Open AccessModern Times, the ‘Pre-Digital Hum‘, and the Impossibility of Silence
Author(s) -
Ilka Brasch
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
pivot
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2369-7326
DOI - 10.25071/2369-7326.35860
Subject(s) - silence , depiction , sound (geography) , impossibility , hum , transition (genetics) , narrative , comics , art , literature , acoustics , visual arts , aesthetics , art history , physics , performance art , law , political science , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
The article considers Charlie Chaplin's 1936 feature _Modern Times_ as highly influenced by the sound transition. Even though the film appeared when film sound had undergone narrative integration and synchronized sound had ceased to attract the spectator's attention in its own right, _Modern Times_ frames cinematic sound as unnatural. Thereby it employs techniques and experiences from the sound transition and uses them for comic purposes. At the same time, the relations beween the film's depiction of machines, its use of sound and music, and the flow of time is constantly under negotiation. What results is a pre-digital era Hum that is constituted by an impossibility of silence in film after the sound transition, an overall mechanical hiss of the cinematic apparatus that inscribes itself into the film, and the aestheticization of rhythm and noise in the modern era.