Modern…Object?

During the Industrial Revolution, which started in England, workers were not considered as subjects. Unfortunately, they were just seen as elements of one or other company. In the film “Modern Times”, Charles Chaplin acts as a worker of a factory who is just drawn with the flow of modernity. The film shows the time of the industrial revolution and all the consequences that had in people’s lives. At the beginning, he was just a worker in a factory who was totally conditioned by that way of living. After being in prison several times, once he was caught in a demonstration and was identified as the leader, he begins working in a restaurant with a girl he met. Unfortunately for him, things never worked out, and he was usually fired.

In that time what people thought had no importance. What were important in those years were production, performance, competence and being better than other companies. Nobody really cared about workers’ rights and every type of demonstration was punished with jail time. Therefore, people had no right of expressing themselves. This is all shown throughout the movie.

We can see perfectly in the development of “Modern Times” that in this period individuals were just seen as objects without opinion, ideas, emotions and so on. It is amazing that due to the modernity, people lost their value and became just numbers of one company. How can we human beings be reduced to that? Were these people so insignificant? I do not think so because people must be considered as subjects, not objects.

Modernity brought improvements for the rich people, but poor people, workers, did not receive any improvements. On the contrary, their problems worsened. This whole idea of being modern was not for everybody and many promises were not fulfilled. Poverty, hunger, children being abused by companies were issues that not the monarchy, nor the Parliament nor companies dealt with.
“Modern times” shows the modernity from a very critical perspective. What is more, companies, rich people and poor people were criticized. In addition, it is a really fun and amusing movie. No wonder why Charles Chaplin is a great inspiration for actors. If you want to find out about modernity, you have to see the movie and judge it by yourself.