’s career precipitously declined after the silent era in a way that
Chaplin’s did not, he never endured the opprobrium that Chaplin did for his polit-
ical views and sexual proclivities. Keaton’s drunkenness, which corresponded to
his fall from cinematic popularity, did not carry with it the contempt that Chaplin’s
leftist political views or marriages with young women garnered. Keaton failed in a
socially acceptable way while Chaplin continued to succeed in an unacceptable
way.3 Their personal trajectories mirror the contrasting relation that their comedy
has to the social order. While Chaplin highlights the comic object as an excess that
cannot exist within society, Keaton displays as an internal excess, as a point within
the social order that reveals the order’s failure and absence of self-identity.
Chaplin conceives excess necessarily occupying a position outside the social
order, whereas Keaton shows that it can be present in society and disrupt it from
within. This orientation is the essence of the distinction between the two comedi-
ans and the source of Keaton’s greater social critique. Although Keaton did not
veer as far to the Left politically as Chaplin, he made film comedies that articulated
a more radical critique of the injustice of the social order and the ideology that
604 T. MCGOWAN

made this injustice possible. Both capture the source of comedy, and both recog-
nize how comedy has the potential to disrupt the functioning of everyday life. But
Chaplin confines comedy to exclusion. As the Little Tramp, he always exists on the
margins of society and reveals what society produces but cannot include. In the
case of Keaton, the comic figure exists in the midst of the social order and repre-
sents its internal contradictions. Although evaluative statements about comedians
are typically subjective and impossible to justify, we should debate the relative mer-
its of Chaplin and Keaton because this argument bears directly on the relationship
between comedy and the social order.

Where the Little Tramp belongs

Chaplin created the figure of the Little Tramp for the first time in his second film,
Kid Auto Races at Venice (Henry Lehman, 1914). The figure of the Little Tramp
represents the perfect embodiment of the comic idea: he is excluded and yet seems
to enjoy his exclusion. If Chaplin were a rich man wearing a tuxedo and a bowler,
he would lose his comic aspect, just as he would if he were a street person dressed
in rags. But because Chaplin brings together the lower class absence of wealth with
the upper class attire, he produces a comic effect. His appearance alone as the Little
Tramp is funny. The class status prevents us from respecting the tuxedo, while the
tuxedo prevents us from simply feeling sorry for the downtrodden Little Tramp.
Chaplin’s excessive dress eliminates the possibility of pathos, the response that typ-
ically overtakes us when we confront those in his social position. One does not
want to throw the Little Tramp one’s spare change but to laugh at him.4
The Little Tramp shows us the social leftover, what society cannot use and what
has no place in society—and yet what stands out excessively. He is the ultimate
figure of lack: he typically does not have a home or a job, and he often does not
have enough to eat. If he does have a job, it is often illegitimate. For example, in
The Kid (Charlie Chaplin, 1921), he earns his living by replacing the windows that
his young assistant breaks. He exists on the margin of society, but he does exist
there in the way that other marginal people do. He is not an unobtrusive homeless
man on the side of the street asking for change. Instead, he manages to end up as
an excessive disturbance of the social order that exiles him. This double structure
is apparent at the beginning of City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931).
The opening sequence of City Lights involves the unveiling of a monument ded-
icated to “Peace and Prosperity.” As the civic leaders lift the cover from the new
monument, the Little Tramp appears asleep on the monument. The initial minutes
of the film depict the authorities trying to remove the Little Tramp from the monu-
ment and he trying to extricate himself. His presence on the monument reveals
that despite the presence of the new monument the city has not actually attained
peace and prosperity for all. The Little Tramp is the stain in the unveiling of the
monument, a stain that gives the lie to what the monument proclaims.
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 605

In this scene, the Little Tramp shows how the social order fails. Unlike the city
officials and upper class citizens who are looking at the monument, he is penniless
and has no place of his own to sleep. At the same time, however, he is the only
figure in this scene with a clear identity. His excessiveness sticks out and separates
him from the others. He disturbs the scene because everyone cannot help but
notice him. This excessive portrayal of misery defines the Little Tramp and holds
the key to the comedy that he creates.
The times when the Little Tramp does become successful appear to defy this
description of his comedy. But his success never completely eliminates his status as
fundamentally excluded. For example, even when he finally becomes rich at the
end of Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin, 1925), he is easily mistaken for a stowaway
aboard a ship and almost arrested. While being photographed for his success, he
falls over a ledge and immediately loses the status that he had only moments ear-
lier. Although this film concludes with his financial success and the reestablish-
ment of his proper identity, the ending demonstrates that his social position is
never secure because he remains a figure of excess. This insecurity also manifests
itself throughout the course of City Lights, as the millionaire whose life the Little
Tramp saves forgets that he has befriended the Little Tramp and thus leaves him
back on the street. At every moment the Little Tramp’s excess ensures that he can-
not but be an exile from the social order.
The Little Tramp is a stand-in for the homeless person or even the enemy
combatant without social status. The Tramp has no social standing, but he
usually wins the favor of a woman who first pities him and then comes to
love him. In this way, Chaplin shows how we might embrace the social left-
over, as at the end of City Lights. This ending shows the formerly blind girl
(Virginal Cherrill) who recognizes the Little Tramp as the benefactor who has
given her the money for the operation to heal her eyes. She expects to see a
millionaire, someone at the height of the social ladder, and instead sees a
social leftover. Because the film concludes with a close-up of the Little Tramp
and not the girl’s reaction to him, the spectator cannot be sure about her reac-
tion. Perhaps she accepts him, or perhaps she rejects him. The face of the Lit-
tle Tramp does not reveal the final act with any certainty. In some sense, each
of Chaplin’s films featuring the Little Tramp places the spectator in the posi-
tion of the blind girl—confronted with the social leftover. His films are all
about giving us the ethical task of embracing what we as a society cast aside,
seeing the detritus as worthy of our love.
At the best moments of his cinema, Chaplin illustrates the impossibility of inte-
grating this detritus within the social order and thereby forces the spectator to
occupy this position as well. This impossible integration occurs not just at the end
of City Lights but also throughout The Kid, where Chaplin exists outside proper
society with a child whom he has found on the street and reluctantly taken in.5
The impossibility is also present in the concluding shot of The Circus (Charlie
Chaplin, 1928), where the Little Tramp’s exclusion enables the romantic couple to
606 T. MCGOWAN

