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through staging automatism gags that exemplify the effects that a lack of intel-
ligent responsiveness to the environment entails. To confirm the claim that
Keaton is involved with a theme of intelligence, one should consult one s own
experience of the automatism/inattention gags. These gags presuppose
alertness on the part of the viewer versus some character s rigidity, the per-
ceptive response versus the virtually blind response. What the audience must
do to appreciate the gags is make up the difference between the character s
almost rote behavior and an intelligent comprehension of the situation.
It is important to acknowledge that not all the humor in The General is
located in gags with disastrous physical consequences. So far we have mainly
analyzed gags in which not attending to actual physical situations has phys-
ical repercussions. However, throughout The General there is a related
though less strenuous sort of humor that is based on a recurring look of sur-
prise on Johnnie s face when he finally realizes that the environment, which
he has conceived being one way, has changed.
44 Themes of The General
In the class of humorous effects that do not involve physical repercussions,
there are instances when Johnnie, through inattention, does not fully under-
stand an alteration of the environment, and, as a result, postulates a wrong
hypothesis to account for it. Examples include his putting his hand out to
test for rain after The Texas runs under the spout of the water tower that
the Union spies have left open. Another example is Johnnie s peering into
the muzzle of the mortar when the explosive that he had previously rolled
off the train explodes several hundred yards behind the train.
In the first case, we see the cab of The Texas in an overhead shot from
the rear. In the upper, right-hand corner of the screen, we see the water tower
pouring out water. In the foreground we see Johnnie bending over, looking
at a gauge in the cab. We can also see the relevant open window of the cab,
thus appreciating what Johnnie ignores. Johnnie straightens up, only to be
splashed by a cascade of water. He immediately puts his hand out to see if
it is raining, thus postulating a rather improbable physical process to account
for the actual process that he failed to notice. The humor here is largely based
on the rigidity of Johnnie s thinking. The volume of water that drenches the
cab is far too great to be part of any but the most catastrophic natural pro-
cess, a flood or a hurricane, for instance. Johnnie s rain hypothesis is quite
absurd. Furthermore, he only looks skyward to account for the wetness,
showing a rigid correlation between sky, water, and rain. Johnnie never looks
backward. As a result, he is virtually forced into a ridiculous alternative.
The case of the explosion behind the train is similar. As he is working on
the mortar, there is a powerful explosion behind him. Johnnie is somewhat
underneath the mortar. He cannot see the explosion, but apparently hears
it. His first response is to look into the barrel of the mortar. Like a child, he
cannot divorce the world from his current center of attention. Then he looks
skyward; perhaps the sound was thunder. In both cases, it is as though the
character has thoroughly erased from his memory the fact that only minutes
earlier, he had cast a bomb from the cab of the train. Again, we see that
inattention originates in automatism and leads to dimwitted behavior on
the part of the character. Only here, the dumb behavior is not an action that
miscarries with physical repercussions but rather with a dubious hypothesis.
Once more, we see that the humorous effect is based on the distance between
an intelligent comprehension of the physical transactions in question and the
character s rigid conception of things. The character is comical precisely because
he lacks concrete intelligence with regard to physical processes due to his
colossal inattentiveness to the changing world around him.
Themes of The General 45
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