Exclusion as Comic Engine
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#01
Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy · Todd McGowan · p.161
Outside and Inside > The Excluded Inside
Theoretical move: The passage argues that Chaplin's greatest comedy (The Great Dictator) achieves its force by identifying the figure of symbolic authority with the constitutively excluded excess, but then collapses into a sentimental fantasy of total inclusion—a fantasy that, far from resolving exclusion, structurally reproduces and even tends toward fascism, because any social whole requires an excluded exception to maintain its illusion of wholeness.
The great humor in The Great Dictator derives from Chaplin's ability to connect the ultimate insider, Hynkel (the representative of Hitler), with the complete outsider, the Jewish barber who ends up in a concentration camp.