form, and in the opening sequence from Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936), in
which the Little Tramp cannot keep pace with the exigencies of industrial
production.
But the zenith of the exposition of the Little Tramp as the manifestation of the
comic excess occurs in his most famous scene—the shoe-eating scene from Gold
Rush. This scene shows the Little Tramp in one of the most desperate positions
imaginable. He is stuck in frigid Alaska with a fellow prospector, Big Jim (Mack
Swain), and they have had nothing to eat for days. Unable to endure their hunger
and with big Jim on the verge of eating him, the Little Tramp decides to cook his
shoe for dinner.
The humor in this scene reveals the excess that Chaplin shows accompanying
the position of exclusion. Because the Little Tramp is excluded from society, he has
nothing to eat and must resort to eating his footwear. But even though his shoe
has no taste and no nutritional value, the Little Tramp cooks and eats it as if
engaged in fine dining. He carefully boils the shoe over the stove, and when eating
it, he turns the laces around his fork as if he was rolling spaghetti, while cutting the
shoe itself as if it were a quality steak. The exaggerated performance of cooking
and eating a wholly inadequate object perfectly manifest the comedy of the Little
Tramp. He shows how excess emerges through the poverty of the figure of
exclusion.
At times, the emphasis on exclusion can produce a damning indictment not just
of the social order as a whole (which individuals can easily deflect from them-
selves) but also of the most precious ideological fantasies that society produces.
This indictment is what takes place at the end of The Circus, when the Little Tramp
sacrifices his own happiness in order to make possible the romantic union between
Rex (Harry Crocker) and Merna (Merna Kennedy). He defends Merna at the cost
of his own position at the circus and then arranges her marriage with Rex, despite
his love for her. We see that their successful romantic union is only made possible
through the exclusion of the Little Tramp, and this exclusion undermines the plea-
sure that we can find in this union. The excluded figure of the Little Tramp signi-
fies all exclusions necessary for the experience of belonging and thus indicts
belonging as such, even in the form of the romantic union.
Chaplin’s final American film, Limelight (Charlie Chaplin, 1952), although it
does not feature the figure of the Little Tramp, shows the impossibility of this
figure entering completely into the social order.6 The film depicts an old comedian
named Calvero (Charlie Chaplin) who saves the life of a young ballet dancer
Thereza (Claire Bloom) in the opening sequence. Suffering from depression about
her failed career, Thereza attempts to kill herself. Even though he is returning
home from a night of drunkenness, Calvero has the awareness to smell the gas
coming from her apartment and to drag her into the safety of the hallway. He then
allows her to convalesce in his apartment. When she returns to the ballet and even-
tually becomes a star, she ensures that he will be able to perform with her out of
gratitude. This arrangement functions for a time until Calvero learns that the
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 607

producer is not satisfied with his performance and that it is only charity that keeps
him employed.
Calvero leaves Thereza as well and begins to perform on the street. When she
finally discovers where he is, she helps to arrange a benefit in which he can again
perform for a large audience. As the star of this benefit staged on his behalf, Cal-
vero will occupy a position that the Little Tramp never did: He will not only belong
to the social order but will reside at the center of it. He performs two successful
routines—a flea circus and singing “O for the Life of a Sardine”—that meet with
uproarious laughter from the audience. Despite running over his allotted time, the
wild approval demands an encore, and Chaplin performs a sketch of musical com-
edy with Buster Keaton. This performance marks the only time that the two
appeared together in a film, and while it is not the highest comic point for either
one, it is not an abject failure. The routine, however, involves Chaplin entering
into Keaton’s terrain.
Calvero plays the violin while his unnamed partner (Buster Keaton) plays
the piano. Initially, we see them unable even to manage to tune their instru-
ments. Calvero breaks strings while just plucking the violin, and his partner
breaks a string in the piano while at the same time being unable to keep the
sheets of music from continually falling from the stand. Their collective fail-
ure ends with the partner stepping on the violin and Calvero pulling a large
knot of piano strings from the piano, which suggests that the performance
will end in comic failure. But this failure is not the actual source of the
comedy.
After the removal of the strings from the piano, the partner sits down again to
play, and Calverso pulls a new violin from the back of his pants. In spite of the
ineptitude they have displayed for the previous few minutes, they begin to play per-
fectly, and it is this perfection that becomes the ultimate source of the comedy in
this scene. Chaplin shows how failure can instantly transforms itself into success
and thus break down the distinction between them.7 With this scene, however,
Chaplin achieves success in a way that he does not during his appearances as the
Little Tramp. Here, he no longer creates the comedy of the excluded. In this sense,
Limelight should have been Chaplin’s last film (as he purportedly intended it to
be). It is fully appropriate that Keaton is present at this moment because it is a
moment at which Chaplin begins to act like Keaton and thus announce his own
demise.
Keaton’s comedy places him within the social structure and thus relies on inclu-
sion. Inclusion marks the end of Chaplin, and just after the success of this routine,
Chaplin jumps off the stage into a bass drum in the orchestra pit. The fall leads the
recurrence of a heart attack, which ends up soon killing Calvero; however, this
event is much more the death of the comedy associated with Chaplin. His comedy
depends on exclusion, and the moment that Limelight reveals his complete
acceptance by the crowd, he dies.
608 T. MCGOWAN

