This analysis reveals Modern Times as a democratic art form in film, suggesting a complex relationship with aura and mechanical reproduction.
This paper looks at Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) through the eyes of Walter Benjamin, reading the film in conjunction with his classic cultural studies essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935). It reiterates cinema’s complicated relationship with aura as an audiovisual art form. It clarifies that for Charlie Chaplin the auteur, the film is, at its core, a democratic art form, as opposed to Benjamin’s hope for it to blossom into a medium for revolutionary agitation and action.
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K Bidiya (2025) studied this question.
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