the narrative-machine: buster keaton’s cinematic comedy, deleuze’s recursion function and the...

8/18/2019 The Narrative-Machine: Buster Keaton’s Cinematic Comedy, Deleuze’s Recursion Function and the Operat

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fficial directorial credits for films starring Buster Keaton are not given in this article; see the Great Direc-

rs entry [HTTP://ARCHIVE.SENSESOFCINEMA.COM/CONTENTS/DIRECTORS/02/KEATON.HTML] on Keaton for a full fil-

ography.

http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/keaton.htmlhttp://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/keaton.htmlhttp://sensesofcinema.com/issues/issue-33/http://sensesofcinema.com/category/comedy-and-perception/http://sensesofcinema.com/author/lisa-trahair/http://sensesofcinema.com/


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uster Keaton’s two-reeler My Wife’s Relations (1922) is prefaced by an intertitle which reads: “In the foreig

ction of a big city – where so many different languages are spoken, the people misunderstand each other

rfectly…” Following this, alternate montage connects two utterly disconnected situations. In the first situa-

on, Keaton, playing a sculptor, vigorously absorbed by the demands of his work, accidentally collides with

ostman. In the second situation, a couple “speaking” Polish call a celebrant on the telephone to ask if he is

vailable to marry them forthwith. In the first situation, Keaton’s collision with the postman has two out-

mes, both of which drive the narrative on. Keaton is left with a letter whose addressee is encrypted in the

mudged details on the envelope, and the postman throws something at Keaton which, like the letter, misses

destination, and breaks the window of a neighbouring building – the building, no less, where the celebrant

the second situation awaits his clients. Keaton’s attempt to flee the scene of the crime is obstructed by a bi

t burly beast of a woman who has witnessed the flying projectile, assumed Keaton to have been responsible

r it and marched him in to face the wrath of the owner of the property. Because the celebrant doesn’t speak

nglish, he in turn assumes they are the couple desperate to make their vows and marries them accordingly.

eaton’s new wife takes him home to her father and brothers, all of who mistreat him terribly. His would be

e lot of an overworked “Cinderfella” had the father not found the misappropriated letter, opened it, read of

n inheritance and assumed the beneficiary to be his son-in-law. Accordingly, the family reverses its treatme

him and all, together, begin to live the life of Riley. That is, until the family of the letter’s real addressee d

rmines to revenge itself upon those who have taken what does not belong to them.

My Wife’s Relations, the play of contingency and misinterpretation provides the means by which Keaton

he director) connects disconnected events. What he dubs the perfection of misunderstanding in his hands be

mes both an admirable description of the film’s comicality and the basis of narrative structure.

Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, Gilles Deleuze describes this connective aspect of Keaton’s aesthetic in

rms of the recursion function (1). The English edition of Cinema 1 translates fonctions récurrentes and se-

es récurrentes (2) as recurrent function and recurrent series respectively but this leads to an unusual charac

risation of Keaton’s gags and doesn’t, in any case, fit with the analogy that Deleuze draws between Keaton’

nema and Rube Goldberg’s cartoons.

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nother example of a recursion trajectory, perhaps the most elemental to be found in Keaton’s films, occurs i

nother two-reeler, The Pale Face. The Keaton character’s effort to flee the clutches of the Indians is stymied

hen the chase manoeuvres him toward the edge of a ravine. Its precipices are connected by a broken-down

idge, consisting of two parallel ropes and less than a handful of planks, which provide a path for the dis-

nce of only one or two steps. Beyond this, the ropes are bare, and the bridge hollows out to the abyss belo

eaton has no means of escaping the Indians except by this forsaken bridge, so he installs himself as a ma-

hine in it, removes a plank from behind him as he crosses it and replaces it in front of him, thereby continu-

g his trajectory in a repetitive and piecemeal fashion. The two sides of the ravine thus present the points of

sconnection, and the planks of wood, individually useless, are the elements of the series that provide

eaton’s means of transportation. The planks, in other words, are his props.

While Deleuze himself is loathe to specify the role of the comic performer or the comedic in the discussions

cinematic comedy in either of his Cinema books (5), this essay explores the connection between the aes-

etic that he identifies as specifically Keatonesque and the humorous quality of Keaton’s narratives. Keaton’

nique formulation and utilisation of the action-image is taken as a means of constructing cinematic narrativ

accordance with Deleuze’s own conception of narrative as something not given in the cinema but “a conse

uence of the visible [apparent ] images themselves and their direct combinations” (6). Keaton’s utilisation o

e recursion function, the current essay argues, generates non-dialectical and inorganic teleologies. Recursio

thus the comic means by which Keaton discloses the machine lying at the heart of narrative.

he argument presented here extends the recent theorisation of cinematic comedy by Steve Neale and Frank

rutnik in their book Popular Film and Television Comedy (7) and by Tom Gunning in his essay on the oper

onal aesthetic entitled “Crazy Machines in the Garden of Forking Paths: Mischief Gags and the Origins of

merican Film Comedy” (8). It focuses upon the aesthetic implications of Neale and Krutnik’s contention

at the shift in the industrial basis of cinema that saw the demand for longer films necessitated greater emph

s upon narrative in ’20s slapstick. It considers Gunning’s identification of the operational aesthetic with the

usal structure of the machine and with gag-based comedy. By explicating and interpreting Deleuze’s treat-

ent of Keaton’s singular deployment of the action-image, it gives concrete content to Gunning’s claim that

is coincidence between the machine and the gag lays bare the mechanics of narrative articulation. It thereb

vestigates further Keaton’s comic configurations of mise-en-scène, gags and narrative structures in order to

sess their significance for our understanding of narrative in general.

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eaton’s two-reelers look back to Mack Sennett’s aesthetics in their slapstick and chase sequences, in the

mergence of comedy from the interpenetration of situations which are parallel in space and time although

ildly disparate in content, and in their experimentation with dream logic, particularly the imbrication of

mic logic and dream logic. But the two-reelers also look forward to his features in their emphasis on props

nd in their construction of both stories and gags around the deployment of props. Indeed, the finest of the fe

res are stories built around a single prop – the train in The General, the ocean liner in The Navigator, the

eamboat in Steamboat Bill, Jr., the cinema in Sherlock, Jr., and the movie camera in The Cameraman – or a

otif, which is in any case a concept that has a prop-like status – athletics in College and marriage in Seven

hances.

y Keaton’s own admission, his short films were often not much more than a compilation of improvised gag

metimes with less than the barest bones of narrative structure. But such extemporising, he observed, could

ot sustain a 100-minute film (9). And although he shares the credits with other directors in his shorts as well

his features, Keaton himself has quite tellingly suggested that in his feature films other directors were larg

brought in to assist with the development of a storyline (10).

he question that concerns me here is how the need for a story-line, for narrative, forced Keaton, beyond

eking assistance from other directors, to relearn his comic repertoire between making short and feature-

ngth films. To put it another way: to what extent did Keaton in fact subordinate the comic to narrative, or

ce versa?