The excluded inside

Although the Little Tramp is the most famous manifestation of Chaplin’s comedy,
this figure impinges on the comic possibilities through its unrelenting emphasis on
exclusion. Limelight does show the end of this type of comedy, but this film is not,
for the most part, a comedy. It is more a film about the end of comedy. Chaplin
made his greatest film after the Little Tramp retires at the end of Modern Times
(1936) and before he chronicles his ending in Limelight (1952). This success of The
Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) depends on Chaplin showing that even the
figure at the center of society shares in the exclusion that befalls the Little Tramp.
In this sense, the film represents a halfway point between Chaplin’s comedy and
Keaton’s. The effectiveness of this comedy can be measured by the controversy
that it aroused after its release and that it continues to arouse.
In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, critics accused Chaplin’s The
Great Dictator of letting Hitler off much too easily. Rather than appearing as one
of most murderous regimes in human history, Nazism comes off as a rule of buf-
foons. Adenoid Hynkel (Charlie Chaplin), the stand-in for Hitler in the film, gives
nonsensical speeches in mock-German, orders the invasion of neighboring Oster-
lich on a whim, dances privately with a globe balloon, and ends up being mistaken
for a Jewish barber and imprisoned.
The mockery of Hitler’s anti-Semitism and the comparison between the dictator
Hynkel and the Jewish barber do not seem to go far enough in their critique. Even
Chaplin himself admitted that, had he known what would unfold, he would not
have made the film. By identifying the insufficiency of a satirical portrait in the
face of Nazi atrocities, Theodor Adorno authors the definitive critique of the film.
In his essay on engaged art, he notes, “The Great Dictator loses all satirical force
and becomes obscene when a Jewish girl can hit a line of storm-troopers on the
head with a pan without being torn to pieces. For the sake of political commitment,
political reality is trivialized: which then reduces the political effect.”8 But if
Adorno is correct and The Great Dictator fails in terms of political commitment, it
does not fail as a comedy. It represents the height of Chaplin’s comic genius, and it
does so to the extent that it moves away from (although does not definitively leave)
the logic associated with the Little Tramp.
The great humor in The Great Dictator derives from Chaplin’s ability to connect
the ultimate insider, Hynkel (the representative of Hitler), with the complete out-
sider, the Jewish barber who ends up in a concentration camp. The excessiveness
of the critique—in addition to Hynkel himself, other Nazi and fascist leaders
become completely absurd, like Joseph Goebbels appearing as Herr Garbitsch
(Henry Daniell)—creates the comedy. One could only mock Hitler through the
extreme excess that Chaplin employs. When Chaplin also shows Hynkel to be
interchangeable with the Jewish barber, the film’s comedy reaches its apex. No one
can tell the difference between the leader of Tomainia and its excluded part. The
inside and outside overlap through this confusion of identity.
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 609

Although The Great Dictator represents the height of Chaplin’s comic achieve-
ment through its identification of the figure of symbolic authority with the excluded
excess, it also includes one of the two most egregious lapses in Chaplin’s cinema.
The danger associated with Chaplin’s focus on the comic object as excluded from
the social order is that this situation of total exclusion tempts him with the image of
total inclusion as a remedy, and the political problem with this remedy is that it is
precisely the dream of universal inclusion that necessitates exclusion. A society can
only construct the illusion of wholeness through a figure of exception not included
within the whole.9 In this sense, Chaplin’s solution for the Little Tramp’s exclusion
not only fails but goes so far as to highlight its necessity. The problem is not just
that Chaplin turns from comedy to sentimentality but that his version of sentimen-
tality vitiates the critique that his comedy so forcefully makes. Preaching inclusion
places Chaplin on the same turf as the Nazis whom his film attacks.
In the speeches that Chaplin’s character gives at the end of The Great Dictator
and Monsieur Verdoux (Charlie Chaplin, 1947), he gives in to the temptation that
accompanies comic exclusion and preaches the politics of including the excluded.
In his speech impersonating Hynkel in The Great Dictator, he gives a long procla-
mation about the need for peace and freedom, as well as the importance of strug-
gling against brutality and dictatorship. He concludes,
Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed,
with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason where science and progress
will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

This call for an end to national barriers and to all other forms of separation is a
fantasy of total inclusion.10 The danger of this fantasy is that the image of total
inclusion always necessitates an exclusion in order to structure the unified set of
all. Including all means excluding at least one. This fantasy is the specific danger
that accompanies Chaplin’s comedy of exclusion, and it is a danger that Keaton’s
comedy avoids altogether. Although we see Keaton wealthy and successful at times
in his films, we never see him propagating the idea of total inclusion as a political
solution.

