A look at the themes of failure in conventional married life and failure in wooing women in the films, “The Tramp” and “One Week”.
This paper examines how both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton are often heralded as cinematic comedic pioneers. It looks at how, in both of their respective short films, entitled ?The Tramp? and ?One Week,? each comedian makes use of common stereotypes of women and also the common stereotypes of romantic relationships between men and women, to illustrate their comedic creations? personality deviations from the conventional masculine roles of domestic success. It discusses how the men in the two films function as failures in the domestic realm and how this parallels both their failures in conventional life and successes at comedic life.
“The film “One Week,” like “The Tramp,” revolves around the theme of domesticity and building a home. However, unlike “The Tramp,” “One Week” is a parody of modernity, and is not sit in a far-off idyllic landscape of the countryside. The newly married couple, receives, as a wedding present, a supposedly easy-to-assemble mobile home. Keaton’s failures to find the home so easy to assemble form the crux of the film. If only Keaton were the stereotypical male he should be able to do so in a jiffy, runs the subtext of the film. However, Keaton’s failure to do so does not necessarily count against him, as the project seems absurd from the beginning and his rival makes things even more difficult by interfering and switching the labels on the packing crates.”