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he subordination of the comic to narrative, or of the possibility of the comic replacing logical causality with

rprise, fate, chance, luck, etc., or of slapstick existing as a non-narrative kind of cinematic attraction are th

ost vehemently debated questions by theorists of cinematic comedy. David Bordwell, Steve Neale, Frank

rutnik, Donald Crafton, Tom Gunning, and Henry Jenkins (11) have all attempted in one way or another to

count for the relationship between the comic and narrative. In approaching this issue here, I will argue that

hat comes to distinguish Keaton’s transition from the two-reeler to the feature-length film is that his gags a

ot so much recast within the dramatic form of narrative as mobilised in such a way as to create a distinctive

rm of comedy (12) .

order to show how Keaton’s gags provide him with a structuring logic for his extended narratives, let me

st very briefly provide details of the kinds of narrative that are found in his two-reelers. The preponderance

adventures and situations furnishes the “structure” of Keaton’s short films with a more or less rudimentary

arrative form. The films tend to chronicle the Keaton character’s life rather than present fully formulated na

tives. The narratives vary, however, in the degree to which they are linear and in the extent to which they a

gressive or resolved, and in the way events are organised according to the rules of psychological and causal

otivation. For the most part they are largely produced through building up humorous incidents or episodes;

ey are not properly structured interpretations of events, but formations that emerge as a result of nothing

ore than the continuity of time and space. Four kinds of narrative can be identified in the two-reelers, al-

ough it is not necessarily the case that they are mutually exclusive. A consideration of the articulation of

ese narratives will in turn enable us to understand how, in addition to the external pressures associated with

e demand for longer films that were brought to bear on his filmmaking, Keaton eventually arrived at a dis-

nctive form of cinematic narrative.



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he two-reelers of the first group are conventional in the sense of being goal-oriented, psychologically moti-

ated, structured through the logic of causality and resolved at the end. These quest narratives detail the

eaton character’s attempt to achieve a goal (whether it is marriage ( Neighbors; Day Dreams; Cops [1922] o

e completion (successful or unsuccessful) of any kind of task (One Week [1920]; The Electric House

922]). While these narratives are quite conventional, they are also farcical in as much as the narrative is

dimentary while the plot is as voluminous as its events are inconsequential. Those of the second group are

ss structured by narrative flow than built around situations, much like the situation comedies that we see on

levision. Keaton retains this kind of structure from the time he worked with Arbuckle. It is evident in such

ms as Coney Island (1917), The Butcher Boy (1917) and The Garage (1919) (all made with Arbuckle) and

ntinues to predominate in The Playhouse (1921), The Blacksmith (1922), The Scarecrow (1920), The

aunted House (1921) and My Wife’s Relations. The third group – The Boat (1921), The Balloonatic (1923),

he High Sign (1921), Hard Luck (1921), The Goat (1921), The Pale Face (1921) – are adventure narratives

ith digressive trajectories brought about by comic processes. The Keaton character’s narrative agency in

ese films is minimised – meaning that he does not so much set out on an adventure (in the way he does late

the feature film Go West [1925] for example), as embody the attributes of a nearly will-less man caught up

the flotsam and jetsam of the world at large, but doing his best to adapt to the ordeals that it presents to hi

his characteristic provides for the digressive structure of such films and allows the comic free reign. The

ms of the fourth group, structured according to the “logic” of displacement, are without a rational basis for

nnecting events. In The Frozen North (1922), The Love Nest (1923) and Convict 13 (1920), even the most

nuous narrative logic of coincidence and accident is abandoned and replaced by dream logic. Causality is

ore dramatically forsaken in Convict 13 and The Frozen North than in The Love Nest .

was in the features, however, that the problem of the tension between narrative and the comic presented it-

lf most emphatically to Keaton. There is evidence to suggest that because the demand for a story was at

dds with the methods he had previously developed for making audiences laugh, Keaton’s shift to making fe

re-length comedies led him to reconsider the comic possibilities at his disposal. In his biography he outline

ow the need for a stronger storyline meant that between his two-reelers and features he had to relinquish im

ausible narrative structures and impossible gags. He had to curb his use of slapstick and work on developin

lievable characters. He also had to avoid gags that were discontinuous with the basic plot structure (13).

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arrative linearity presented one of the biggest difficulties. Keaton learned through experience that in feature

ngth films audiences would not tolerate having their attention diverted from the hero’s efforts to resolve the

oblems presented by the narrative. To illustrate the point, he cites one of his favorite sight-gags, devised fo

he Navigator (1924). It was to take place in the scene where Keaton, having donned a diving suit, plunges

own to the bottom of the ocean to mend a leak in the ship on which he and the girl have been set adrift. At

s disposal he has a number of gags relating to the incongruity of situation and behaviour (while underwater

puts up a barricade bearing the sign “Men at Work” and washes his hands in a bucket of water) and also t

e transformation of objects (he uses a lobster as a pair of pliers and a swordfish as a weapon to joust with

nother swordfish). All of these gags, according to Keaton, were readily accepted by the audience. The one

ey rejected (and which was cut from the film) involved the Keaton character playing the part of traffic cop.

nning a starfish to his diver’s suit, he held up his hand to halt a passing school of fish so that a big fish wait

g patiently for clear passage could go along its way. When the gag was shown in the trailer, the audience’s

sponse was suitably mirthful, indicating that the gag itself was not lacking in comicality. But a subsequent

st-screening of the whole film revealed that its placement in the narrative vitiated its comic potential. Keato

ncluded that his “feature comedies would succeed best when the audience took the plot seriously enough t

ot for [him]” as he “indomitably worked [his]…way out of mounting perils” (14). The challenge then was

vise a way of making gags while retaining a narrative structure that would guarantee the maintenance of a

ence attention.



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While Keaton’s feature films were more conventional in narrative structure than his two-reelers – not only

ore teleological but also more organised around the Keaton character as agent of narrative development – a

xamination of his first forays into feature filmmaking indicates that it wasn’t a straightforward transition. Hi

st feature, The Three Ages, a parody of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), is in fact three short films inter-

ut with each other, each exploring the same theme but in different epochs – love in prehistoric, Roman, and

odern times. The feature-length narrative of his next film, Our Hospitality, was achieved largely by subordi

ating comedy to melodrama. The beginning of the film is firmly organised by the melodramatic mode; the

arrative hinging upon a feud between two families which provides the situation for a duel between the

eaton character and the brothers of his love interest. Comedy is injected into the duel structure; it breaks

ith conventional melodramatic realism, but its effects are comparatively insignificant in terms of narrative

velopment, leading David Bordwell et al to cite it for its exemplary narrative structure in spite of its genre

5). The third feature, Sherlock, Jr., confirms that Keaton was even at that stage still uncomfortable with the

ll-length narrative. This time he deals with the problem by inserting a dream within a film within the film,

hich allows him to retain the impossible gags and divergent logical structures of some of his earlier films. I

only with his fourth feature, The Navigator, that Keaton makes the transition to full feature-length comedi

arrative. It is noteworthy that in this film he interweaves the narrative structure with a prop in a manner that

had not done so resolutely since One Week .



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oth The Navigator and The General attest to a comparatively greater ease with narrative structure on

eaton’s part and the story is implicated in nearly all of the incidents related. In The Navigator, Keaton plays

card-carrying member of the idle rich, Rollo Treadway. The plot of the film at its broadest level involves

ollo attempting to get the girl he loves to marry him. While she initially rejects him, complication and coin-

dence, which sees them both set adrift on an ocean liner called “the Navigator”, conspire to give them a sec

nd chance. Un-navigated, as it were, they are subjected to the will and whim of the elements. In the course

eir adventure, Rollo and the girl must adapt to the scale of the ship, hazard fierce storms and vast seas and

nd off a tribe of hungry cannibals. A series of individual tests brings them closer together until the final sho

here their embrace affirms their love for each other.

onventional narrative causality also appears to organise the unfolding of events in The General. The film

esents the story of the heroic deeds of a Southern patriot in the American Civil War. Keaton plays an es-

emed train driver called Johnnie who has but two loves, his engine, eponymously named The General, and

rl called Annabelle. When Civil War engulfs the South, Annabelle’s brother and father do the honourable

ing and enlist. Annabelle expects Johnnie to do the same, but when he tries his application is refused be-

use he is regarded as more valuable as a train driver. Annabelle dismisses Johnnie’s excuses and vows to

ave nothing to do with him until he is in uniform. From this point on, the narrative concerns Johnnie’s re-

mption.

