Erwin Rommel - Biography

Rommel studying maps during the battle at El Alamein

            Erwin Rommel was one of Germany’s most respected military leaders in World War Two. Rommel played a part in two very significant battles during the war – at El Alamein in North Africa and at D-Day. Rommel’s nickname was the ‘Desert Fox’ – a title given to him by the British.

  

            Rommel was born in 1891 in Heidenheim. During World War One, he distinguished himself in the German Third Army and he was decorated for his bravery and leadership. After the war, Rommel remained as an infantry officer and instructor. His chance for real military power came when Hitler, appointed chancellor in 1933, recognised his ability. By 1938, Rommel was a senior military figure in the Wehrmacht. His success in the campaigns of 1939 and especially the successful attack on Western Europe in 1940, lead to Hitler appointing him commander of the Afrika Corps in 1941. It was in the deserts of North Africa that Rommel found real success.

            The nickname ‘Desert Fox’ was well deserved. Rommel was highly respected even by the British. Auchinleck, Rommel’s opposite until his sacking by Churchill, sent a memo to his senior commanders in North Africa, to state that it was their responsibility to ensure that their men thought less of Rommel as a ‘super military leader’ and more of him as a normal German commander.

"…(you must) dispel by all possible means the idea that Rommel represents anything other than the ordinary German general……….PS, I’m not jealous of Rommel."

Auchinleck

            Rommel’s fame in the desert rests on his success as a leader and also his uncompromising belief that all prisoners of war should be well looked after and not abused. One story told at the time was that Italian troops took from British POWs’ their watches and other valuables. When Rommel found out, he ordered that they be returned to their owners immediately. To many British ‘Desert Rats’, Rommel epitomised a gentleman’s approach to a deadly issue – war.

            Rommel knew that his options at the vital battles at El Alamein were limited. Montgomery, who succeeded the dismissed Auchinleck, had the advantage of Bletchley Park feeding him the battle plan Rommel was going to use. Rommel was also seriously starved of the fuel he needed for his attack on Montgomery’s ‘Desert Rats’. The second battle at El Alamein was a very fluid battle but the sheer weight of supplies that Montgomery had access to (amongst other equipment were 300 new Sherman tanks) meant defeat for Rommel. The defeat of the Afrika Corps was the first major setback for Hitler and the Wehrmacht. Hitler ordered Rommel to fight to the last man and the last bullet. Rommel had far too much respect for his men to obey this command and retreated. The Germans left North Africa in May 1943. Despite this refusal to obey Hitler’s command, Rommel did not lose favour with Hitler.

            In February 1944, Rommel was appointed by Hitler to be commander of the defences of the Atlantic Wall. Rommel’s brief was to ensure that Western Europe was impregnable.

            He took full responsibility for the Northern French coastline. The beaches at Normandy were littered with his anti-tank traps which were invisible at full-tide. As it was, the planning at D-Day meant that Rommel’s defences were of little problem to the vast Allied attack. At the time of D-Day, Rommel commanded the important Army Group B.

            On July 17th 1944, Rommel was wounded in an attack on his car by Allied fighter planes. The attack took place near St. Lo.

            Rommel was implicated in the July 1944 Bomb Plot against Hitler and the Gestapo was keen to interview this famous military commander. Hitler was keen to avoid the public show trial of his most famous general and it seems that a 'deal’ was done. Rommel died ‘of his wounds’ on October 14th 1944. He was given a state funeral. But it seems that he committed suicide to a) save himself from a humiliating show trial and b) it seems that Hitler promised that his family would not be punished for Rommel’s indiscretions if he died ‘of his wounds’.

            What impact Rommel would have had on the Allies drive to Germany after D-Day is difficult to speculate. However, the sheer odds against the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe post-June 1944 were such that this famous commander would have been unable to hinder the Allies progress.

"He was a daring and much-admired general, his personality and his fate creating an enduring legend denied to many orthodox, and ultimately more successful, commanders."

