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Abstract
This study examines how the films of the leading silent comedians of the 1920s (Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon) negotiated the tensions of social perception and performance in a burgeoning consumer culture. In the 1920s, social perception and performance were increasingly governed by a logic of perpetual assimilation; people continually attempted to master new forms of conduct and self-presentation generated by the media of consumer culture, often performing socially among strangers who judged them on external details. I argue that the feature films of the key silent comedians (which I term "the sight gag features") highlight the tensions of consumer culture for both men and women, but illustrate avenues of success which are generally specific to men, recalling the professional roles of the cinema showman and the athlete.
Chapter One details how the sight gag features address the anxieties of perpetual assimilation through a recurrent narrative structure, in which the comic character repeatedly fails to fit into an unfamiliar environment, but is ultimately accepted or redeemed, often in a final test. Chapter Two examines the sight gag features in the context of advertising scenarios from the 1920s relying on the fear of overlooking details, and argues that the films' repeated use of the "sight gag" (a form of visual humor based on mistaken perceptual interpretations) mediates tensions propagated by new advertising imagery. Chapter Three demonstrates how sight gags in which the comic character directs the perceptions of other characters through deceptive details recall advertising practices of the cinema showman, and embody a form of masculine success in consumer culture. Chapter Four examines how the exaggerated performances of the comedian, as he is forced to assimilate into an unfamiliar group, negotiate new tensions of social performance in consumer culture. Chapter Five analyzes how the movements of the comic character around obstacles in chase scenes recall images of masculine achievement found in athletic performances of the 1920s, and serve as a potent figuration and imaginary mastery of the process of perpetual assimilation.