ven though in both films all the events in some way pertain either to developing the character for the audi-

nce or to the films’ narrative unfolding, there is nevertheless a sense in which these feature-length narratives

ffer from their non-comedic counterparts. Chance, fate, luck, and coincidence are more significant factors i

e orchestration of these films’ narratives. For example, just when it becomes clear that the test of “naviga-

on” in The Navigator has overwhelmed the protagonists and death by drowning is inevitable, a submarine –

e deus ex machina – comes to the rescue. And in The General, coincidence is the only reason that Annabell

urneys on Johnnie’s train to visit her wounded father in a nearby town and it is bad fortune that she remain

n board when it is stolen by the Northerners. When Johnnie makes it his mission to retrieve his beloved trai

is unknown to him that Annabelle has been taken hostage and it is pure luck that he is privy to Northerners

attle plans. Coincidence, not heroism, nor any dialectical capability on Johnnie’s part, enables him to rescue

oth Annabelle and his train and warn the Confederates of the pending Yankee offensive. Coincidence and

hance undermine the functions that causality and character agency have in narrative. In particular, such fac-

rs erase the way that conventional rational causality produces narrative meaning and, indeed, legitimates

arrative’s claim to meaning. On the other hand, this is not to suggest that coincidence and chance necessaril

ake the films non-narrative or anti-narrative.


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ne of the most interesting arguments that can be brought to bear on the relationship between comedy and

arrative structure in early cinema comes from Tom Gunning’s theorisation of an operational aesthetic based

n demonstrating the function of the machine. Whereas theorists like David Bordwell and Steve Neale and

ank Krutnik generally concur that in the relationship between narrative and the comic the abandonment of

usal motivation is more or less a generic convention (16), Gunning, by contrast, actually makes mechanica

usality the crux of the relationship between cinematic comedy and the operational aesthetic (17).

he operational aesthetic, similarly bound up with the nineteenth century context of cinema, extends Gun-

ng’s previous theorisation of the cinema of attractions (18). Gunning uses the latter concept to account for

nema’s emergence from the specific cultural and technological conditions of the nineteenth century, noting

particular the vast array of optical toys and visual attractions that both culminated in the invention of cine-

a and established its audience as sophisticated urban pleasure seekers. The imperative of early cinema or th

nema of attractions was not, he argues, to tell stories so much as to arouse and to intensify the curiosity of i

udience, to astonish and shock them.

he earliest evidence of the operational aesthetic is found in the audience’s attraction to the cinematograph

elf; the films screened by the cinematograph are deemed by Gunning to be “simply a demonstration of the

achine’s process and functioning” (19). This cinematographic machine similarly captured the process and

nctioning of other machines as we see in the Lumière brothers’ 1896 actualité , Arrival of the Train. The fa

nation with the machine went hand in hand with cinema’s illusory capacity. Gunning cites, for example, ea

cinema’s appropriation of the music hall’s sausage machine routine where a pig is herded into one end of a

ox and comes out the other side as meat cuts and sausages (20). The operational aesthetic also revelled in th

versibility of nature, as is illustrated by the brothers’ film of the brick wall that is erected and dismantled b

anipulating the forward and reverse wind mechanism of the projector.

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While many of the cinematic examples of the fascination with operationality have a comic element to them, i

as in the plethora of mischief films produced over the years 1896–1905 that cinematic comedy really got u

rway. It is in them that narrative, gag and mechanism became three distinctive means of ordering the temp

l process in a way that was distinctively cinematic. Gunning identifies these three components of the opera

onal aesthetic in his analysis of L’Arroseur arrosé (1895), a film often cited as the first piece of cinematic

medy. A basic narrative structure is formed by the construction of the gag, a gag that is itself constructed o

e basis of the deployment and redeployment of an apparatus. A man attempting to water his garden is pre-

nted from doing so by a boy stepping on the hose. When the man examines the nozzle to see what is wron

ith it, the boy steps off the hose so that water suddenly spurts in the man’s face. The man reprimands the bo

nd finally chases him out of frame with the hose. The narrative emerges from the apparatus mediating be-

ween the two characters and inscribing action with temporal development in the operation of the device (21)

he gag, Gunning quite rightly suggests, emerges from the deployment of an apparatus which creates a deto

character action through an inanimate object, and of course from the man, initially oblivious to the boy’s

tervention, being caught unawares.

unning describes the anti-productivist ethos of mischief films like this. Their primary aim was the derail-

ent or interruption of intentional action. Indeed, this quality of interruption or derailment and the fact that i

as “structured around a quick payoff” constituted its gag-like structure and prevented the “flow…into a

nger temporal progression” (22). As films increased in length, directors for a time strung pieces of mischie

gether in a kind of additive or parataxical structure, but ultimately this method proved unsustainable and th

ischief film all but disappeared. Gunning argues, however, that the operational aesthetic continued to preva

to the 20s in Chaplin’s assembly lines and Keaton’s locomotives: “This fascination with the way things

me together, visualising cause and effect through the image of the machine, bridges the end of the nine-

enth century and the beginning of the twentieth, shaping many aspects of popular culture” (23).

he Keaton films in which the operational aesthetic most clearly comes to the fore can be called task films (a

ough there is a task dimension in all of Keaton’s films) (24). The operational aesthetic is evident in the arti

ated gags in One Week orchestrated in relation to the construction and transportation of the house, the gal-

ws with an elasticised noose and the machinic performances of the rioting prisoner and the Keaton charact

Convict 13, the collapsible mast designed to allow the vessel to squeeze under the low bridges in The Boat

e trafficator made from a boxing glove and pantograph (extension scissors) in Cops, the constructive and d

ructive transformations of the house in Electric House, the demolition of the car and the invention of the

rung saddle in The Blacksmith, the hybrid balloon/boat in The Balloonatic and finally Buster’s lifeboat and

s means of lowering it into the water in The Love Nest .

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unning’s identification of an operational aesthetic in early cinematic comedy unquestionably provides a

eans of understanding the deployment of apparatuses in both Keaton’s short and feature-length films. More

mportantly though, it can be used to explain how these apparatuses relate to Keaton’s gags and Keaton’s nar

tive structures. For the operation of apparatuses oft-times provides the substance of both the story and the

medy. Consider, for example, the two-reeler The Electric House. As a tale of retribution, narrative events

e linked through misidentification and revenge. The Keaton character has just graduated as a doctor of

otany but is mistaken for an electrical engineer and contracted to electrify a house. The film is organised

ound the undertaking of a single task. Both the story and the film’s comic dimension emerge from the

monstration of the uses of electricity. And both, literally and figuratively, are concerned with crossed wires

his film recalls the house of gadgets in The Scarecrow and one can imagine that the diverse uses of electrici

that the film explores would have dazzled contemporary audiences more than today’s. (It is the poetic, ofte

rreal, quality of the images that emerge from this enterprise that remains impressive.) Stairs become escala

rs; the bath travels to the bed to pick up its client; dinner is distributed by train; the plates are cleaned in the

shwasher and returned to their cupboards by conveyor belt; the pool table is electrified to set up the game;

e library to distribute books; and outside, the water-level of the swimming pool can be altered by shifting a

ver. The film’s gags involve both the operationality and malfunctioning of these newly invented machines.

s one would expect in a Keaton comedy, a few slapstick glitches temper the demonstration of such modern

arvels. The real engineer gets his own back by unleashing the destructive underside of electricification. Th

rcuit room is like a computer, which he reprograms to turn the house against its inhabitants. Keaton’s at-

mpt to carry his suitcase up the stairs turns into a Sisyphean nightmare. With the trunk heavy on his back, h

unable to see that his interminable movement up the stairs is thwarted by their downward mechanisation.

nd as the owner argues with one of his guests in the library, the automated book selector slaps the latter on

e back with such perfect timing as to lead the man to believe his host is the perpetrator of the violent deed.

ghts flash off and on of their own accord and the dining room furniture starts to pulsate. The rollaway bath

ems to take offence at Keaton and the girl being alone together in the room and intervenes in the situation

y sucking him in and ferrying him away while knocking her onto the bed, which in turn folds up and impris

ns her in the wall cavity. The house that had been animated by electricity appears to those within it as sud-

nly animistic and, in this respect, it behaves in a manner not unlike the malevolent house in One Week .

ndoubtedly the contraptions and apparatuses in Keaton’s films are the basis for his gags. Even if the opera-

on of such machines does not always correspond with the Keaton character’s intention (for he is capable of

nleashing in them an unstoppable destructive capacity), they are his primary means of adapting to the world

which he lives and they justify his continuing existence in the film.


