On Chaplin's Great Dictatorship Speech and the Subversion of Humanism

I went to watch this beautiful clip again...what is considered the best speech in movie history

But I was reminded of Zizek's commentary on the picture which brings out the subtle, genius of Chaplin which can only exist behind the "Go Humanity" speech we just saw...

It's issues like these... and the subtlety of ideology/religion where it doesn't work in the explicit message, but behind the curtain.

While Zizek isn't explicit about this Chaplin scene, my interpretation (and what I think Zizek was alluding to) of the use of Wagner in the Great Dictator is that the where we first encounter the Wagner song is the Hitler character kicking around the globe imagining how to take over the world....

Of course the Hitler character fails. And we get the Chaplin Jew speaking in the place of Hitler where we encounter the Great Dictator Speech from above. And in this scene we get the return of the Wagnerian music.

The typical interpretation of the scene seems to be to remember Chaplin as humble man delivering the message that gives hope to the world through a message of democracy and belief in the Human Spirit...

And in the humble Chaplin, we find a man who seems to accidentally stumble into the spotlight grabbing the heart of the masses by giving his seemingly obvious, humanist opinions (though with a bit of passion)...

And we're all like AMERICA! I LOVE YOU!  GO DEMOCRACY....

However, Chaplin was no respectful pro-American actor.... He was regularly in trouble with the government  and had to take up residence across the ocean for much of his career...

The man was a communist...

And below the surface of the speech... we see a lot of subtle things that Zizek picks up on:

-The Return of the Wagner Song.

-The arm movements of the Jewish Chaplin are eerily reminiscent of Hitler's arm movements.

-And the audience is displayed as kind of a group "en masse" just like the German masses were united under one flag with one cause under one leader...

And perhaps, if you look closely enough, you can see Chaplin shining through his character.... A few split moments, that we want to forget about as a viewer.... But we can't forget them within the context of the speech and maybe we just count it as the humility of thew Jewish Chaplin coming out amidst the fanfare of his speech....

Let me repeat... Chaplin was a communist. His views would naturally have been against the opinion of the speech he expressed. However, his movie has to be made into a success for the American, Democratic loving audience... So Chaplin makes the surface movie that is so widely revered amongst us... But behind the movie, we catch the brilliance of Chaplin as he subverts the movie's own intended message...

 I would argue that the horror we see in Chaplin's face is the discovery that the way to take over the world and unite the masses is not through the totalitarian rhetoric of Hitler and the German Nationalists, but the takeover can be much more subtle and much more powerful.... if the rhetoric is clothed with humanist, pro-democracy rhetoric...