Alan Palmer

Michel Foucault - Biography

Michel Foucault

            Michel Foucault was a French philosopher or more specifically a historian of systems of thought, a self-made title created when he was promoted to a new professorship at the prestigious Collège de France in 1970. Foucault is generally accepted as having been the most influential social theorist of the second half of the twentieth century. He was born on October 15, 1926, in Poitiers, France, and died in Paris in 1984 from an AIDS-related illness. As an openly homosexual man he was one of the first high-profile intellectuals to succumb to the illness, which was at the time still most unknown. However, it would appear that he knew he had AIDS and he reportedly was not afraid to die as he sometimes shared with his friends his thoughts of suicide. Yet, he continued working relentlessly until the end, spending the last eight months of his life working on the last two volumes of The History of Sexuality, which happened to come out just before he died in Paris at the hospital on June 26th 1984. He is buried at the Cimetière du Vendeuvre in Vienne, in the Rhone-Alpes Region, not far from Poitier the city where he was born.

            Foucault’s father was a surgeon, and encouraged the same career for his son. Foucault graduated from Saint-Stanislas school having studied philosophy with Louis Girard who would become a notorious professor. After that Foucault attended the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris, then in 1946, equipped with an impressive academic record he entered the École Normale Supérièure d’Ulm, which is the most prestigious French school for humanities studies. Fascinated by psychology he received the equivalent of a BA degree in Psychopathology in 1947. In 1948, working under the famous phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, he received another BA type of degree in Philosophy. In 1950 he failed his his agrégation (French University high-level competitive examination for the recruitment of professors) in Philosophy, but succeeded in 1951. During the 1950s he worked in a psychiatric hospital, then from 1954-58 he taught French at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He then spent a year at the University of Warsaw, and a year at the university of Hamburg.

            Through his impressive career Foucault became known for his many demonstrative arguments that power depends not on material relations or authority but instead primarily on discursive networks. This new perspective as applied to old questions such as madness, social discipline, body-image, truth, normative sexuality etc. were instrumental in designing the post-modern intellectual landscape we are still in nowadays. Today Michel Foucault is listed as the most cited intellectual worldwide in the humanities by The Times Higher Education Guide. This is not so, however if we consider the field of philosophy alone, and that in spite of it being the discipline Foucault was largely educated in, and which, it is safe to say he might have identified with the most. This is probably because Foucault’s definition of philosophy focuses on the critique of truth and does so by conceiving it as inextricable from a critique of history. This is because according to him, it makes philosophy a much richer discipline. Linking philosophy and history, however is considered by many as irreconcilable with the generally accepted definition of philosophy as being independent of it.

            In 1959 Foucault received his doctorat d'état under the supervision of Georges Canguilhem, the famous French philosopher. The paper he presented was published two years later with the name Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (Madness and Unreason: History of Madness in the Classical Age, 1961). In this text, Foucault abolished the possibility of separating madness and reason into universally objective categories. He did so by studying how the division has been historically established, how the distinctions we make between madness and sanity are a result of the invention of madness in the Age of Reason. He does a reading of Descartes' First Meditation, and accuses him of being able to doubt everything except his own sanity, thus excluding madness from his famous hyperbolic doubt.

            In the 1960s Foucault was head of the philosophy departments at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. It was at this time that he met the philosophy student Daniel Defert, whose political activism would be a major influence on Foucault. When Defert went to fulfill his volunteer service requirement in Tunisia, Foucault followed, teaching in Tunisia from 1966-68. They returned to Paris during the time of the student revolts, an event that would have a profound effect on Foucault's work. He took the position of head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Paris-VII at Vincennes where he brought together some of the most promising thinkers in France at the time, which included Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière. Both went on to become leading thinkers of their generation, and both have taught at EGS. It was also in 1968 that he formed, with others, the Prison Information Group, an organization that gave voice to the concerns of prisoners.

            In The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure, one of his last far-reaching works he wrote: "[W]hat is philosophy today–philosophical activity, I mean–if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself?". Foucault is here practicing the very kind of critical questioning he is hinting at. It is a sort of reflective movement of thought that challenges the all-too-often uncritical tendencies of philosophical thinking, especially when it fails to see that it is itself part of what needs to be critiqued. In this light, Foucault is not simply stating something to be accepted or refuted, for that too would lead to complacent thinking. On the contrary, in his very use of language here and elsewhere there is a clear opening for something other, perhaps even unknown, which is made possible in part through a challenging use of the questioning mode.

