Essay Archive - Chaplin's, The Kid
Chaplin's, The Kid
Like Moses among the bullrushes Oedipus on the mountainside, or Snow White in her Disneyland forest, Charlie Chaplin's The Kid is a tale whose underlying archetype has enthralled audiences of all ages: the abandoned child found in the wilderness. But unlike his more privileged mythological predecessors, who at least had the good fortune to be deposited in lush, natural surroundings, Chaplin's cast-off child is discovered among, the ignoble detritus of modern society. A garbage-strewn alley in the seedy Red Light District in Los Angeles' Chinatown of the 1920s serves as the shooting l....
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