Friday, February 3, 2012
Tragedy of the Common Man?
When the unnamed doorman in The Last Laugh is demoted to bathroom attendant, his world collapses. At the end of the film he is estranged from his family, fellow workers and neighbors and only the night watchman gives him succor. Is this film a tragedy in the Aristotelian sense (that is, does he fall because of some tragic character flaw?)? Is it an indictment of the society of the time? A study of the inevitable effects of aging? Or, to put the point another way, whose fault is the doorman's downfall?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I believe the tragedy of The Last Laugh is a result of the values of society which are portrayed in the film; in particular, a lack of value for the elderly. There is nothing honorably about the job the doorman held in the beginning of the film, but it did require some youthfulness to do. Despite his change in job he is still simply helping the hotel patrons, but when he is working in the bathroom, a job reserved for the elderly workers, the people he serves treat him with very little respect; in fact, hardly anyone treats him with respect. The two notable exceptions are the child who inform the protagonist of his job change and the night watchman. The child can be seen as being too young to have been indoctrinated into the societies' disrespect of the elderly, and so he still acts kindly towards him. The night watchman is portrayed as being removed from society, and scenes work to convey this by showing how his fellow workers are asleep while he is working. Do to this removal from society he also does not hold the lack of value for the elderly.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I think it's funny that I like to comment on the same posts as Adam. But moving on...
ReplyDeleteI think Adam hit the nail on the head in his discussion of a lack of respect for the elderly in the German film's universe. Looking at it from an even broader perspective, The Last Laugh was released around the same time that Hitler published Mein Kampf, the connection being that Hitler's ideal society had little tolerance for those who didn't fit the strong, youthful Aryan mold. ("Jews, gypsies, the elderly and disabled - see y'all later!") Beyond the disrespect the old man suffers once he's demoted, however, I feel the biggest cause of his downfall is his own pride. The problem there is that the old man's ego depends on his position to survive, and since he was raised in a society that scoffs at bathroom attendants, once he's in that position he's unavoidably doomed. Were the old man to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. say, "Whatever your life's work is, do it well," I think he might come to understand that the thing that makes or breaks a job isn't how others view it but how you approach it yourself.
I personally believe that there is no one person who is truly “at fault”. In fact, it is most definitely a combination of natural elements. Firstly, in relating this to “the wild,” a predator was introduced early in the film. This predator happened to be much younger than the original doorman, much stronger and more inclined to do his job; all in all, he just looked the part. When this man replaces the old doorman, the old doorman tries to prove himself by lifting a heavy suitcase, but to no avail. This also mirrors our lack of respect for the elderly. It is the natural course of life to get old and frail, eventually leading to our deaths. Therefore, when frailty begins to take its toll, we seem to downgrade the elderly to make them seem like less of a person. This could be the exact reason why the doorman ended up as the bathroom attendant. In the end, there is not a person, or a thing for that matter that can take the blame for the doorman’s being demoted, but instead the natural course of life and the issues that come with it.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that it is any one of those faults mentioned alone. The German society, the employer’s policy, and the protagonist’s own pride blinding his ability to prepare for his inevitable future all contribute to the film’s depressing conclusion. The very high end and rich German society did not care at all for its old; there were no provisions to help its citizens that fell through the cracks. The hotel’s policy on retirement also seemed to be nonexistent. The most that the protagonist’s employer did for him was to give him a check and take his coat. Of course the bathroom attendant post became available and eventually became his new job but it paid a great deal less and sucked the dignity out of him.
ReplyDeleteNow this is not to say that the protagonist is purely the victim of his environment, like I said before, he digs part of his grave himself. When the audience first meets him we learn that his whole life revolves around his job and everything that it entails from the buttons on his coat to the boy who opens the hotel doors for him. He is so wrapped up in his little world that the thought of not being able to perform his job and losing it never crosses his mind until he finds out of his replacement. He put all of his eggs into one old, brittle basket and that basket just broke. I actually see him as lucky when the hotel gives him another job instead of just kicking him out on the street.