            Foucault’s project, then, should not be confused with traditional history and needs to be wrestled with. He helpfully continues: "In what does it [philosophy] consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known?" Significantly, he is questioning the very discourse of philosophy as an established tradition whose tendency towards rigidity needs to be interrogated. Foucault’s re-defining of "philosophical activity" characterizes what philosophy needs to be today if it is to do more than simply perpetuate the status quo. There is thus in a very real sense a political and ethical level to Foucault’s work. This is to varying degrees evident in all of his corpus, hence the appeal many critical thinkers still find in his research today.

            Foucault always endeavors to write what he calls a "history of the present" and in spite of the apparent contradiction it is a critical move that has political reach. Because what matters today has roots in the past, a history of the present is a productive space for critical thinking. In Foucault’s own words: "The game is to try to detect those things which have not yet been talked about, those things that, at the present time, introduce, show, give some more or less vague indications of the fragility of our system of thought, in our way of reflecting, in our practices." Early on he refers to such history in terms of archeology and later as his research become more directly political, as genealogy, taking his cue from Friedrich Nietzsche.

            His numerous archaeological, or epistemological studies recognize the changing frameworks of production of knowledge through the history of such practices as science, philosophy, art and literature. In his later genealogical practice, he argues that institutional power, intrinsically linked with knowledge, forms individual human "subjects", and subjects them to disciplinary norms and standards. These norms are produced historically, there is no timeless truth behind them. For him truth is something that is historically produced. Foucault examines the "abnormal" human subject as an object-of-knowledge of the discourses of human and empirical science such as psychiatry, medicine, and penalization.

            Foucault published The Order of Things in 1966, which immediately became a bestseller in France, perhaps surprisingly given the level of complexity of the book (arguably his most difficult to read). It is an archeological study of the development of biology, economics and linguistics through the 18th and 19th centuries. It is in this book that he makes his famous prediction at the end that "man", a subject formed by discourse as a result of the arrangement of knowledge over the last two centuries, will soon be "erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." Less poetically and in the same book: "As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of a recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end."

            Foucault's book Archaeology of Knowledge was published in 1969. As with The Order of Things, this text uses an approach to the history of knowledge inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's work, although not yet using Friedrich Nietzsche terminology of "geneaology", and this is a rare major work for Foucault that does not include a historical study per se. Because what Foucault is really after in this book is the question of archeology as a method of historical analysis. This attitude to history is based on the idea that the historian is only interested in what has implications for present events, so history is always written from the perspective of the present, and fulfills a need of the present. Thus, Foucault's work can be traced to events in his present day. The Order of Things would have been inspired by the rise of structuralism in the 1960s, for example, and the prison uprisings in the early 1970s would have inspired Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975). Discourses are governed by such historical positioning, which have their own logic, which Foucault refers to as an "archive". Archeology, Foucault explains, is the very excavation of such archive.

            In 1975 with the publication of Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, his work begins to focus more explicitly on power. He rejects the Enlightenment's philosophical and juridical interpretation of power as conceptualized particularly in relation to representative government, and he introduces instead the notion of power as "discipline" and takes the penal system as the context of his analysis, only to generalize it further to society at large. He shows this kind of discipline is a specific historical form of power that was taken up by the state from the army in the 17th century, which spread widely across society through institutions. Here he begins to examine the relationship of power to knowledge and to the body, which would become a pivotal Foucaultian move in his future research. He argues that these institutions, including the army, the factory and the school, all discipline the bodies of their subjects through surveilling, knowledge-gathering techniques, both real and perceived. Indeed, the goal of such exercise of power is to produce "docile bodies" that can be monitored, and which lead to the psychological control of individuals. Foucault goes as far as arguing that such power produces individuals as such. In maping the emergence of a disciplinary society and its new articulation of power, he uses the model of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon to illustrate the structure of power through an architecture designed for surveillance. The design of Bentham's prison allows for the invisible surveillance of a large number of prisoners by a small number of guards, eventually resulting in the embodiment of surveillance by the prisoners, making the actual guards obsolete. The prison is a tool of knowledge for the institutional formation of subjects, thus power and knowledge are inextricably linked. The rather controversial conclusion of the book is that the prison system is actually an institution whose purpose is to produce criminality and recidivism.

            During the 1970s and 1980s Foucault's reputation grew and he lectured all over the world. In 1971 he was invited to debate Noam Chomsky in on Dutch television for The International Philosophers Project. It gave rise to a fascinating debate, which has been published several times since then. Chomsky argued for the concept of human nature as a political guide for activism while Foucault argued that any notions of human nature cannot escape power and must thus first be analyzed as such.

