[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
ever rising arc. The advertising business was born. It grew at a great rate
since it answered business s desire for growth by creating and instilling new
needs in the buying public. People entering the expanding service sectors
66 Themes of The General
exchanged their workaday practice of manual skills with things for intensive
use of social skills involved with handling people.
As business became larger, as monopolies were created, the need for huge
office staffs arose. As a result, one notes a striking rise in the clerical sector
of the American economy as well as an intensive division of labor among that
group. In 1900, there were 0.9 million clerical workers; in 1910, 2.0 million;
in 1920, 3.4 million; and by 1930, there were 4.3 million clerical workers.37
Like the service sector, these people no longer had the skilled manipulation
of objects as a workaday part of their lives. For them, a film like The General
could be compensatory since it did not reflect the values of their work culture.
The values portrayed in The General as concrete intelligence construed as
adaptability were not the sorts of social talent and abilities needed to
master routine such as service and clerical work. In The General, talents
presupposed as generic by an earlier work culture are examined, dramatized,
and celebrated. For the growing service and clerical work culture of the twen-
ties, The General could be seen as vicariously supplying an experience with
objects and an occasion for thinking about concrete interactions that were
no longer part of the work experience of much of the population.
Even in the factory sector of the population, one notes that, though
their work still involved interactions with physical objects, it was, for the
most part, not skilled work. In the nineteenth century much factory work
was still artisanal. The factory worker had intimate, intuitive knowledge of
his materials.
Because many machines have slow rates of depreciation, the workshops are
full of ancient milling machines and lathes, imprecise and poorly adjusted.
The worker must know what his machine is capable of, how to wheedle and
coax precision out of it. The worker makes do. He may shore up the frame
here or there to take out the play, reestablishing the horizontal alignment for
better results in milling. The company cannot retool completely for each new
product line. The production machinist must himself take the initiative in ready-
ing the old machines. He has his personal little tool kit, consisting of calipers
and wedges, He must know something of handwork, of how to use a file, for
many of the parts he has to turn out are so complicated that they can only be
roughed down by machine. Hand finishing is required.38
This picture of nineteenth-century work is celebrated in that period s art by
Zola in L Assommoir, and also in La Bête Humaine. In film, I submit, The General
presents one of the finest images of the artisanal work of the nineteenth
Themes of The General 67
century. It achieves this in two ways: through Johnnie Gray s successes, and
through his failures. Both modes presuppose the kind of concrete intelligence
about things described above. The craftsman develops with his work; he learns
about things as Johnnie does with the catapult gag. The craftsmen in the
factories of the nineteenth century did not receive formal training.39 Their
skills were empirical. They were not scientific or technical. For instance, their
knowledge of metallurgy was not acquired through chemical theories, but
based on what they learned on the job. Much of this was intuitive;40 body-
English was often required. The worker relied on the role of practiced
dexterity and trade secrets transmitted by experience, the importance of know-
ing intimately the raw materials, and of developing faculties by doing. 41 Johnnie
Gray manifests this sort of intimate knowledge in the dexterity with which
he handles his engines. Furthermore, the empirical, trial and error aspect of
this intelligence is underscored by the fact that in The General there are many [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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ever rising arc. The advertising business was born. It grew at a great rate
since it answered business s desire for growth by creating and instilling new
needs in the buying public. People entering the expanding service sectors
66 Themes of The General
exchanged their workaday practice of manual skills with things for intensive
use of social skills involved with handling people.
As business became larger, as monopolies were created, the need for huge
office staffs arose. As a result, one notes a striking rise in the clerical sector
of the American economy as well as an intensive division of labor among that
group. In 1900, there were 0.9 million clerical workers; in 1910, 2.0 million;
in 1920, 3.4 million; and by 1930, there were 4.3 million clerical workers.37
Like the service sector, these people no longer had the skilled manipulation
of objects as a workaday part of their lives. For them, a film like The General
could be compensatory since it did not reflect the values of their work culture.
The values portrayed in The General as concrete intelligence construed as
adaptability were not the sorts of social talent and abilities needed to
master routine such as service and clerical work. In The General, talents
presupposed as generic by an earlier work culture are examined, dramatized,
and celebrated. For the growing service and clerical work culture of the twen-
ties, The General could be seen as vicariously supplying an experience with
objects and an occasion for thinking about concrete interactions that were
no longer part of the work experience of much of the population.
Even in the factory sector of the population, one notes that, though
their work still involved interactions with physical objects, it was, for the
most part, not skilled work. In the nineteenth century much factory work
was still artisanal. The factory worker had intimate, intuitive knowledge of
his materials.
Because many machines have slow rates of depreciation, the workshops are
full of ancient milling machines and lathes, imprecise and poorly adjusted.
The worker must know what his machine is capable of, how to wheedle and
coax precision out of it. The worker makes do. He may shore up the frame
here or there to take out the play, reestablishing the horizontal alignment for
better results in milling. The company cannot retool completely for each new
product line. The production machinist must himself take the initiative in ready-
ing the old machines. He has his personal little tool kit, consisting of calipers
and wedges, He must know something of handwork, of how to use a file, for
many of the parts he has to turn out are so complicated that they can only be
roughed down by machine. Hand finishing is required.38
This picture of nineteenth-century work is celebrated in that period s art by
Zola in L Assommoir, and also in La Bête Humaine. In film, I submit, The General
presents one of the finest images of the artisanal work of the nineteenth
Themes of The General 67
century. It achieves this in two ways: through Johnnie Gray s successes, and
through his failures. Both modes presuppose the kind of concrete intelligence
about things described above. The craftsman develops with his work; he learns
about things as Johnnie does with the catapult gag. The craftsmen in the
factories of the nineteenth century did not receive formal training.39 Their
skills were empirical. They were not scientific or technical. For instance, their
knowledge of metallurgy was not acquired through chemical theories, but
based on what they learned on the job. Much of this was intuitive;40 body-
English was often required. The worker relied on the role of practiced
dexterity and trade secrets transmitted by experience, the importance of know-
ing intimately the raw materials, and of developing faculties by doing. 41 Johnnie
Gray manifests this sort of intimate knowledge in the dexterity with which
he handles his engines. Furthermore, the empirical, trial and error aspect of
this intelligence is underscored by the fact that in The General there are many [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]