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elated simply to tasks and the malfunctioning of apparatuses, the operational aesthetic appears to break out

isolated moments. The machines that Keaton constructs in his short films are mostly small gestures of inte

onally directed behaviour that accumulate to form the plot. Occasionally the aesthetic is pursued quite rigor

usly, as in One Week or The Boat ; but more often than not, its somewhat piecemeal form is closer to that of

e turn of the century extended mischief films.

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While Gunning utilises the concept of the operational aesthetic to demonstrate that causality and mechanism

incide in the gag, and that this ordering produces something like narrative, his emphasis is ultimately on

azy machines, absurdist mechanics and hence the gag’s subversion of narrative’s anticipatory logic. The

ag, in other words, relies on a cause-effect structure but follows recognisable causes with unexpected effect

he gag’s subversion of narrative remains part and parcel of an anti-productivist ethos. In addition, Gunning’

terest lies not in the story or what the event means but in how the operational aesthetic focuses upon the

nctions and processes of the machine. But while he identifies the coincidence of causality, mechanism and

ag, he fails to reflect upon their configuration in functional (as opposed to absurd anti-productive) causality

ecisely that kind of coincidence that we saw at the beginning of this essay in the series of gags that estab-

hed the narrative of My Wife’s Relations. Such coincidences produce a mechanistic kind of narrative in

hich meaning is indeed secondary to operationality.

ne of Keaton’s commentators, Jean-Patrick Lebel, goes a step further than Gunning. His observation that

eaton’s gags often function as mechanisms for narrative resolution has led him to label Keaton a dia-

ctician. The gag registers a “dialectical” form of adjustment on Keaton’s part in the course of which the sy

esis resolves the contradiction, through Keaton’s masterful success… The gag structure is not circular but

alectical” (29). Consider his account of a gag from The General:

In pursuit of the Northerners, Keaton prepares to use against them the curious bombarder-mortar-can-

non he has had the foresight to hitch on to the back of his train. He loads the weapon with elegant pinch

es of cannon powder (first variation: cannon charge assimilated into salt-cellar). Keaton lights the

weapon’s fuse. The cannon fodder pops out and, after describing a most graceful curve, drops a few feet

away (second variation: simple turnabout, Keaton’s fiasco. The cannon belches its projectile in a nig-

gardly fashion).

But Keaton isn’t one to let himself be bested. This time he stuffs the cannon full to the brim. Now we’ll s

what we’ll see. He lights the fuse and, while it burns, returns to his driver’s seat.



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But on his way back to the tender he unfortunately uncouples the mortar truck, detaching it from the res

of the train. The liberated connecting hook drags along the track, jerking the weapon and causing the

cannon to lower dangerously, until it’s aiming directly at Keaton who tries to save himself. But in his pa

ic he’s ensnared his foot in the hook of the tender, and remains a captive directly in the cannon’s line of

fire. In a fit of panic he impotently throws a piece of wood at the cannon (a supreme detail this, adding t

the gag’s perfection). This solution proving ineffective, he faces the cannon, helpless.

It is now that Keaton the director, compensating for his energy, makes the track curve. The positions are

thus the following: Keaton’s locomotive takes the curve and is no longer in the cannon’s line of fire; the

Northerners’ locomotive, on the other end of the curve, is. And just before the cannon itself takes the

curve, the shot goes off! (30)

ebel reduces this “double-trigger” gag to the three moments of the dialectic. The first stage comprises

eaton overloading the cannon; the second stage (or antithesis) occurs when the cannon turns on him; and th

ird stage or synthesis comes about because the cannon nevertheless hits its initially intended target. Lebel

us delineates the gag in dialectical terms, identifying Keaton’s behaviour with dialectical sublation (the

ufhebung). The sublative process is exemplified in his statement that both “Keaton and the cannon surpass

emselves, the former by his magnified action, the latter, its function enriched by its added inventiveness an

ecision; Keaton makes the cannon do things it could never do otherwise” (31).



18/33


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theorising the relationship between the dialectic and comedic narrative, the concept of teleology can be

ed to distinguish between the dialectical or organic form of dramatic narrative and the possibility of a non-

alectical comedic form. Teleology doubtless has a relation to the dialectic in so far as both are modes of be

ming, but teleology is not necessarily concerned with the resolution of immanent contradictions nor with

blation as the preservation of that which is negated on a higher level. Teleology for Hegel pertains to mech

nism and chemism (35) and in contradistinction to the dialectic can properly be either internal or external.

ternal teleology is exemplified in living organisms and has a stronger correspondence to the dialectic in so

r as the realisation of purpose is immanent to the object (36). In external teleology, the purpose or goal is in

oduced from an outside agent rather than immanent. The agent thus presupposes the object and intervenes i

by attending to the mechanical or chemical principles according to which it operates. The purpose that the

bject serves is not its own but that of the agent and often also that of another entity such as God.

ebel’s characterisation of Keaton as a dialectian could thus be challenged on the grounds he confuses the di

ctic with teleology. Keaton’s surpassing of himself (as Lebel puts it) is not after all the result of the develop

ent of internal contradictions, but the outcome of nature conforming to narrative necessity through divine

tervention (a curve in the track positions Keaton outside the cannon’s line of fire), which in this instance

eans the intervention of Keaton the director, the metteur-en-scène who usurps the power of God. In Lebel’s

ample of Keaton’s “dialectical” gag structure, the character’s action and its consequences would be more

propriately understood as the enactment of an external teleology rather than the operation of the dialectic.

While there is an undeniably teleological aspect to the gag, it is not strictly speaking internally dialectical.

order to clarify further what is at stake in this mode of narrative development that functions in accordance

ith the rules of external teleology, we can examine the ramifications of Deleuze’s classification of Keaton’s

ms in terms of the large form of the action-image – the form which he argues is properly an organic form i

much as it is self-generating and self-regulating. For Deleuze’s situation of Keaton’s work in the context o

e organic form of the action-image provides a pertinent backdrop for a consideration of comedic narrative.

et us bear in mind too that dialectic, for Hegel at any rate, is necessarily organic and that the difference be-

ween internal dialectic and the external application of the dialectical method is ultimately a distinction be-

ween the organic and the inorganic.