Keaton as the included exclusion

Keaton never succumbs to the idea of universal inclusion as Chaplin does because
he never conceives of the comic object as completely excluded from the social
order. Instead, his comedy reveals an exclusion internal to the social order. Kea-
ton’s character fits in, but his manner of fitting in exposes how the social order
exceeds itself.11 His excess is thus inseparable from the order itself, in contrast to
that of the Little Tramp, who exists apart from society and can never be integrated
into it. Keaton belongs, but his belonging shows that no one really belongs. Belong-
ing always leads to a failure to belong, and ironically, it is the failure to belong that
always leads to belonging.
610 T. MCGOWAN

This structure is apparent in the most famous sequence in all of Keaton’s cin-
ema—his entrance into the movie screen in Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924).
When the projectionist (Buster Keaton) falls asleep while showing a film, his
dream self leaves the projection booth and walks to the theater screen where he
interacts with the scene. Even though this interaction is only a dream, the projec-
tionist has the excessive ability to enter into the film being screened. However, this
excess immediately produces a problem. Each time that Keaton adjusts to his set-
ting, a cut produces a new setting that renders his action inappropriate. For exam-
ple, he dives into the sea off a rock, and a cut to a snowy landscape results in
Keaton being stuck headfirst in a mound of snow. He endures mishap after mishap
due to the constant cuts, and he is never able to find his bearings in the setting
before it shifts. He can enter the scenes of the projected film, but this wish fulfill-
ment leaves him unable to act ending up almost eaten by lions or run over by an
oncoming train as the setting changes. His inability to act is funny because it is the
result of the power his dream state gives him.
The sequence from Sherlock, Jr. highlights a formal difference between Chaplin
and Keaton that bespeaks their theoretical difference. Chaplin’s comedy focuses on
himself as the figure of exclusion, and his films emphasize his individual perfor-
mance. Consequently, these films seem as if they could be stage performances
without much alteration. This possibility is impossible to imagine with any of
Keaton’s films. Keaton is a filmic filmmaker, and his comedy derives from editing
(as in Sherlock, Jr.) and from his incredible stunts, most of which require the vast
canvass of film. Chaplin introduces a foreign element—namely, himself—into the
film in order to create comedy. Keaton distorts the form of the film so that the
comedy functions as an internal excess. Keaton’s editing and stunts are excessive,
but they remain part of what they exceed. The formal contrast between Chaplin
and Keaton derives from their different approaches to comedy. All comedy
involves excess, but Keaton’s excess is that of someone on the inside.
The film usually considered Keaton’s masterpiece, The General (Clyde
Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1926), develops this logic to its fullest extent.
At first glance, it seems as if this is a Chaplin film about exclusion. Johnnie
Gray (Buster Keaton) endures a type of exclusion throughout the film. He
cannot enlist in the Confederate Army and thus cannot win the love of Anna-
belle Lee (Marion Mack), who will only commit herself to someone who has
enlisted. Nonetheless, Johnnie, as a train engineer, plays an integral role in the
Confederate Army’s struggle. In fact, it is the vocation of engineer that leads
the army to reject Johnnie’s attempted enlistment. He is too valuable to the
Confederacy as an engineer to be employed as a soldier. Johnnie works within
the Confederacy but cannot fully belong to its official military structure. Like
the Little Tramp in City Lights, he does not belong, but in his case, the failure
to belong does not entail complete exclusion.
Johnnie’s attempted enlistment provides the first major comic scene of the film.
Johnnie goes to the enlistment office certain that he will win the love of Annabelle.
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 611

But just as he is about to enlist, an authority informs the enlistment officer that the
train engineer cannot become a soldier. After being rejected because of his value as a
train engineer, Johnnie tries to adopt a series of different identities in order to fool the
enlistment officer. Each comic attempt is thwarted, and Johnnie remains part of the
Confederate struggle but not a proper member of the Confederate Army. But this
position holds no weight at all with Annabelle, who believes him to be a coward. He
fails precisely because he is excessively valuable to the cause. The ending of the film
corrects this failure, but it does so excessively, and thus produces another failure.
One of the great comic endings in the history of cinema takes place as Johnnie
finally attains a role in the Confederate Army. When Johnnie uses his train to
block a Union offensive, the Confederate Army rewards him not just with enlist-
ment but also with officer status. This new status impresses Annabelle and ends
their estrangement, although at the moment that Johnnie would kiss Annabelle to
cement their relationship, his rank becomes a barrier to their renewed connection.
As the new officer prepares to kiss Annabelle, a series of soldiers walk past him
and salute because of his rank. Instead of kissing Annabelle for the first time, John-
nie must salute each soldier. He belongs, and it is his belonging that prompts
Annabelle to accept his proposal. But it is also his belonging to the army that acts
as a barrier to kissing her. Inclusion does not eliminate failure but excessively
reproduces it in the case of Keaton. Whereas Chaplin finds excess outside the social
structure, Keaton finds it within, and it acts as an obstacle for him. He is only able
to surmount this obstacle when he decides to kiss Annabelle while continuing to
salute without even looking at the passing soldiers. This image of Johnnie kissing
and saluting at the same time provides the perfect comic conclusion for Keaton’s
masterpiece. At this moment, he acts excessively—kissing and saluting—because
his inclusion leaves him unable to act of his desire.12
Keaton always succeeds at inclusion even when it seems, as with The General or
Battling Butler (Buster Keaton, 1926) that he will not. In the latter film, his exces-
sive wealth leads to his initial exclusion: Even though he is wealthy, the father and
brothers of the Mountain Girl (Sally O’Neil) whom Alfred Butler (Buster
Keaton) is attempt to woo find him too weak and unmanly to be a suitable mate
and member of their family. Butler’s solution, proposed by his valet (Snitz
Edwards), is to pose as the famous prizefighter who shares his name, Alfred Bat-
tling Butler (Francis McDonald). The former Butler’s excess wealth cannot help
him through the training regime that he must endure, and this regime comically
reveals his failures as an athlete. Eventually, as he does in The General, Keaton suc-
ceeds in Battling Butler, defeating the great boxing champion in a fight. The initial
excess in both cases produces a failure, but then the failure leads to a final excess.
But one of the reasons why The General is Keaton’s masterpiece and Battling
Butler is an almost forgotten film is the final comic twist that The General adds.
The end of Battling Butler ceases to be comic when Alfred Butler defeats the boxer
who shares his name and wins the affection of the Mountain Girl. His romantic
union with the Mountain Girl marks the film’s turn away from comedy, and we do
612 T. MCGOWAN

