On buses and trains people were forced to look at these threatening strangers "for long minutes or even hours". It was comforting to be able to view these people as "harmless oddballs". Its only fitting then that Chaplins filmic "physiologies" of the big city be carried out in silence. Despite his poor beginnings Charlie Chaplin the filmmaker, was in a sense, a flaneur himself. A wealthy romantic whose films are exercises in simple pleasures and the botanizing of various "city types" into two-dimensional caricatures that are comforting in their simplicity. Chaplins character in "Modern Times", however, is not just a flaneur but rather how the flaneur would like to view himself. He is one of the crowd.
"Modern Times" describes itself as "A story of industry, of individual enterprise - humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness." Like a true proletarian Chaplins characters idea of happiness has less to do with individual enterprise and more with industry. Throughout the course of the film he takes on a total of seven roles, all of which are professions. They include the factory worker, the prisoner, the ship builder and the waiter. The title given to his character is not a name but a job description: "A Factory Worker". The only other time in the film he is given an identity that isn't a job is when he is in jail. The warden calls for him as "Number 7". Factory Worker finds no greater joy than, as Baudelaire puts it, "the pleasure of being in a crowd an expression of the enjoyment of the multiplication of numbers". This character possesses what Karl Marx ironically referred to as "the soul of the commodity". In everyone he meets he sees a potential buyer of his services. In his pocket he carries a description of his services, his worth. Because of the Factory Workers need to appeal to consumers he possesses a chameleon-like anonymity. He is flexible to take on many roles and enjoy the security and identity that each gives him because he is solely defined by his labour.