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he action-image is the term Deleuze uses for Classical Hollywood narrative. His emphasis falls predomi-

antly on the active, transformative structure of such films. Transformation occurs on the basis of two differ-

nt compositions of images of actions and images of situations which give rise to the large and the small

rms. In the large form the relation between situations and actions has the formula SAS’ (Situation, Action,

w Situation). The small form, on the other hand, is expressed by the ASA’ structure. An action discloses a

tuation that demands a new action (37). The large and small forms of the action-image thus articulate speci

economies of narrative.

eleuze in fact specifies five laws of the large form of the action-image, but does so quite separately from hi

scussion of Keaton. What is important to us here is the way Keaton’s comedy both deploys and modifies

em. This will be demonstrated by posing Deleuze’s articulation of such laws against the narrative structure

Keaton’s feature films. In so doing, what Deleuze himself says is extended to show that Keaton’s comedy

uts into question the organic quality that Deleuze attributes to the large form.

theorising the large form of the action-image, Deleuze specifies the sign value of images of situations in

rms of the Peircian concept of the synsign. The synsign or the encompasser, as Deleuze also calls it, signifi

real or determinate milieu, a place with actual qualities and powers that specify that subject’s relation to the

tuation (38). The qualities and powers of the milieu impinge upon a character and make him/her respond to

e situation in order to modify it. The fact that the situation impinges on the character in a particular way, an

at the character is responsive, constitutes a second sign called the binomial. The binomial designates a duel

ade up of two individuated forces which intersect. One force comes from the synsign which can manifest

elf in an antagonist, the other from the protagonist (39).

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he first law of the action-image pertains to the organic mode of the synsign, which forms a spiral of develo

ent and includes both spatial and temporal caesuras. This law of the organic structures the actualisation of

ilieux at the level of situation, space, frame and shot and organises the passage from the first situation to th

bsequent one (S to S’) (40). Not only is it self-generating and self-regulating, it issues forth challenges that

ill be responded to and that will cause it to change. The second law concerns the passage from situation to

tion. Here the synsign/encompasser contracts into a binomial or a duel by means of the convergence of par

lel montage. Lines of action emanate from the encompasser and converge in the binomial in order to “mak

ossible the ultimate individual confrontation, the modifying reaction” (41). The third law refers to the actual

oint of confrontation. At the climax, montage, even the shot/reverse shot is forbidden. Rather, “two terms

nfront each other face to face and must be seized in an irreducible simultaneity” (42). The fourth law of th

tion-image is that the duel is neither single nor local; there is “a dovetailing of duels in each other. The bin

ial is polynomial” (43). The fifth and final law states that the breach between the encompasser – Deleuze

so calls it the limit-image – and the hero is huge and “can only be bridged progressively” as the hero actu-

ises his potential powers (44). Implied in this progression is the psychological development of the hero: “In

neral the hero must pass through moments of impotence, internal or external” (45). Insofar as the large for

the action-image is an organic form, it is synonymous with the Hegelian dialectic. It develops as a result o

e emergence from the situation of internal, immanent contradictions which are resolved in accordance with

eir own immanent qualities. That is to say, the resolution of contradictions is organic.

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order to see how these laws function in Keaton’s cinema we can consider the example of Steamboat Bill,

he film’s narrative is centred around Willie (played by Keaton), a college dandy, attired in Oxford baggies,

ow tie and beret, who visits the father he has not seen since early childhood. Steamboat Bill (Willie’s father

rnest Torrence) is a parody of early twentieth century working class masculinity. Big, beefy and butch, he

mbodies the ideal that to be a man entails practical competence and he is clearly repulsed by what he per-

ives to be his son’s effeminate qualities. The challenge presented to his son Willie (obviously so-named to

cord with his personal affectations) is to prove his worthiness to his father. This challenge is for the most

art ignored by Willie, who is more interested in pursuing the affection of a girl he knows from college than i

easing his father. The challenge is only responded to when the storm hits and engages him in a duel of hy-

rbolic proportion (46).

Steamboat Bill, Jr., the synsign starts out as the idyllic quality of a town situated on the riverside of the

ississippi – which is immediately undermined by the place name “Muddy Waters”. Pastoral idyll has been

renched open by the progress of modernity, the old steamboat is obsolete in the face of its modernised coun

rpart while the tradesman is superseded by the entrepreneur. The synsign thus contracts to form the two

des of the binomial: the Keaton character’s redundant father and the town’s most prominent businessman

King), come head to head on a number of occasions. What is distinctive in Keaton’s oeuvre, and this no

oubt prevents his comedy degenerating into pure parody, is that he never breaks the third law, the law forbi

ng montage. The confrontation with the cyclone, like the collapsing bridge in The General, or the waterfall

Our Hospitality, is not conveyed through montage but is shot as continuous action. Steamboat Bill, Jr. in

ct gives Keaton’s most famous example of the confrontation and the risk of death it involves. The facade o

two-storey building descends upon Keaton in a single shot, the open upper window becoming his escape

atch from a certain death. The fourth law is evident in the extension of the general antipathy between King

nd Bill, to Bill and Willie, and to Willie and his girlfriend’s father. Minor duels escalate into slightly larger

nes: Willie is forbidden to see his girlfriend; Bill gives Willie a return ticket to Boston and sends him on his

ay; a violent outburst between Bill and King sees the former incarcerated, and so forth. In Steamboat Bill,

e limit-image comes in the form of the cyclone. But while the Keaton character enters into a duel with the

anifest dimensions of the cyclone and in so doing reinstalls harmonious relations, it is significant that he

oes not meet this challenge through self-transcendence as the fifth law demands. Admittedly, in Steamboat

ll, Jr. (and College), Keaton accumulates greater competency than in his other features. But this is far from

nvincing. Even though Willie rescues his father, and his girlfriend and her father, he still cannot tie a basic

not.



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here is thus one law of the large form of the action-image which Keaton’s cinema is not properly obedient t

the Keaton character’s bridging of the breach presented by the synsign, he evidences little capacity for sel

anscendence (47). So, we could say that in Keaton’s films the development of contradictions is organic, bot

e constitution of the synsign and the development of the binomial are organic but their resolution is inorga

. In spite of Deleuze’s claim that Keaton’s comedy complies with the large from of the action-image, it by

o means complies with all the laws of that form. And in breaking the fifth law, Keaton throws into question

e organic quality of narrative that the form claims.

).4'&()4. &.8 >#-1'2)4.

ow, without self-transcendence, does Keaton meet the challenge presented to him by the limit-image?

eleuze’s emphasis on the machine and on the functions of recursion and minoration indicate the specificity

Keaton’s response.

inoration, or the conversion to the miniature, is the means by which Keaton diminishes the scale of his env

nment. To fully understand its implications it is first necessary to reflect further upon the fourth of the five

ws. For the dispersal of the binomial in the polynomial gives rise to a number of minor difficulties. In fact,

e can see here that the small form of the action-image (the ASA’) manifests itself in Keaton’s feature-lengt

ms. That Deleuze’s commentary on Keaton is not situated in the chapter on the large form of the action-im

e but in the one on the small form suggests that one should be wary about polarising the comedy of the

mall form and of the large form (polarising for instance, Chaplin and Keaton). Deleuze himself says in Cha

r 11 “Figures, or the transformation of forms” that while “[t]he distinction between the two forms of action

in itself clear and simple… its applications are more complicated” and that although directors have a prefe

nce for one form or the other, they also at times utilise the form that is not their usual one (48). My argumen

that even though Deleuze proposes that the distinctiveness of Keaton’s comedy results from the audacity

ith which it tackles the large form, the small form is not only more prevalent in Keaton’s shorts but is evi-

nt in the large form in what Deleuze calls minoration.



