The Paradox of Man
It’s strange to find myself looking upon an ancestor of a past lover while scrolling on Instagram. Aablack-and-white clip of a man who broke his silence during World War II to deliver a monologue in protest of fascism. Bearing the same toothbrush moustache as the subject of his speech, it was the first time fans would hear his voice in cinema. The Great Dictator (1940) is recognised today as iconic, praised for advocacy of peace, democracy and human rights, with emphasis on the inherent good nature of humanity.
The comments on the video all echoed the same tone: idol worship.
Hundreds upon hundreds of comments:
“He was incredible!”
“He would be disappointed with the current state of the world today.”
I scrolled until I found the message I was hoping to see. With one like, it read:
“Weird coming from a pedo.” This comment now has two likes.
When I met this descendant of Charlie Chaplin, I was in my early twenties. We met as many do in this age of technology, through a dating app. He took me to the beach on a cold October night. Today, I wouldn’t be so quick to jump into the truck of a man I had just met over the internet, but I’ll blame that on my undeveloped prefrontal cortex.
We got to know each other through all the small talk one could compact in a forty-minute drive to the nearest beach. My date proposed cutting the travel time by taking me to an inland river. I rejected. Many of the rivers in Perth are populated by bull sharks, a species with a specialised physiological adaptation that allows them to thrive in both saltwater and freshwater environments. Bull sharks are known as one of the “big three,” alongside Great Whites and Tiger sharks.
I think of them as aggressive, but opinions vary depending on who you ask. They’re certainly more reactive and have been known to attack without provocation, but no one can deny the impact of their investigatory bites. With triangular serrated teeth that cut like a butcher saw, and a bite strength among the strongest relative to their size, they are highly territorial. When encountered, they are more likely to escalate an interaction than retreat. What may be a test bite can still be fatal. There have only been a small number of shark attack fatalities confirmed to be caused by Bull sharks, but I’d take that risk swimming in clear salt water over murky river water any day.
After my date and I finally got to our destination, it was decided the water was too cold to submerge in. So, we decided to make ourselves comfortable in the sand along the shore. The small talk continued. In an attempt to impress me, my date told me about his lineage. This was immediately shut down by my incessant word vomit—the kind that is projectile. Falling out of my mouth with so much force and long before I could process the potential consequences of it. A vocal deviation I am still in the process of training away.
“He was a paedophile.”
I then found myself educating this man on the grim history of his own great-great something-paterfamilias. A man that had been described by his ex-wife, Mildred Harris, as short-tempered and treated her like a ‘cretin.’ Chaplin had made many questionable remarks that have been documented. The one that stands out to me most is:
“For a while, I kept hoping she wouldn’t let go of her youth—the spirit of youth, the spirit of being gay and forever incorruptible—but she lost it. She turned out to be as selfish and cynical as a brawling fishwife.”
Mildred was sixteen when she married Charlie; he was almost double her age at twenty-nine.
Articles detail that most of his affairs were with “women under eighteen” but let’s just call them what they really were: children. He was also said to have had relations with more than two thousand women, of whom he frequently boasted. One of his conquests was Lita Grey, an actress Charlie had worked with since she was twelve and impregnated when she was fifteen. Although he didn’t mean to get her pregnant, he only wished to rape her. At thirty-five years old, Charlie advised Lita to have an abortion. When she refused, he suggested that she find a suitable husband, to which he would pay a dowry of twenty thousand dollars.
Even in the Roaring Twenties, child sex offenders could face up to thirty years in prison. To avoid legal charges, he married Lita, but not without making his disdain for her painfully clear. On the day they wed, he left his new bride to go fishing, calling her a ‘little whore.’
His cruelty towards his wife only escalated. Based on Lita’s testimony, shortly after their wedding they stood on a platform awaiting a train when he turned to her and said: “This would be a good time to put an end to your misery. Why don’t you jump?”
Charlie would have made a fine specimen for early chemical castration experiments, although it wouldn’t be implemented until years after he started abusing children.
