My Inspiration for working in Media: Charlie Chaplin and Hedda Hopper

Charles Spencer “Charlie” Chaplin, a humorous and notorious movie star was the subject to harsh and cruel media analysis while being one of the most successful actor in history.

Age 12. A critical period in one’s youth. Either you become the dangerous youth where the old people scream “YOOOOOOUTTTHSSSS” when you run past their door ways hitting the newspaper they’re about to read, or you are the youth in the designated to after-school programs designed for the same “YOOOOOOUTTTHSSSS” to become more cultured and defined. I heavily particpated in the Arts. In that time, I was incredibly influenced by my middle-school drama teacher. Simultaneously, I really got into silent films because of a Film and Media class my mother was taking at her college.

And that’s where it all started

Film and media was a class not-so-unlike Introduction to Media. Except, there were more movies, popcorn, lack of 180 people, and not at the greatest-campus-in-the-world. But, Film and Media had something that Intro doesn’t: Movies. My mother was required to have an emphasis in her study in the course. It was with my pressure that we selected silent film.

Come September her professor designated assignments to be centered around a single character or individual prominent in the silent film era. One particular person stood out from the rest: Charles Chaplin.

The first film we saw with Charlie Chaplin was Modern Times.

Modern Times, a social commentary on the progressive inhumanity that society suffers through the metal of machines, brought upon my first meeting with Chaplin. A whimsical and charming figure, Chaplin found his way into my mother and I’s hearts. His cinema was beautiful.

Over the course of the period we had watched The Kid, City Lights, The Gold Rush, and my personal favorite:

The Great Dictator

I was obsessed. I couldn’t end my infatuation with the acting and the success of Chaplin. I dug deeper into his personal life.

A complicated, internal misnomer, or to put it simply- fucked up life of Charlie Chaplin. I shouldn’t have expected anything other than that, but he was thrilling. Four wives- one underage in a legal marriage in Mexico, plenty of children- leading to granddaughter Oona Chaplin of Game of Thrones, a target of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, and revokeing of his American Citizenship from a supreme investigaton by J. Edgar Hoover.

Still, the life of this actor was rooted in his humble beginnings. A child growing up poor, but in the theatre. An adolescent fighting for his right to survive, and an adult building a childhood he never had.

However, Hollywood was not without its scrutinizers.

Hedda Hopper, a failed former actress and gossip columnist, berated by the successs of Chaplins films was the catalyst into his removal from Hollywood. Hopper, an oppurtunist took no chances in catching onto the latest story.

It was here that I took to the research in how Media can affect the society. Hedda Hopper reported Chaplin as Communist. Chaplin himself has no political philosophy, but in the 20s and 30s artists were considered to be allied with the egalitarian and concept of sharing. Ironically, Chaplin was a millionaire and near-billionaire in the depression. In his first speaking movie, The Great Dictator, Chaplin parodizes Hitler, but in the end turns him into a passionate and peaceful message of Brotherhood- which Americans and Hopper took as petty socialism.

The columns of Hopper pushed the Red Scare into the Artistic Fray. My research had led me to studying McCarthyism. I found another play, written by Arthur Miller, The Crucible, that established the relevance of gossip in American history.

Today, the connection of accurate and resourceful media has made me furious. Mostly because it isn’t or that people try to say it isn’t. It is my goal to rid America of the elaborate hoax that false media and inaccurate information pertains. It’s very easy to start a lie. And if everyone believes in the lie- it becomes truth.

Writing Press Releases, becoming a publicist, or a spokesman means for people to buy into what you are saying. If you’re lying, I hope your career falters, because right now we need truth. Right now we need to be awakened.

The Truth Hurts. The Truth Makes People Happy. The Truth is the Truth.