not laugh at it. But at the conclusion of The General when we see Johnnie forced to
kiss Annabelle while saluting at the same time, it is apparent that the excess of his
success produces the very barrier that it promises to eliminate, and in this way the
comedy continues. At the moment Keaton belongs, he finds himself bereft of the
benefits that come with belonging.13As a result, one laughs at The General right
until the film ends.
Keaton’s focus on the excess of belonging contrasts with Chaplin’s focus on
the excess of exclusion, and both forms of excess result in great comedy. One
need not choose, but it is at the same important to distinguish the political
valence of each form of comedy. Despite Chaplin’s more radical politics,
Keaton creates a more radical comedy because it illustrates how the social
order subverts itself rather than trying to subvert it from the outside. That is
to say, the failure of the social order derives from its own contradictions, and
Keaton’s films direct our attention toward these contradictions. This focus is
the political high point of comedy.

Keaton’s danger
Keaton’s form of comedy does carry risks with it. While he never lapses into the
sentimental vision of total inclusion that Chaplin succumbs to at the end of The
Great Dictator, he commits an equally traditional political misstep. When his films
show that the insider is at once an outsider, that belonging also entails a failure to
belong, they sometimes have recourse to racist images in order to convey the out-
side. He fails to see that the racialized outsider is different from the insider, that
there is a distinction between insider’s failure to belong and the situation of the
outsider. That is to say, not everyone fails to belong in the same way, and Keaton
creates racist images because his version of comedy does not allow him to see this
fact. Although the majority of Keaton’s films avoid such imagery, it does appear in
a few of his films, including two of his features.
Perhaps the most egregious racism in Keaton’s cinema occurs in The Navigator
(Donald Crisp and Buster Keaton, 1924) where Rollo (Buster Keaton) and Betsy
(Kathryn McGuire) sail alone aboard the large ship Navigator and encounter black
savages who attack the ship and threaten them. The savages have a stereotypical
look and act buffoonish throughout the encounter. Here, Keaton employs a stan-
dard Hollywood racist image without any irony.
The point of the exchange between Rollo and Betsy and the savages is to
illustrate the similarity between the two camps. Neither side is able to attack
the other successfully without creating mayhem for itself, and in this way,
Keaton avoids the typical denouement of the racist imagery. For him, there is
no significant difference between the figures of high society (Rollo and Betsy)
and the outsiders who are attacking them. The problem is that Keaton turns
to racist imagery to illustrate this idea, and it marks an important limitation
of his cinematic project.
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 613

In addition to the depiction of the black savages in The Navigator, Keaton

resorts to the use of blackface in his films. He had used it in his vaudeville routine,
and then he turned to it in two shorts and one feature—Neighbors (Edward Cline
and Buster Keaton, 1920), The Playhouse (Edward Cline and Buster Keaton, 1921),
and College (James Horne and Buster Keaton, 1927).14 In each case (and especially
in College), Keaton uses blackface to mock his own character, to show how he is a
lacking figure who requires the excess of blackface in order to fit in. But what the
act of putting on blackface fails to see is that it inherently mocks those who are
genuinely excluded.15
Keaton fails to pay attention to genuine exclusion in the way that Chaplin does
because he focuses on the inside excluding itself, not on those who necessarily
remain on the outside. His lapses into racism are not simply personal political
errors divorced from his filmmaking project but errors that germinate within the
project itself. Just as sentimental total inclusion is the risk that Chaplin runs, black-
face or wild black savages is the risk that Keaton runs.
The contrast with Chaplin on the question of racism is sharp. Chaplin himself
never appears in blackface in any of his films, which is quite remarkable given the
era in which he worked and given his start in vaudeville where blackface was ram-
pant.16 There is also an absence of racist stereotypes in Chaplin’s films. Though
the casts are almost uniformly white, Chaplin does not use non-white characters to
create humor in the way that Keaton does in The Navigator.
Certainly one is free to dismiss Keaton altogether for his forays into blackface or
to accept them through the prism of historicist thinking, seeing them as the errors
of a particular epoch. But this dismissal is to miss the elucidative value that Kea-
ton’s racism has for us. It is a specific form of racism, not that of the Klan or even
the contemporary opponent of affirmative action who retreats from the fantasy of
the racial other’s seemingly strange enjoyment. Instead, it is a racism that fails to
consider the difference between society’s self-exclusion and those whom it
excludes.
Society’s self-exclusion ensures that no one really belongs, and this is what
Keaton’s comedy emphasizes. But in order to obscure this universal failure of
belonging, societies have recourse to racism, xenophobia, and other form of
exclusion. They exclude in order to hide the fact that everyone is always
already excluded. Certain groups must embody non-belonging so that others
can believe that they belong. By focusing on the non-belonging of everyone,
Keaton overlooks this distinction. This failure on Keaton’s part is not neces-
sary—one can certainly create his type of comedy and avoid it—but it repre-
sents a danger that a comedian of his stripe must remain vigilant against. It is
a failure that Chaplin’s form of comedy, in contrast, almost never succumbs
to. Even though Keaton is more politically efficacious comedian, he needs
Chaplin as a corrective. There are times when Keaton requires Chaplin to
come rushing to his aid philosophically, as he did materially when he gave
the down-and-out Keaton a part in Limelight.
614 T. MCGOWAN

