ABSTRACT
Charles Chaplin’s rise to international celebrity emphatically shows how early twentieth century mass culture readily absorbed and reconverted the carnival elements of the circus and music hall where Chaplin fi rst developed the skills later to make him famous. Chaplin also expedited the silent fi lm industry’s evolution from a “cinema of attractions” targeted mainly at lower social classes to a narrative expression appealing increasingly to middle-class spectators. By the early 1920s, the English-born star was selfconsciously reaching for artistry in his fi lms, gradually refi ning the raucous, frequently bawdy slapstick of his early short reels into feature-length sentimental comedies full of high-minded social commentary. In his 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts, the U.S. essayist Gilbert Seldes bemoaned the increasing predominance of “art” in Chaplin’s work and openly encouraged the fi lmmaker to return to the lowbrow spontaneity of his earlier period (54). That Seldes’s warning went unheeded should not be surprising, as his voice was a minority opinion among prominent intellectuals of the 1920s-many of whom Chaplin had personally befriended. For most intellectuals of the period, Latin Americans included, the sort of mass culture emblemized by Chaplin could only be co-opted if it assumed distinctly artistic dimensions. By covering up the traces of vernacular culture from which the early silent comedy emerged, intellectuals could more easily lay claim to the disputed terrain between the popular and the erudite.
