Season 14 · 4 Feb 2026The return of fascism- 49:50City LightsHe tells the sequence of the red flag picked up behind a truck: the character is mistaken for a communist and arrested.
Appears in 9 videos · 10 passages, 2 of them in depth.
Dominique Pagani uses Chaplin to explain Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: reading this book means watching Charlie without him knowing it, while keeping the sequences in mind1. Consciousness in it is like Charlie Chaplin, unaware of the roof tiles about to fall on him2. He often comes back to Modern Times. He sees in it the machine going haywire3 and links the film to the manufactory described by Hegel, which already foreshadows it4. He also brings up the red flag scene: the character picks up a flag that has fallen from a truck, is taken for a communist and is arrested. He sees in it a sign of the period's attraction to Marxism5. In 2026, however, he places this sequence in City Lights6. About Limelight, he singles out the clown who hides his suffering from the audience7. Finally, he counts Chaplin among the Americans he holds in reverence, among the things he loves about the United States, and among the true elite89.
Summary produced automatically from 10 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, singer, film editor and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from his childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977. […]
Read the article on WikipediaText: Wikipédia, CC BY-SA 4.0, excerpt · Portrait: Strauss-Peyton Studio, Public domain
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