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et us turn for a moment then to the small form. Like the large form of the action-image, the small form is

mprised of actions and situations, but in the latter variety the movement emanates from action to situation

new action. The small form, Deleuze writes, moves from “a mode of behaviour, or a ‘habitus’”, to a partia

disclosed situation. … A representation like this is no longer global but local. … It is no longer structural

ut constructed around events [‘événementielle‘]” (49). The ASA’ form is comprised of a specific kind of sig

lled the index, which provides the rationale for the images of actions and their disclosure of situations (50).

he index itself is located in the action, whether it be a mode of behaviour, a gesture, a habitus, or a fully ar-

culated action. There are two kinds of indexical actions: one refers us to something about the situation that i

ot present, to a lack or an absence of something; the other is equivocal or suggests two different situations a

e same time. In cinematic comedy the latter kind of index prevails. Deleuze illustrates the index of equivoc

in an example from a Chaplin film in which Charlie, seen from behind, appears to be sobbing convulsively

ntil a subsequent shot discloses that he is shaking a cocktail. Certainly this is an apposite image of Chaplin’

e of equivocity to simultaneously produce pathos and comedy. My argument is that Keaton’s comedy also

lies on the equivocity of the index.

he equivocity associated with the small form dominates most of Keaton’s short films. For example, as the

ory of The High Sign develops the Keaton character participates in two antithetical modes of employment,

hile it becomes apparent that the trajectory of the narrative necessitates the removal of this equivocity. In

ne Week , lot 66 is confused with lot 99, and the further perpetration of equivocal signification by Keaton’s

val, Hank, changing the numbers on the house building kit, is the cause of the monstrous house and the de-

acle that results from having to relocate it. In many of Keaton’s shorts, but in some of his features as well,

e narratives are propelled by a misinterpretation of signs, misinterpretation only made possible because of

quivocity. In Convict 13 and The Haunted House the confusion occurs at the level of costume; in Cops, at th

vel of the object (the bomb which Keaton apprehends as a cigarette lighter), and likewise in The Balloonati

he hybrid balloon-boat) and The Scarecrow (the contraptions/objects). The Playhouse is concerned with the

quivocity of identity – Keaton not only plays the entire orchestra, but his girlfriend is a twin. In The Naviga

r, Rollo ends up on the wrong ship because a sign has only been partially disclosed to him, and in Battling

utler, the narrative is complicated by Keaton pretending to operate under the sign of someone he is not.



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his overwhelming evidence of the small form means it is not sufficient to look simply at the transformation

situations to grasp the comedic aesthetic of Keaton’s cinema. We must also examine the specific relation-

ip between the large and small forms. For it is by grasping the nature of the interaction between these form

at we can understand the distinctive relationship between narrative and gag in his films. Deleuze, in fact, ac

unts for the transposition of the small form into the large form in Keaton’s cinema, proposing that Keaton’

iginality lies in the way he “filled the large form [of the action-image] with a burlesque content”, indeed a

ntent so at odds with the large form that Keaton’s reconciliation of the two is as implausible as it is improb

le (51).

While Deleuze himself does not say as much, the two forms intersect at the exact point that Deleuze attempts

theorise Keaton’s comedy in terms of minoration. Even though Deleuze proposes that various instances of

e synsign in Keaton’s films are notable for their immensity and grandeur, he also argues that the hero of

eaton’s films deals with this immensity, these limit-images, through a process of minoration. The gap be-

ween synsign and character is filled by minoring actions.

he notion of minoration is derived from the functioning of the machine. Deleuze writes of “Keaton’s dream

taking the biggest machine in the world and making it work with the tiniest elements” (52) and says of Th

avigator “the machine is not merely the great liner by itself: it is the liner apprehended in a “minoring” fun

on, in which each of its elements, designed for hundreds of people, comes to be adapted to a single destitute

uple” (53). Minoration results from the Keaton character’s disavowal of what is essential to the constitutio

the limit-image. Rather than the hero undergoing the self-transcendence necessary to rise up to meet the

mit-image, he succeeds by diminishing its immensity. In diminishing it, he produces comedy.

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espite Steamboat Bill, Jr.‘s indisputable presentation of the large form, it is not possible to begin to discuss

ithout mentioning minoration. Not only is there the diminution evident in the names of the three male pro-

gonists, King, Bill and Willie, the dovetailing of duels that Deleuze discusses in regard to the fourth law

ust be understood in this film as the accumulation of minor duels. The passage from situation to action (the

cond law of the large form) similarly takes place through the accumulation of small details. In fact the an-

pathy between father and son is expressed in terms of costume and habitus (both of which are indicators of

e small form). Keaton’s father, disaffected with his son’s appearance, takes steps to “redress” him. Willie’s

hiskers are whisked away (“take that barnacle off his lip”, Bill senior instructs the barber) and new attire is

ught for him. Bill senior attempts to alter the indices of his son’s personality so that father and son may be

ore harmoniously connected. The small form is also the means by which Bill hopes to recognise Willie

hen he meets him at the train station. Willie writes his father that he will be wearing a white carnation, but

cause it is Mother’s Day every man on the platform wears a white carnation. What should have been a sig

individuation becomes a sign of generality and sameness. When Willie and his father at last see eye to eye

is notable that Willie has given up his pansy outfits for the work gear his father wanted him to wear from th

art. And when King’s ship sinks at the end of the film, the crown is the only part which remains above wate

ing clinging to it with all his might. These points confirm that the small form (the minor) is present in what

eleuze otherwise calls the large form of the action-image. Actions express situations as much as situations

ve rise to specific actions.

he concept of minoration can therefore be interpreted as implying that Keaton inserts the small form into th

rge form, that he uses the small form as the means of apprehending the situation expressed by the limit-im-

e of the large form. The operation of minoration can in turn be understood as Keaton’s means of relating a

ons to situations – actions characterised by a refusal to acknowledge situations that border on sublimity, and

mportantly, actions that respond to situations bit by bit instead.

eaton’s most overt minoration of the large form is found in The General, which diminishes the epic throug

e combination of melodrama and slapstick. The narrative of the heroic deeds undertaken by a Southern pa-

ot in the American Civil War combines with the story of the patriot’s on-again off-again romance with his

weetheart Annabelle and monumental history is turned into the experience of a single couple (54).



27/33

wo shots in the film illustrate this point. Johnnie has single-handedly taken on the group of thieves from the

orthern army, chasing them by train. As his train advances north, a long shot captures him standing aloft th

nder, facing the camera, chopping wood to fuel the boiler for his engine while the whole Southern army an

en the Northern army pass behind him. The shot is funny not simply because Johnnie has his back to the ac

on, not just because he is oblivious to the situation, and engaged in completing another action, fulfilling an-

her function, but because of the disproportion, the disparity between the two planes of the image, the epic

andeur of the armies in the background, and the banal and docile demeanour of Johnnie chopping wood in

e foreground. Here the two forms, the large and the small, meet in the single frame. Interestingly too, there

no dialectical point of confrontation, the two simply pass each other by.

he second image exemplifying minoration occurs when Johnnie, having rescued his train and girl, returns t

arietta to warn the southern army of an impending invasion. As the Confederate General puts on his battle

arb, Johnnie and Annabelle help him dress. Johnnie takes the General’s hat and puts it on his head. He strap

s sword to his waist while Annabelle buttons his coat. The gestures of familiarity and domesticity similarly

dicate the diminishment of the large into the small.

inoration comprises Keaton’s means of injecting the large form with components of the small form, but it

so assists in the development of recursion series. The disconnection and equivocity of minoration combine

ith the recursion function. The operational aesthetic, in other words extends from the machine gag to the tr

ctory gag and thence to the narrative. The machine in The General is of course the train and the film cere-

oniously and comically explores the spectrum of its operational capabilities. The train is derailed, diverted,

as its cars uncoupled, is broken into, destroyed, conjoined, refueled, collided with, shown in forward and re

rse motion. But it is also an adaptable machine; it can be used to destroy railway tracks and pull down tele

aph wires. It is thereby transformed from a cumbersome vehicle lacking the velocity and manoeuvrability

quired to make a good chase element to an extension of Keaton’s own nimble body.