Human versus machine

The contrast between Chaplin and Keaton becomes most visible in their respective
attitudes toward technology. While Chaplin finds comedy in showing the mechani-
zation of the human being in Modern Times, Keaton depicts machines functioning
like human beings. In the famous opening sequence of Modern Times, Chaplin
shows the machine transforming the human into an excessive being. As a worker
on an assembly line, Chaplin’s task is one of tightening two bolts on a series of
parts that rapidly move past him. With a wrench in each hand, Chaplin manages
to keep pace, even though he falls behind on occasion.
When the plant manager orders the speed of the line increased, Chaplin loses
the ability to keep pace, and intent on tightening every bolt, he follows the parts
into the large machine where the conveyor belt takes them. We see Chaplin himself
moving within the machine in one of the film’s lasting images. Here, Chaplin’s
incapacity as a worker on the assembly line produces him as an excess within the
machine. The film is not simply making an elementary point about the reifying
force of the machine. Instead, it is showing how industrial production creates a
human excess that cannot be integrated into the production process.
Keaton’s much more sanguine position on technology often focuses on the train
or the ship, most famously in The General but also in Our Hospitality (John Bly-
stone and Buster Keaton, 1923) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Charles Reisner and Buster
Keaton, 1928). The train or the ship or whatever type of technological device in a
Keaton film is never simply a machine under human control. It is always a
machine that seems to have a subjectivity of its own. The machine is funny
because, like the subject, it is constantly exceeds itself.
The most comic machine train sequence in Keaton’s cinema occurs in Our Hos-
pitality, when Willie McKay (Buster Keaton) travels south to visit his birthplace
and claim the inheritance from his recently deceased father. During the train ride,
Willie unknowingly sits next to Virginia (Natalie Talmadge), a member of the
Canfield family, with whom Willie’s family is engaged in a longtime feud.
Although Willie’s timid interaction with Virginia is comic, the primary humor
during the train ride derives from the train itself and its relationship to its
environment.
The train carries the appellation “Rocket,” but its speed never exceeds the pace
at which a person might run. In fact, recurrent shots of the train in motion depict
a dog running along beneath one of the cars, and he runs along throughout almost
the entire journey. At one point, he even demonstrates that he can outrun the train.
Early in the trip, an exposed stowaway expresses his displeasure by holding the
train back with his hand, revealing that the machine is not decisively stronger than
a human. The weakness of the train is further evident when the film shows the
track on which the train travels. It appears crooked and haphazardly placed, and it
must traverse natural obstacles, like a fallen tree that the track awkwardly runs
across. As the train passes over sections of the track, the track moves up and down
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 615

in order to indicate its instability. When a donkey refuses to move for the train, the
engineer and conductor are able to move the track around the donkey so that the
train can pass. This comic event reveals the pliability or humanity of the machine.
Though the machine promises regular functioning, in Our Hospitality and
throughout Keaton’s films it displays the same foibles as a human being.
These foibles continue throughout the journey. The back of the train breaks off
and sends the sleeping conductor plummeting to the ground. When it goes
through a tunnel, the absence of any exhaust mechanism leaves all the passengers
covered in soot. But the primary comedy comes at the end of the journey. Due to a
boy’s prank at a switching site, the back of the train decouples from the front and
travels down a parallel track. It soon outraces the engine and ends up arriving at
the station prior to the front of the train. The sequence concludes with the front of
the train crashing into the back at the destination.
The contrast between Keaton’s depiction of technology and Chaplin’s is
extreme. While Chaplin shows the machine failing like Keaton does, his emphasis
is much more on the machine’s effect on the human being subjected to it. The
human working with a machine becomes automated and machine-like. One might
imagine Henri Bergson going to a screening of Modern Times late in his life and
finding absolute confirmation of the thesis of Laughter, in which he argues that
comedy involves the human becoming machine-like.17 He would not have the
same reaction to Our Hospitality. In Keaton’s film, the machine behaves more like
a human than the human beings themselves do. For Keaton, the train itself is a
subject.18
The different positions that Chaplin and Keaton take up relative to the machine
fit within their approach to comedy. The machine excludes Chaplin, and the com-
edy derives from this exclusion and from Chaplin’s struggle with the machine. The
machine exposes the worker’s lack through its excessive demands. In the case of
Keaton, the machine is one of us, and we are not at war with it. Like any subject,
its own lack creates an excess, in the way that the instability of the train track ena-
bles two people to move it around a recalcitrant donkey. One could say that Keaton
is more sanguine about technology, but this orientation is only because he sees its
failures more clearly.
It is around their relationship to the machine that Gilles Deleuze locates a cen-
tral difference between Chaplin and Keaton in his Cinema 1: The Movement-
Image.19 Deleuze recognizes Chaplin’s hostility to the machine, and he sees in Kea-
ton’s films an attempt to show the machine not as a whole but as a series of parts.
In other words, the machine in Keaton’s vision is one of us. This relationship leads
Deleuze to proffer a vision of the contrast between the two as a contrast between
two forms of communism. He writes, “we cannot be certain that Keaton lacks a
political vision that is, on the contrary, present in Chaplin. There are rather two
very different ‘socialist’ visions, the one communist-humanist in Chaplin, the other
anarchistic-machinic in Keaton.”20 The role of the machine in Keaton’s political
vision is undeniable, but it does not derive from any investment in the machine as
616 T. MCGOWAN

such. He is not a believer in salvation through machines or technology. Instead, he

turns to the machine to reveal that even automation does not work properly. As
Keaton demonstrates, we do not have to look to exclusion for comedy. The contra-
diction that produces comedy exists in the midst of machine of the social order
itself.

