A Bedpan of Poop: The Influence of Silent Screen Comedy on Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer

The influence of film technique on John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer is well established. However, there is another aspect of silent era cinema that is highly present in the novel yet largely overlooked: slapstick. As much as any other contemporaneous film genre, slapstick shared with Dos Passos a skepticism about the controlling nature of modern urban society. A close comparison of the novel and the films of Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin, the era's two most popular film stars, furthers our understanding of how Dos Passos sought inspiration in popular entertainment to make his critique of modernity, while also revealing a comic sensibility at work in a novel more frequently viewed through the lens of tragedy.