            During the later years of his professorship at the Collège de France he started writing The History of Sexuality, a major project he would never finish because of his untimely death. The first volume of the work was published in 1976 in French and the English version would follow two years later, entitled The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction. However, the French title was much more indicative of what Foucault was after: "Histoire de la sexualité, tome 1 : La Volonté de savoir", which translates as The History of Sexuality Volume I: The Will to Knowledge (a newer edition is simply named The Will to Knowledge). It is an amazingly prominent work, maybe even his most influential. The main thesis of the work is to be found in part two of the book called "The Repressive Hypothesis" where Foucault articulately explains that in spite of the generally accepted belief that we have been sexually repressed, the notion of sexual repression cannot be separated from the concomitant imperative for us to talk about sex more than ever before. Indeed, according to Foucault it follows in the name of liberating so-called innate tendencies, certain behaviors are actually produced. With the contention that modern power operates to produce the very behaviors it targets, Foucault attacks here again the notion of power as repression of something that is already in place. Such new notion of power has been and continues to be incredibly influential in various fields.

            His last two books, the second and third volumes of the history of sexuality research, entitled The Uses of Pleasure and The Care of the Self respectively, both relate the Western subject's understanding of ourselves as sexual beings to our moral and ethical lives. He traces the history of the construction of subjectivity through the analyses of ancient texts. In The Uses of Pleasure he looks at pleasure in the Greek social system as a play of power in social relations; pleasure is derived from the social position realized through sexuality. Later, in Christianity, pleasure was to become linked with illicit conduct and transgression. In The Care of the Self, Foucault looks at the Greeks' systems of rules that were applied to sexual and other forms of social conduct. He analyses how the rules of self-control allow access to pleasure and to truth. In this structure of a subject's life dominated by the care for the self, excess becomes the danger, rather than the Christian deviance.

            What Foucault made from delving into these ancient texts, is the notion of an ethics to do with one’s relation to one’s self. Indeed the constitution of the self is the overarching question for Foucault at the end of his life. Yet the point for him was not to present a new ethics. Rather, it was the possibility for new analyses that focused on subjectivity itself. Foucault became very interested in the way subjectivity is constructed and especially how subjects produce themselves vis-à-vis truth.

Palestina: a Terra, o seu Povo e a sua História, Parte I.

Parte do Muro original de Jebus (atual Jerusalém).

            Jerusalém foi fundada há 4200 anos por um dos povos que constituem a estirpe palestina: os jebuseus, pertencentes ao tronco cananeu. O seu nome original, Jebusalem, incorpora a palavra Salem (Salam) que significa paz. Os cananeus partilharam o seu território em completa harmonia com os filisteus, que se estabeleceram na costa e se misturaram racialmente com outros povos do mar, sobretudo com as ilhas gregas, especialmente Creta. Alguns historiadores confundiram-se e consideram os filisteus originários dessa ilha, mas isso foi uma integração posterior. Outros, equivocadamente, consideram os filisteus e os cananeus como povos camitas. Basta ver os seus idiomas para reconhecer a origem semita, aparentados com o idioma árabe. Mil anos mais tarde, os hebreus chegaram à Palestina, conquistando-a a sangue e fogo; os hebreus não foram os povoadores originais da Palestina e não fundaram Jerusalém.

           

            Há mais de 5.000 anos, depois que um período de seca assolou a Península Arábica, os cananeus, tribos dos árabes semitas, vieram se estabelecer nos territórios a leste do Mar Mediterrâneo que formam, hoje, a Síria, o Líbano, a Jordânia e a Palestina. Os jebusitas, um subgrupo cananeu, fundaram Jebus – Jerusalém – no lugar onde ela está localizada hoje e edificaram o primeiro muro a seu redor, dotado de 30 torres e sete portões. Aproximadamente 2.000 anos mais tarde, os filisteus, vindos de Creta, chegaram na terra de Canaã. Misturaram-se com as tribos cananeias e viveram na área que agora se estende da Faixa de Gaza até Ashdod e Ashkelon. Os cananeus deram aos territórios que eles habitaram o nome bíblico de “A Terra de Canaã”,  enquanto os filisteus deram-lhe o nome de Filistina ou ‘Palestina’.

