Theories

 

Communication involves a process of encoding and decoding, and the aim of all communication is to maximize the likelihood that the receiver receives the same meaning as sender sends. In Grossberg's article, the author suggests "Audience interpret messages by articulating them into their own codes. It is thus reasonable to assume that the decoded meaning will differ from the encoded meaning, which describes the way the text is articulated within the institutional contexts of its production"(4). This is exactly happens to Charles Chaplin's Modern Time. In this situation, the film is the message. The original meaning Chaplin put in the film was his concern about the relationship between modern progress and the life of people, without any political meaning. Because of the different codes the audiences have, the meaning from the film is differed from place to place, from time to time.

When we try to interpret the film, what we want to find is some meaning that is not obvious to everyone. What we intend to find is something deeper inside the text. The underling meanings of Modern Times are about the political and social organization of reality. Simonian described the background of that time, "In 1936, the year Modern Times was released; many Americans still felt the residual emotions of anguish and aftermath from the First World War. In the meantime, Americans also began anticipating, with fright, the effects of the upcoming Second World War. Though, some viewers laughed and applauded, government officials and leaders did not agree with Chaplin's lighthearted intentions and felt threatened." (5) The audiences' thoughts were fixed with that social context, therefore the only possible meaning of this film at that time was "communist tone".

The public had already decided what its meaning was, "we might be more interested in understanding how the text produces the particular meaning we assume it has" (6) Therefore, we are less interested what the text communications than how it communications. This is explained why there were so many commentaries on this film and no one listened to Chapin original intention.

Grossberb in his article mentioned that semiotics argues the meaning of a text is the product of its articulation to and by a set of cultural codes. Different countries have different cultures and social systems. The code for interpret a text is different from country to country, community to community. That is quite understandable why countries like United States focused on communist threat of this film, while China and Russian were interested in capitalist exploitation. On the one hand, the polysemy of this film gives the possibilities of many interpretations; on the other hand, small number of very powerful semiotic codes transect in the film produces accepted meaning shared within a certain group of people. However, I have to say that nowadays, the semiotic codes shared within a group are losing power because of globalization. The tension between east and west is relaxing, so when our generation sees this film, most of us regardless of countries of origin will not come up with a clear political inference of it.

 

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Siliang Xu yu274663@yorku.ca