Charlie Chaplain's speech in The Great Dictator - I get it now.

When I was younger, I was a bit of a contrarian. I always enjoyed taking, if not morally opposing sides, at least aesthetically opposing sides to that which was popular. Had a lot more fight in me back then, that's for damn sure. And one of the things I remember commenting on, in passing, was Charlie Chaplain's speech in The Great Dictator.

Not that I disagreed with any particular part (except maybe I might've gotten a little prickly about some of the 'cleverness' comments), but that I felt it was too overt, too on-the-nose, too unsubtle. Then - as now, for that matter - I regarded indirectness as a kind of artistic grace and elegance. Nowadays I have a bit more respect for the blunt delivery as well, even though I generally still prefer the understated approach.

Now, I'm not much of a film buff to begin with, and certainly not of that early era of film, so years passed, and I hardly gave it a second thought. But I was thinking today, just today, about how future generations will look back on us.

How will they look at our present state of politics with anything but disbelief? They'll have to tone down the stupidity, I said to myself, and even then ask themselves, "How could anyone believe this dreck? How could anyone not see?"

And yet, like me when I was younger, they might look at anyone who outright stated the exact opposite of the political positions of the morons du jour as insufficiently subtle, insufficiently clever; of course, we all know those basic principles; every child does! Who needs that to be said?

Surely what would have landed, surely what was needed was something biting, cutting, precise, something that cuts down to the bone with precision and righteous fury and academic deconstruction of these absurd views; some attack so particular and ferocious and detailed that it can't be denied! Surely, that's what people, both the disheartened-but-right-thinking and nearly-beguiled-would-be-fascists needed! That's what would raise the spirits of liberty and dampen the sickened fires of tyranny, right?

Going over Charlie Chaplain's speech in The Great Dictator now, unabashedly idealistic, unashamed in its love for principle and our common humanity, regardless of what cynicism or doubt would tell us; regardless of what experience or trauma whisper in our ears; saying something that is fundamentally virtuous in, and to, a world that seems to have entirely forgotten what it is to have basic integrity; where a good portion of one's fellow man seem to have entirely lost the plot, the most basic and implicit lessons learned as children about decency and connection...

I get it now.

I get it now.