            Os cananeus descobriram que estavam numa localização estratégica e cercada por poderosos impérios originários do Egito a sudoeste, através do Mediterrâneo a oeste, e Mesopotâmia e Ásia a nordeste. Mais de um milênio antes do nascimento de Cristo, egípcios, assírios, babilônios, persas, mongóis, gregos e romanos cresceram ao redor da terra dos cananeus e filisteus e a governaram por variados períodos de tempo. A posição geográfica da área significava que ela servia tanto como um ponte entre os vários impérios regionais, como uma arena para as lutas e conflitos entre eles. Em consequência, os cananeus nunca puderam estabelecer um estado forte e unificado, e suas organizações políticas tomaram a forma de cidades independentes dotadas de governos ligados por relações federativas. 

A Copa Além do Futebol!

            Nossa nação encontra-se longe de possuir condições para receber um evento de magnitude internacional como a Copa do Mundo de Futebol. Baseio-me nisto pelo grande absurdo de nossa realidade do dia-a-dia. Vivemos em uma nação rica onde uma pequena elite fica com toda riqueza e o restante da população precisa lutar pelo que sobra. A realização da Copa no Brasil custará 30 bilhões de reais, sendo 94% advindo de dinheiro dos cofres públicos. Quando comparamos esse valor ao que é investido em educação e saúde no Brasil em relação ao nosso PIB, nosso governo gasta 10% de seu PIB em educação e 12% em saúde. O Brasil ocupa 85° posição no IDH mundial (Índice de desenvolvimento humano), ocupamos a penúltima posição no ranking mundial de educação (segundo pesquisa da Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)). Sem esquecermos-nos das áreas menos favorecidas de nossa nação aonde nem escolas existem e se existem mal possuem a presença de professores.

            Nossa realidade não está em conformidade com os gastos exorbitantes de um evento que não proporcionará o retorno desejável, pois necessitamos de cidadãos com uma boa educação para nos tornarmos uma nação campeã na educação, nossas escolas e professores estão abandonados. Escolas completamente esquecidas pelo governo com bibliotecas sem recursos, ausência de especialização técnica, falta de professores em diversas áreas da educação básica e média, uma assustadora formação de analfabetos funcionais, poucas ou nenhuma presença de salas de multimídia e informática. Necessitamos de grandes investimos na saúde, pois nossos hospitais estão “sucateados”, abandonados, nossos irmãos brasileiros ficam meses esperando para consultar com um especialista nos Postos de Saúde do SUS. Pessoas morrem todos os dias em todos os Estados da Federação de doenças evitáveis ou por falta de tratamento ou atendimento de urgência/especialidade.

            Embora muito se tenha falado sobre haver vantagens na realização da Copa do Mundo de Futebol no Brasil, particularmente como cidadão e contribuinte não concordo com essas afirmações, pois não caracterizam nossa realidade nacional. Uma realidade de uma nação subdesenvolvida, com a população carente dos mais básicos serviços públicos.  Muitos falam que a visibilidade que o país terá neste período será uma vantagem, mas oque será realmente visto? Os Estádios “Padrão Fifa” ou as Escolas e Hospitais dentre outros “Padrão Brasil”. Os mais otimistas esperam que esta visibilidade possa atrair, por exemplo, investidores para que venha conhecer o país e suas características, não só futebolísticas. Mas que tipos de investidores esse evento pode trazer para um país onde grande parte da população vive a margem da miséria? Investidores no turismo sexual, no tráfico de drogas, no tráfico humano.

           

Um Sonho Possível, crítica e reflexão sobre o filme baseadas nos estudos piagetianos.

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar uma crítica reflexiva sobre o filme ‘Um Sonho Possível’ e a relação dos acontecimentos do filme com os estudos piagetianos.