Necessity versus contingency

The relationship that Chaplin and Keaton have to the machine seems to belie that
relationship that they have to necessity and contingency. We typically associate the
machine with necessity—unless it breaks down, it operates according to necessary
rules and has no room for contingency. But in addition to his investment in the
machine, Keaton is also a filmmaker of contingency. This emphasis reveals the
contingency at work in the apparent necessity of the machine. The role of necessity
and contingency in the films of Chaplin and Keaton speaks to where they locate
their comedy.
Chaplin is the necessary excess that the social order must expel in order to cre-
ate the appearance of functioning smoothly. The necessity associated with Chaplin
is the necessity of exclusion. He can repeat the same character in multiple films—
the Little Tramp—because the character is socially necessary. Chaplin’s comedy
calls for us to change our relationship to what is excluded, but it grasps the neces-
sity of exclusion itself.
Keaton is the contingent excess that internally troubles every social order. His
comedy reveals that social success depends on contingency, and in this way he
destroys all myths of proper social hierarchy, whether earned through birth,
through merit, or through hard work. Keaton succeeds in his films not because he
is nobler, more skilled, or more hard-working but because he benefits from contin-
gency.21 It is the central role of contingency in all of his triumphs that lies at the
heart of Keaton’s comedy. Despite his status as a lacking subject, he can perform
incredible feats through the aid of pure contingency.
In every one of Keaton’s films, contingency is the vehicle for his success. It
allows him to rescue his family from financial ruin in The Saphead (Herbert Blach!e
and Winchell Smith, 1920), to resolve the family feud in Our Hospitality, and to
corral the stampeding cattle in Go West (Buster Keaton, 1925). Success never sim-
ply occurs in a Keaton film. Contingency always plays a decisive role in it, and this
reveals the tenuousness of all success.
Contingency often enables Keaton to survive what appears to be certainly a fatal
event. This survival is what occurs during the horrible storm at the end of Steam-
boat Bill, Jr. A building collapses just before Keaton enters it, and subsequently he
survives a house falling on top of him because he happens to be standing at the
precise point where an open window on the house hits the ground.22 After a series
of other close encounters with death, finally a tree that he is holding becomes
uprooted and delivers him to safety. Contingency is the excess that rescues the
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 617

endangered subject, and all of Keaton’s films show that society could not go on
without contingency playing a central part.
Necessity and contingency can both play a role in comedy, but they occur at
opposite ends of the comic spectrum. Necessity produces the comedy of exclusion,
and contingency creates the comic disruption within the social order. Chaplin’s
failures are comic because they are necessary, while Keaton’s successes are comic
because they are contingent. But in each case, an incapacity leads to an excess, or
an excess leads to a incapacity. And this comic intersection is what both Chaplin
and Keaton have in common.
Chaplin shows that failure can be a mode of success, and in this way, he pro-
vides a direction for how to comport ourselves as subjects. We must identify with
the excluded excess. Keaton, on the other hand, shows that success always fails.
This does not so much tell us how to act but how to structure the social order. Soci-
ety must foreground the inevitability of failure even in the midst of the greatest tri-
umphs. It must begin with the failure of anyone to belong.
Chaplin and Keaton represent supplementary forms within the comic experi-
ence, and both are required. Chaplin’s comedy is the more standard form, but Kea-
ton’s is more far-reaching in its implications. Though the dangers of Keaton’s
comedy are greater—racism is more of a catastrophe than sentimentality—so are
the rewards. Keaton emphasizes that every success occurs simultaneously with a
failure that undermines the success. Laughing at Keaton’s comedy means wrestling
with the inevitability of failure.

Notes
1. Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies, p. 62.
2. Callahan, “Buster Keaton,” in Senses of Cinema.
3. Chaplin lived out his life in prosperity, while Keaton’s career basically ended with the failure of
What—No Beer? (Edward Sedgwick) in 1933. After this time, he struggled with drunkenness
and barely eked out a living. Thanks to the largess of Chaplin who gave him a role performing
with him in 1952, Keaton’s career underwent a moderate revival until his death in 1966.
4. Chaplin’s genius consists in constructing the figure of the Little Tramp as a purely comic
figure. The temptation to make a social outcast pathetic is almost insurmountable, but
Chaplin succumbs to it only on rare occasions in his films—and he quickly regains his
bearings and returns the Little Tramp to the domain of comedy.
5. The Little Tramp’s attempts to dump the child that he finds on the street are extremely sig-
nificant for Chaplin’s creation of the Little Tramp. His ability to display a complete lack of
concern for the welfare of an abandoned child is essential to the comedy of this figure. If he
were caring and affectionate at all times, we could not laugh at his plight. The coldness of
the Little Tramp in The Kid is difficult for Chaplin to sustain in later films, but its decline
represents a decline in the comic potential of the Little Tramp.
6. It is evident that Limelight functions as Chaplin’s farewell to Hollywood and to the cinema
as such. The death of Calvero and his symbolic replacement with Thereza the ballet dancer
indicates Chaplin’s own symbolic death as a comic performer. When he returns in A King
in New York (Charlie Chaplin, 1957), it is primarily to launch an attack against the political
and cultural situation in the United States that precipitated his exile.
618 T. MCGOWAN