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he train-machine, which includes the railway, also constitutes the film’s narrative trajectory, giving the clea

t and fullest expression of the trajectory gag. As Daniel Moews says:

…the narrative line of the film is also the spatial line of the film, the distance traveled; and both are non

other than the actual railroad line itself. Its rails become a visual embodiment of a comic fatality contro

ling characters and events. Restricted to them, excluded from other directions and other possibilities of

action, the northerners and Johnnie are held in conflict (55).

While the editing of Keaton’s film might appear to conform to the conventional chase sequence, it is signifi-

nt that there are no breaks in this trajectory. The first half of the film inscribes a line that moves from right

left (geographically from south to north and figuratively from good to evil); the second half is simply a re-

rsal of this trajectory. Keaton’s dogged pursuit of the Yankees in the first half is matched by the Yankee’s

termination to run him down in the second.

he recursion function, we have seen, emerges whenever the Keaton character makes piecemeal attempts to

rther himself along a trajectory and it impacts upon the orientation of the action of the protagonist. Johnnie

r example, divested of his beloved train, pursues the thieves on foot. A handcart aids him and then, when it

derailed, he happens upon a penny-farthing that appears from nowhere (the very terrain of this shot is utter

discontinuous with the shots before and after it: a house is suddenly inserted between shots of a railway cu

ng). The penny-farthing is in turn upgraded to a train engine. While Johnnie certainly has a goal here, he is

ithout a plan or a schema of how to achieve it. Rather than develop psychologically, Johnnie functions recu

vely. At best his actions have only tenuous relations to the end, but usually none at all. Values and events ar

nked not because of their direct relation to either the problem or its resolution but because they can be relat-

d to other values or events.

ven in the absence of the machine, the operational aesthetic still structures the narrative through minoration

nd recursion. Recursion, for example, is apparent in the manner in which Keaton’s athleticism allows him t

ve the girl in College, in Willie’s confrontation with the cyclone in Steamboat Bill, Jr. where he is literally

wept along from one encounter to the next, and in the montage sequence in Sherlock, Jr. Recursion and mi-

oration are the alternative “mechanical” means to the logic of immanent causality of the dialectic. They are

sential components of the structure of comedic narrative that Keaton brings to cinema.



29/33

Keaton’s cinema the recursion series doesn’t go on ad infinitum; but nor is it brought to an end organically

he organic force that conventionally structures narrative is replaced by the pure mechanical teleology of the

ajectory. Through the combination of recursion and minoration, the trajectories and machines of Keaton’s

ms weave contiguous pathways until a solution is at last happened upon. Resolution is due to fortuitous cir

umstance and divine intervention. In this sense, the rendering of narrative form through the insertion of the

cursive function suggests that Keaton’s contribution to the large form of the action-image, which Deleuze

ems to be an expression of the American ethos, counters the very basis of its claim to organicism, and ther

re naturalness.

eleuze attributes an ethical dimension to Keaton’s deployment of “the secret finality of the machine” sug-

sting that embedded in the strategy of minoration is the notion that the grandest schemas can still be made

rtinent to the single individual. The Keaton character, like Rollo Treadway magnanimously trying to tow

e ocean liner with a row-boat , persists as the little man, struggling with the elemental forces of the univers

ertainly, Keaton’s character’s stoicism illustrates an ethical determination to live by individual ideals and th

cursion function provides a means of expressing this stoical character, but the comic formulation of this ide

mpacts upon the presentation of such an ethics. Far from degrading that character, as the comic is wont to d

e stoic ethic here takes on a sacred or beatific grace, but one that nevertheless permits the audience to dis-

nce themselves from its ethical dimension.

om the machines and apparatuses for which Keaton is famous to Gunning’s operational aesthetic and

eleuze’s concepts of minoration and recursion, we thus see the logic that underpins the driving force of

eaton’s comedic aesthetic. In short, Keaton formulates a single logic for the narrative, the trajectory, the ma

hine and the gag. The importance of Gunning’s work for our understanding of Keaton’s cinema is that he

aws attention, perhaps for the first time, to the significance of the coincidence of narrative, gag and machin

Deleuze’s work we find all the components necessary for a full and clear articulation of the operational ae

etic – the machine, recursion, minoration and the trajectory. The mechanical imitation of organic narrative

at we see in Keaton’s work can doubtless be understood in terms of Henri Bergson’s conceptualisation of

e comic as the “mécanisation de la vie” (56), but I would rather argue, along with Gunning, that the comic

ys bare the mechanics of narrative ordering. Narrative is thereby made into a subset of the machine, simply

ne machine among many, and narrative meaning is reduced to little more than an effect of basic operationali

.



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hanks to Andrew Murphie, Lone Bertelsen, Lisabeth During and Richard Smith for their valuable comment

n an earlier draft of this paper and Richard Smith and Roger Dawkins for the ongoing lessons on Deleuze’s

nema books.

his article was refereed.

.8.4(#2Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 1: L’image-mouvement , Les Editions de Minuit, Paris, 1983.

Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 1: The Image Movement , trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, University of Minnesot

ess, Minneapolis, 1986.

Deleuze, 1983, p. 177.

Deleuze, 1983, p. 177.

Deleuze, 1983; Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, The Athlone Press, London, 1989.

Deleuze, 1989, p. 26.

Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik, Popular Film and Television Comedy, Routledge, London, 1990.

Tom Gunning, “Crazy Machines in the Garden of Forking Paths: Mischief Gags and the Origins of American Film

omedy”, Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins (eds), Classical Hollywood Comedy, Routledge, New York, 1995,

. 87–105.

Buster Keaton, My Wonderful World of Slapstick , Da Capo Press, New York, 1982, pp. 173–4.

. From the time Keaton parted company with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle in 1920 until he started to make features, he made

two-reeler films. Most of these were co-written and co-directed with Eddie Cline. Two (The Goat and The Blacksmith)ere collaborations with Malcolm St Clair and the last, The Love Nest , was directed solely by Keaton. In the features Keato

ares the credits for directing with Cline, Jack Blystone, Clyde Bruckman, Donald Crisp, Charles F. Reisner, James W.

orne and Edward Sedgwick. Critics and commentators have generally acknowledged that the directorial responsibility for

eaton’s films was largely his (at least until he fell out with MGM), despite other directors being listed in the credits. Even

eaton’s gag writer and sometime co-director Bruckman said that Keaton “was his own best gagman” (Rudi Blesh, Keaton,

he Macmillan Company, New York, 1966, p. 149) and that his crew were “overpaid from the strict creative point of view.

ost of the direction was his” (Blesh, p. 150).

. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985; Neale and Krutnik;

onald Crafton, “Pie and Chase: Gag, Spectacle and Narrative in Slapstick Comedy,” Karnick and Jenkins, pp. 106–119;

unning, “Crazy Machines” and “Response to Pie and Chase”, Karnick and Jenkins, pp. 120–122; Henry Jenkins, What

ade Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic, Columbia University Press, New York, 1992.

. On this point see also Kevin W. Sweeney, “The Dream of Disruption: Melodrama and Gag Structure in Keaton’s Sherloc

”, Wide Angle, vol. 13, no. 1, January 1991, pp. 104–120.

. Keaton, pp. 173–4.

. Keaton, p. 176.

. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of

oduction to 1960, Routledge, London, 1985.

. David Bordwell, “Happily Ever After, Part Two”, The Velvet Light Trap, no. 19, (1982), p. 2; Neale and Krutnik, p. 30.