Toda a trama cinematográfica aborda a vida de Michael Oher, um jovem que foi tirado de sua mãe quando tinha sete anos de idade, pois a mesma era usuária de crack. Seu pai suicidou-se, mas ele nunca possuiu uma relação com ele, seu irmão Marcos de quem ele lembra-se que foi separado pelo Estado, quando este interveio em sua família é o único membro da família que ele conhece o paradeiro. Michael não foi nem ao menos registrado e apresenta um QI de 80, muito baixo. Michael é tirado de sua mãe Denise e separado do seu irmão Marcos em um período importante de sua vida quando a criança está entrando no Período operatório. Piaget diz que em torno dos sete anos o pensamento da criança torna-se lógico, com características de reversibilidade. Inicialmente esta lógica é aplicada a problemas que existem, problemas concretos. Depois se transformam em operações mentais. Michael nessa fase já era capaz de tomar decisões cognitivas e lógicas, apresentando argumentos corretos, essa análise explica as recordações traumáticas do momento em que foi tirado de sua família, pois Michael podia decidir por si mesmo e por mais difícil que fosse a vida com sua mãe, ele queria ficar junto a ela e ao seu irmão.

No decorrer do filme Michael Oher é adotado pela família Tuohy e começa há perceber o amor de mãe vindo da Leigh Anne que também apresenta ao próprio Michael suas qualidades como jogador de Futebol Americano.  Com base em Piaget que distingue em três características básicas da inteligência operatória: a descentração, a conservação e a reversibilidade, podemos, observar que Michael tinha sido marcado pelas transformações sucessivas que ocorrem em sua existência e possuía consciência e compreensão das relações que se estabeleceram entre os diferentes eventos de sua vida desde que foi tirado de sua mãe e irmão, características da inteligência operatória de descentração. Ele achava que sua capacidade era limitada, pois foi assim colocado para ele. Michael demonstra habilidade de responder as questões oralmente, mas muitas dificuldades em fazer o mesmo pela forma escrita. É essência para a escrita e matemática à necessidade do principio piagetiano de inteligência operatória da conservação. As palavras têm uma forma de escrever e os cálculos também seguem regras para isso é essencial à conservação. Vemos que o personagem mostra um desenvolvimento deficitário nessa etapa de sua vida, sejam pelos traumas sofridos na infância ou pelo desprezo, preconceito e abandono ocorridos pela indiferença da sociedade para com ele.

Michael tem um forte instinto protetor que é aparente tanto no seu convívio com a família Tuohy como no teste de aptidão que realiza. O protagonista começa a jogar para o time futebol da escola e devido ao seu instinto protetor consegue grande destaque junto ao grupo. Aqui podemos relacionar com o que ensina Piaget, que com o desenvolvimento da moral e da afetividade a criança passa a perceber que o importante no jogo, está no fato de jogar pelo prazer da convivência ou jogo social. Michael tem a oportunidade de demonstrar sua grande aptidão na adolescência, mas isso já estava inerente em seu desenvolvimento cognitivo desde a infância.

Relatório sobre o filme Tempos Modernos de Charles Chaplin.

            O relatório que se segue visa analisar o filme produzido e dirigido por Charles Spencer Chaplin, Tempos Modernos e sua relação com os eventos históricos estudados na disciplina de História Moderna do Século XVII e XVIII, com foco na Revolução Industrial. O filme passasse na década de 1930, durante o crash da bolsa de valores de Nova Iorque (1929), conhecida também como Grande Depressão. No filme Chaplin interpreta o personagem vagabundo-operário.

            No inicio do filme aparece uma cena um tanto emblemática, onde vemos um rebanho de ovelhas avançando, mas se o telespectador não for atento passará despercebido que dentre elas há uma ovelha negra. Chaplin era um humanista, e como tal, suas obras sempre possuem várias críticas a sociedade e a suas diversas facetas políticas como o fordismo, militarismo, imperialismo, nazismo, capitalismo e tantas outras formas de opressão ou manipulação do homem pelo homem. Mas o que Chaplin tenta passar ao seu publico por meio dessa imagem da ovelha negra dentre as brancas? Pois bem, essa ovelha negra representa exatamente o vagabundo-operário interpretado por Chaplin, pois nosso herói irá opor-se ao sistema industriário vigente que submete a escravização os operários. No desenvolver da trama o operário-vagabundo simboliza a resistência do povo, diante da opressão da sociedade industrial moderna.

            Parafraseando a obra de Chaplin, não posso deixar de citar o livro, A Revolução Industrial de Francisco Iglésias, que nos deixa uma visão bem clara da situação vivida pelos trabalhadores desse momento da história humana:

“Já o proletariado desempenha tarefas rudes, pesadas, e em ambientes nocivos à saúde e que os leva a vida curta. Falta-lhes segurança, os acidentes com as novas máquinas são comuns e não há previdência. No trabalho consomem-se mulheres e crianças, de ínfima idade (até de quatro anos, com horário de 10 a 16 horas), como se vê nas descrições históricas de Marx em O Capital, no livro de Mantroux, ou – dentre outros – entre outros – nos romances de Charles Dickens (1812-70), que testemunhou a realidade.”