7. Chaplin films the final routine in Calvero’s act differently from the first two. While we see
the first two routines, the film cuts to the audience at the benefit laughing enthusiastically
with approval. During the third routine, Chaplin provides no reverse shot of the audience
until the routine concludes. As a result, the spectator has no idea whether or not Calvero is
succeeding or bombing with the audience, which contributes to the sense of tension during
the routine. It also adds to the sense of triumph when the routine concludes and Chaplin
shows the cheering crowd.
8. Adorno, “Commitment,” in Aesthetics and Politics, pp. 184–185.
9. For the classic account of the role that the exception plays in constituting the state as a
whole, see Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.
10. The speech at the end of Monsieur Verdoux is less dogmatic and more politically daring,
though it ultimately suffers from the same vision that hampers the speech in The Great Dic-
tator. After his condemnation for murder, Verdoux claims,
As for being a mass killer, does not the world encourage it? Is it not building weapons of
destruction for the sole purpose of mass killing? Has it not blown unsuspecting women
and little children to pieces? And done it very scientifically? As a mass killer, I am an
amateur by comparison.
Here, the call for universal inclusion remains implicit in the critique of the development
of large-scale weapons like the atomic bomb, which had only recently been used.
11. Keaton’s belonging to the social order extends to his relationship to the setting. While
Chaplin is always alienated from the setting, Keaton is intimately involved in it and creates
his comedy out of the world to which be belongs. According to Robert Knopf, “In Keaton’s
films, the world itself is an integral part of the show, and consequently the world embraces
the illogic of his vaudeville comedy rather than serving merely as a background for it”
(Knopf, The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton, p. 82).
12. The ending of The General represents a case of Keaton quoting himself in an earlier film,
Seven Chances (Buster Keaton, 1925). In this film, James Shannon (Buster Keaton) spends
the entire running time attempting to marry Mary Jones (Ruth Dwyer). In the end, the
marriage finally takes place at her house, but as he prepares the kiss Mary for the first time,
a series of other people intervene to congratulate them and thereby interrupt the kiss. The
film ends with James looking exasperated and still unable to kiss his new bride. This version
of failure emerging out of excess is even more insightful than what The General shows.
Here, it is marriage itself that is the barrier to romantic contact.
13. Battling Butler simply concludes with Butler winning the affection of the Mountain Girl and her
family. This unambiguous triumph at the end separates Keaton’s comic successes—Navigator
(Donald Crisp and Buster Keaton, 1924), Battling Butler, and College (James Horne and Buster
Keaton, 1927)—from his greatest masterpieces, such as Sherlock, Jr. and The General.
14. Seven Chances (Buster Keaton, 1925) also relies on racist stereotypes of black characters
and the fear of miscegenation for some of its comedy.
15. The problem is that one cannot simply dismiss Keaton’s racist films as comic failures.
Neighbors represents his most racist short film: not only does he appear in black face, but
he uses black characters in a completely stereotypical way. Nonetheless, the comic sequen-
ces in which he tries to rescue the neighbor whom he loves from her house and to escape
her father’s wrath are among the highlights in all of his shorts.
16. I should add that even though Chaplin himself never performs in blackface, he does appear
in a film in which others are in blackface. This is a 1915 short entitled A Night in the Show
that he directed.
17. See Bergson, “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic,” in Comedy.
18. Alan Bilton argues that Keaton even transforms nature into a machine to make clear that it
too can malfunction, stating,
 QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO 619

Keaton’s films portray the natural world as just another enormous machine, a vast
organic engine prone both to over heating and to breaking down—which is one of the
reasons why there are so many storms, cyclones and floods in his work (Bilton, Silent
Film Comedy and American Culture, p. 183).
Keaton focuses so intently on the machine not because he has faith in the possibility of tech-
nological successes but because he knows that technology will inevitably fail. If nature is also
a machine, then it can fail as well, which forces us to think of nature’s problems as in some
sense self-inflicted. This approach leads Jennifer Fay to consider Keaton a filmmaker of cli-
matology. See Fay, “Buster Keaton’s Climate Change,” in Modernism/Modernity.
19. Deleuze does not isolate the difference between Chaplin and Keaton in their attitude
toward the machine. He begins with the claim that Keaton, in contrast to Chaplin, is the
only filmmaker to translate burlesque to what Deleuze calls the large form, the form that
focuses on a vast situation and requires a significant action to change the situation. The
burlesque action is typically inadequate to do so, but Keaton defies this limitation. He man-
ages to resolve a shipwreck or escape a deadly storm through comic acts, whereas such sit-
uations typically require the actions of, say, a western hero like John Wayne.
20. Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, p. 176.
21. This is not to say that Keaton’s incredible stunts are successful solely due to contingent fac-
tors. It is certainly Keaton’s skill at a stunt man that enables him to perform the numerous
stunts that he does. But in the diegesis of the films, his skill is rarely shown to be responsi-
ble for his success. It is always some contingent element—a house falling just the right way,
a rival tripping at an opportune time, a log appearing just when he needs it, and so on.
22. The danger involved in the stunt of having the side of an actual house fall on top of Keaton
with just the open window missing his body prompted the stunt coordinator for Steamboat
Bill, Jr. to refuse to continue to work on the film if Keaton insisted on performing the stunt.
Keaton preferred to execute the stunt as planned without the assistance of the stunt coordi-
nator for the rest of the film.

Works cited
Adorno, Theodor. Commitment, translated by Francis McDonagh. Aesthetics and Politics (Lon-
don: Verso, 1977).
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-
Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, translated by Cloudesley
Brereton and Fred Rothwell. Comedy, edited by Wylie Sypher (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1956).
Bilton, Alan. Silent Film Comedy and American Culture. (New York: Palgrave, 2013).
Callahan, Dan. Buster Keaton. Senses of Cinema (October 2002). <http://sensesofcinema.com/
2002/great-directors/keaton/>
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara
Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992).
Fay, Jennifer. Buster Keaton’s Climate Change. Modernism/Modernity 21:1 (2014), 25–49.
Knopf, Robert. The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1999).
Mast, Gerald. The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1979).