Mabel’s Strange Predicament

[osprey_archer]

Mabel Normand’s short film “Mabel’s Strange Predicament” is best remembered now as the first appearance of Charlie Chaplin’s “Tramp” character - in a more drunken and lecherous form than in his later appearances (sayeth the film description; I haven’t actually seen any of Chaplin’s Tramp films so I can’t compare).

It’s a short slapstick comedy about a girl (Normand) who gets locked out of her hotel room in her pajamas, and sneaks into the hotel room across the hall, only to hide under the bed when the gentleman staying there returns… and then to be discovered by the gentleman’s wife… at which point Mabel’s own sweetheart arrives, and jumps to exactly the same erroneous conclusion about Mabel’s presence in the gentleman’s bedroom. A battle royale ensues. The tramp weaves drunkenly in and out of the action throughout.

This is an interesting bookend to yesterday’s musings about domestic violence in silent film, because Normand’s approach is so at odds with Alice Guy Blache’s: The Ocean Waif is a drama, and the waif’s abuse by her foster father is a brutal threat, whereas “Mabel’s Strange Predicament” is a comedy and thus treats its violence comically.

I’m not sure if I have a deeper thought about this - I’m circling around the way that genre shapes the way that audiences view characters’ actions, so that you can have, say, a show like Agents of SHIELD where the heroes will do literally the exact same thing as the villains and a large part of the audience will still accept them as heroes because, you know, the narrative says so!

Comments

[asakiyume]

Actually, that is precisely what put me off Agents of SHIELD! But yeah, point taken. I was reflecting on this in a Goodreads review (not my own, someone else's) of A Clockwork Orange: how the actions that are considered evil really vary a LOT depending on all sorts of things... and now I'm thinking about what things are considered fair game for humor--like when people say it's too soon to joke about something, or certain sorts of jokes are considered poor taste--or even horrific.

[osprey_archer]

Oh yeah, any story that has really sketchy parts is going to have at least a few people who nope out of it for that reason. But overall, quite a lot of viewers will more or less trust the story: if it says mindwiping people is good when our heroes do it, they'll just nod along and keep eating popcorn.

[littlerhymes]

genre shapes the way that audiences view characters’ actions

This is so real. This reminds me of how we view romcoms and how it's often said, pretty rightly, that sometimes what's framed as romance in a romcom would be uhhhh creepy or stalkery in real life.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah! But left to their own devices, so many viewers are like, we know this is the endgame pairing, and the music is swelling in that romantic way, so it must be sweet that he's climbing through her window while she sleeps. Humans are really quite easily manipulated in some ways, rather disturbing really.