Francisco Iglésias,

A Revolução Industrial. Pg. 104.

            

            Na sequência temos as cenas dentro da fábrica, e podemos observar os trabalhadores manufaturando peças, enquanto, elas passam em uma esteira. Nosso herói, o vagabundo-operário não consegue acompanhar o ritmo frenético da máquina e não realiza sua função a tempo de acompanhar seus companheiros de trabalho. Nesse momento do filme em particular fica claro a dificuldade do homem permanecer lucido diante do insana máquina e seus proprietários burgueses, que veem o operário apenas como um complemente necessário aonde a máquina não se pode fazer presente naquele momento (por enquanto).

            Em meio ao alucinante e anormal trabalho braçal na fábrica, o personagem chapliniano enlouquece, e apresenta dificuldade de parar o movimento repetitivo  e literalmente surta, passando por diversos apuros na fábrica. Diante dos acontecimentos nosso herói cai na esteira e é puxado pela máquina para dentro das engrenagens, cena que veio a tornar-se épica no cinema. Desse acontecimento podemos encontrar algumas metáforas chaplinianas. O homem entre as engrenagens é a peça principal que faz a máquina funcionar? Os constantes acidentes de trabalho que acometiam centenas de trabalhadores anualmente durante a década de 1930? Acredito que ambas as questões são pertinentes para aquela cena.

            No próprio filme o operário-vagabundo é confundido com um líder comunista ao tentar devolver uma bandeira vermelha, que caiu de um caminhão e acaba em frente de um grupo de grevistas.

            O visionário Chaplin traz em seu filme a presença da supervisão por câmera de vigilância, algo ficcional para seu período histórico, mas que hoje é realidade em praticamente todas as fábricas. Por meio desta câmera o proprietário da fábrica pode acompanhar o trabalho dos funcionários e ditar o ritmo das esteiras de produção conforme a necessidade.

            Sua tradicional montagem semântica aparece aqui, no inicio do filme intercalando imagens de ovelhas entrando aglomeradas no curral e de trabalhadores se amontoando na entrada da fábrica, ilustrando que o empregado não é tão diferente dos animais, tendo que seguir ordens e rotinas. Observe ainda como uma ovelha negra se destaca no meio das outras, simbolizando o personagem do vagabundo, que simplesmente não aceita o modo de vida imposto pela urbanização e industrialização e, portanto, é diferente dos demais.

            Nosso herói é levado para um hospital depois de seu surto de loucura dentro da fábrica. Após breve tratamento ele recebe alta e não é aceito de volta na fábrica. Agora nosso herói vagabundo-operário está doente e desempregado em meio a uma cidade aonde impera o desemprego, fome, greves e desordem social. Chaplin acaba preso ao tentar ajudar uma jovem que roubava bananas para alimentar suas irmãs menores e seu pai desempregado. Encontramos afirmações que fazem eco há esses eventos no texto de Francisco Iglésias:

“Foi exatamente esse aumento (na produção), levando à dispensa de muitos, que trouxe a revolta contra a máquina, ao longo de toda a primeira Revolução Industrial, vista como inimiga pelos trabalhadores, pela dispensa de gente provocada.”

Francisco Iglésias,

A Revolução Industrial. Pg. 88.

            Na obra cinematográfica de Chaplin, Tempos Modernos o operário-vagabundo apaixona-se pela jovem que por fome roubava comida, ele vai trabalhar numa loja de departamentos como segurança, até que nosso herói volta à fábrica como ajudante de mecânico no reparo das máquinas.

            No desenvolver dessa trama o mecânico chefe cai dentre as engrenagens e fica preso. O operário-vagabundo tenta de todas as maneiras retirar o companheiro das engrenagens. Aqui vemos Chaplin fazendo alusão aos constantes acidentes que acometiam os trabalhadores nas fábricas, pois as mesmas levavam mais em consideração a produção do que a segurança humana. Para o proprietário burguês o que importava não era a segurança do homem, mas a funcionabilidade plena da máquina, pois está lhe renderia capital o homem é substituível.