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Chaplin, Jimmy Stewart, or…Curly? Who is Your Underdog Hero?
AN EXPLORATION OF THE THE AMERICAN UNDERDOG ARCHETYPE IN FILM. Ok its high school, and you are sitting in the cafeteria near Jimmy Stewart (highly proficient but shy), Charlie Chaplin (A tramp, but surprisingly resourceful), and Curly (Whoop! Whoop! Hopeless, but somehow prevailing in spite of himself), with an impossibly popular, athletic, and handsome Val Kilmer splattering mashed potatoes in all of your faces. You’ve just walked into the typical American (usually high school or college) underdog movie. Though this archetype has long been a part of American moviedom (and culture), it may surprise you that Curly has been gaining on the others…
THE GOLD RUSH (1925, Charlie Chaplin, Mack Swain, Georgia Hale): Early Hollywood made frequent use of the nebbish hero, and Chaplin was one of the best. He’d often start out the hapless tramp, then by virtue, ingenuity, and luck, somehow get the money and girl (to the frustration of the bully). In “The Gold Rush”, Chaplin is a wretched Alaskan gold miner, who perilously (and hilariously) partners a claim with Big Jim (Swain), then stumbling into a Gold Rush town, falls in love with show girl Georgia (Hale). Georgia and her friends set up the poor tramp for ridicule, but later takes pity. The two are separated for a few years, until reunited on a ship home (during which time The Tramp grows rich…
