Charlie Chaplin Shoulder Arms Analysis

From 1914-1918, Americans were concerned with the war in Europe and the United States’ eventual involvement in 1917. Prior to 1917, Americans did not want to be involved with WWI just as Americans didn’t want to be involved in WWII in the early 1940’s. Despite America’s desire to remain out of the war (Leuchtenburg 12), German attacks on U.S. ships in both wars forced the hands of the Presidents. Charlie Chaplin’s, Shoulder Arms (1918), came out at the end of WWI and made the U.S. public aware of the conditions of war and the unrealistic fantasies about the heroism of fighting in the war. Chaplin plays an uncoordinated soldier who faced obstacle after obstacle in the trenches of the Western Front and in the end, he realized it was all for nothing. While Detour (1945) hints to post-war issues, its storyline focuses more on women in the post war era than on the ridiculousness of war itself. Its story attempted to put women back in their place, much …show more content…
Americans were concerned with power over the “other,” and in the years after WWI, the other was defined not only as immigrants, but also as African Americans. The Birth of a Nation also bolstered male dominance and authority during the teens and 1920’s just as Mildred Pierce did in the 1940’s (Bederman 47). However, while Mildred Pierce illustrated why mothers should be dependent on men in a male dominated society, The Birth of a Nation spewed propaganda about a white male dominated society (Sklar 58). White women were helpless against outside forces, specifically black me, and required saving from the dominant white man. This is illustrated in the scene where Elsie, a white woman, is being harassed by Silas Lynch, a mulatto, and the Ku Klux Klan must ride in to save her. Both films perpetuated the dominance of men in society and both films concentrated on the idea that women were helpless without