. Gunning derives this concept from Neil Harris’ study of P.T Barnum’s entrepreneurial success, Humbug: The Art of P.T.

arnum, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1973. Barnum (1810–1891) was an entertainment entrepreneur, a wily

agmatist who would do almost anything to make a buck, including dramatising the reality effects of his shows,


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anipulating the truth and flagrantly deceiving his audiences. He achieved fame and fortune by blurring the distinction

tween the circus and museum, orchestrating such one-act attractions as the 161-year-old slave Joice Heth whom he

vertised as having nursed George Washington. Harris develops the idea of an operational aesthetic to account for the

raction of the American public to such hoaxes. Barnum’s special contribution to Jacksonian America was to present

nundrums and illusions to the American public who responded with a requisite amount of skeptical fascination. Barnum’s

culiar aesthetic sought to focus his audience’s attention on the “structures and operations” of his exhibits and hoaxes alike,

of which were “empirically testable, and enabled – or at least invited – audiences and participants to learn how they

orked” (p. 57). The operational aesthetic then was “an approach to experience that equated beauty with information and

chnique, accepting guile because it was more complicated than candor” (p. 57). Significantly, Harris conceives this aesthet

ore broadly than is suggested by Gunning’s application of the concept to the cinema, where it is taken as simply part of an

demic fascination with the machine and its illusory capabilities.

. Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Cinema, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde”, Wide Angle, vol. 8, nos 3

1986, pp. 63–70.

. Gunning, “Crazy Machines”, p. 88.

. Gunning, “Crazy Machines”, p. 98. The Lumière brothers’ film Charcuterie mécanique (the mechanical butcher) can be

derstood as an allegory for the cinematic process itself, a point taken up many years later by Jean Eustache in his 1970 fil

Cochon (co-directed with Jean-Michel Barjol).. Gunning, “Crazy Machines”, p. 90.



. See Noel Carroll, An In-Depth Analysis of Buster Keaton’s The General, Ph. D. New York University, Xerox University

icrofilms, 1976.


. He is of the view that cinema could only really produce dramatic narratives through the development of character

ychology and the exploration of character motivation. For him, comedic narratives emerged only at that point that gags

uld be “intricately worked into comic personas”. p. 97.

. Gunning, “Response”, p. 121.

. Gunning, “Response”, p. 121.

. Jean-Patrick Lebel, Buster Keaton, trans. P.D. Stovin, A. Zwemmer Limited, London, 1967, pp. 124–7.

. Lebel, pp. 122–3.

. Lebel, p. 124.

. Michael Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1992, p. 82.

. Inwood, p. 83.

. Inwood, p. 82.

. Mechanism is a device, means, machine or instrument. Inwood proposes that Hegel understands it in terms of an

rrangement and interaction of objects on mechanical principles” (Inwood, p. 181). Mechanism for Hegel is neither organic

r behavioural to the extent that “[t]he category of mechanism applies primarily to inorganic nature. But mechanism

sentially consists not in the relations of physical or material bodies, but in external relations of persistent, independent

jects”. (p. 181.) Chemismus or chemism refers to the arrangement and interaction of things in accordance with chemical

inciples. Inwood notes Hegel’s differentiation between chemism and mechanism: “[a]n object in a mechanistic system

ght in principle exist, … even if it were detached from the system and thus unrelated to other objects. But chemical

bstances or stuffs are intrinsically related by their opposition to and affinity for each other” (p. 182).

. Inwood, pp. 182–3.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 144.

. Deleuze, 1983, pp. 141, 218.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 142.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 151.


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. Deleuze, 1983, p. 152.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 153.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 153.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 154.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 154.

. Indeed, in so far as cinematic melodrama has been theorised as exploring the problematic constitution of masculinity, the

trusion of the epic form (which conversely deploys an unproblematic representation of masculinity) explicitly addresses th

presentation of masculinity in melodrama. By creating an oxymoron – epic masculinity versus melodramatic masculinity

eaton’s films make fun of both constructions. See Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, “Minnelli and Melodrama”, Christine Gledhill

d.), Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, British Film Institute, London, 1987, pp.

–74.

. In addition to Lebel, many theorists of Keaton’s comedy make the mistake of presuming that the Keaton character

rpasses himself because of the challenges he confronts. (See, for example, Noel Carroll and Daniel Moews, Keaton: The

ent Features Close Up, California University Press, Berkeley, 1977.) The issue of self-transcendence is a complicated one

the genre of comedian comedy because the narratives of such films are organised around the virtuoso performance abilitie

already established live entertainment comedians, whether they be from vaudeville, the music hall, the night club or the

evision variety show. The central performer has an existing extra-diegetic persona that is grafted on to the identity of thearacter. Whether this persona is to be regarded as transcending the limitations of character identity is not altogether clear,

t it is undoubtedly the case that the extra-diegetic persona gives the character license to behave in a manner that is

consistent with the conventions of fictional realism. Theorists like Steve Seidman (Comedian Comedy: A Tradition in

ollywood Film, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1981) and Peter Kramer (“Derailing the Honeymoon Express:

omicality and Narrative Closure in Buster Keaton’s The Blacksmith”, The Velvet Light Trap, no. 23, spring 1989, pp. 101–

6) have argued that the narratives of comedian comedies develop in such a way as to create an opposition between the

rformative license of the comedian and the normative society of the diegesis. More precisely, they argue that the

rformative license is bound up with non-conformity, with aberrant and anti-social behaviour and that the purpose of

rrative development in such films is to ensure the subordination of such excess. I have demonstrated elsewhere (“Fool’s

old: Metamorphosis in Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr.”, Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros [eds], Falling For You: Essays o

nema and Performance, Power Publications, Sydney, 1999, pp. 209–244) that not all of the narratives in comedian comed

nction in this way and I have argued that the tension between the extra-diegetic persona and the diegetic character puts the

tion of identity and the possibility of transcendence into question.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 178.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 160.

. Deleuze, 1983, pp. 160–163.

. “L’originalité profonde de Buster Keaton, c’est d’avoir rempli la grande forme d’un contenu burlesque qu’elle semblaitcuser, d’avoir réconcilié contre tout vraisemblance le burlesque et la grande forme” (Cinéma 1: L”image-mouvement , p.

7). Unfortunately in the wording of the English translation Deleuze’s reference to what is specifically comic is lost. The

nglish translators, for instance, write that Keaton merely “gives” the large form a burlesque content and the multiple senses

the term tout vraisemblance are not evident in the English “against all odds”. The idiom is usually translated as “in all

kelihood” or “in all probability” but the term vraisemblance also carries with it the meanings verisimilitude, likelihood,

ausibility and probability. The latter two words are especially significant since their opposites, implausibility and

probability are often used to specify the nature of comedy. See for instance Jerry Palmer (The Logic of the Absurd: On Fil

d Television Comedy, British Film Institute, London, 1987) and Neale and Krutnik. The connotation of verisimilitude is

so important given that Deleuze claims that the action-image constitutes the cinema of realism and that while the large for

the action-image is usually reserved for the great realist genres of the epic, the documentary and the Western, it is the sma

rm of the action-image that is properly comedic. He proposes at the same time that it doesn’t necessarily give rise to

medy and can be used for dramatic effects as much as comic effects.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 176.


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#$ &'$($"' 78&&09::;D:!4;AE&DA8A4D:F

sa Trahair is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of New South Wales. Her book Laughing

own Silence: Sense and Nonsense in Early Cinematic Comedy will be published in 2005.

. Deleuze, 1983, p. 176.

. George Wead has noted that the narrative is adapted from a real story in the American Civil War. In 1862 a union spy sto

passenger train at Big Shanty in Georgia. His plan was to travel to Chattanooga and destroy along the way the telegraph

res and track. The plan failed because the spy was pursued by the train’s engineer and a road-shop foreman. The spy and

s accomplices were captured and hanged. George Wead, “The Great Locomotive Chase”, American Film, vol. 2, no. 9,

ly–August 1977.

. Moews, pp. 221–2.

. Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic [1911], trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell,

reen Integer, Copenhagen, 1999.

0 @ J ! ! K I B J ! K @ >
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