He hated his wife and used Lita’s body to fulfil his insatiable desires, imposing himself on her up to six times a night. This resulted in another pregnancy, in which again, Charlie asked her to have an abortion. Only this time, he wasn’t asking. Charlie pulled a gun on Lita and tried to intimidate her into doing what he wanted.
They would divorce later that year, and more disturbing events of his domestic abuse would surface. However, his personal life seemingly never affected his career.
Many articles circulating today call him a comedic genius, a cinema icon and a film legend. Forty-eight years after his death, some still remember him for what he truly was: a predator.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what happened to that descendant of Charlie Chaplin that I was seeing: we ended up dating for around six months, long after our expiry date.
A month or so into dating, he invited me to be a plus one for his nephew’s birthday. This was where I met his entire extended family. On the drive over to his sister’s home, my date handed me his phone and asked me to put on some music of my choice. I had to swipe through his apps to get to Spotify, but not before seeing Tinder still installed on his phone.
I can’t remember if it had already started raining, but it was as if the heavens had opened. I thought about throwing myself out of his truck. I positioned my fingertips on the passenger door handle and imagined opening it, tumbling out, and letting the bitumen cut up the skin on the bottom of my palms, knees, and shins. Doing so would ruin the birthday party of a young boy, a reasonable prospect in my selfish mind, as if this act alone would stop the world from turning.
Pulling myself from daydreaming to come back to reality, I put on a brave face and found a playlist. I carried myself with grace through every family member’s introduction. He called me by a variation of my name that I hated. I didn’t correct him. I smiled through it all. That’s how I was raised: polite above all else.
We planned a date night for that same evening: mini-golf made fun by cocktails in hand. I got tipsy but he got drunk. A few hours into our night, as we were leaving the venue, he kissed me and told me he loved me. I said it back.
We overextended our night out by deciding to walk home. An event that was mislabeled an adventure. It was a thirty-minute walk from the venue, although he gave me a piggyback ride for the bulk of the journey. The next day, I was cuddled up to him in my bed, using my fingertips to trace shapes on his chest when I said those famous last words: “So, what are we?” His answer made me cry. I wasn’t his girlfriend, and there was no certainty we would ever become a couple. Yet fidelity was an expectation that fell solely on me.
I spent Christmas with him, his family and was even included on a family holiday afterwards. I wanted so badly to be accepted; I spent god knows how much on grapes, berries, cheeses and deli meats at a shop with prices set for customers to fit the bill for import taxes. The memories I have from this trip are mostly good; however, I can’t skip over the event in which I was called a bitch in front of his entire immediate family. An act my lover had intended to impress his sister’s partner with.
Two weeks later, he ended things because he “didn’t want to commit” to me. We continued to see each other. During this time, I documented the deterioration of my mental health. I was experiencing anxiety attacks and other nervous system disturbances daily. My body was physically telling the same message I had continuously rejected in my mind: he isn’t good for you. I didn’t listen. I just wanted to be loved, at any expense.
This was before the term “situationship” had become popularised by the internet and hadn’t yet entered my sphere of terminology, despite being “chronically online.” We continued doing all the relationship-type activities, with him benefiting far more than I, as men so often do in these dynamics.
He ended up officially-unofficially dumping me the night before Valentine's Day, at around 11pm, when I asked him how we were going to spend it. Not long after this, I received a shirtless picture from him, but it wasn’t a traditional thirst-trap. He was covered in ECG stickers, and I knew what this meant: he had tried to kill himself and had been discharged from the hospital.
I still don’t know what his intentions were, but so much time has passed that I don’t care to dissect it. I immediately fell into saviour mode, wanting to fulfil my role as Little Miss Fix-It. We remained in contact but never as anything more than friends. A few weeks later he invited me to the launch party of a multi-million-dollar boat that he had worked on. I attended alongside his parents and gawked at what money could buy. It was fitted with a helicopter pad, a tennis court and every facility that you could find on land.
He remained in contact with me after moving on to his next romantic interest, and only then was I able to cut the cord. This was, of course, after he had shown sexual interest in me whilst pursuing another woman. I’m sure this was a pattern that existed whilst we were dating, but again, I don’t care to spend any more time on it.