“Chaplin in Modern Times made a model-demythicization of homo technologicus, opposing himself to it in the only way that appears possible; that is, as the survivor of a preindustrial humanity. Having entered into a factory Chaplin contradicted technology (and thus made it become part of his linguistic-expressive world), since he, surviving from another civilization and conserving its customs, madly and comically emphasized the inexpressiveness of the world of technology. The stylistic technique of Modern Times, in my opinion, has not been surpassed. Theoretically it could be said that such a contradiction (the expressiveness of Chaplin against the inexpressiveness of the machines) should be ideologized today by presenting the expressive man no longer as survival but as evolution: it was (a manual would say) the point of view of the worker – elaborated and complicated, so far as we are concerned, by the writer – who has projected into reality, demystifying it, the capitalistic industrialization of the world: so it should still be the point of view of the worker to demystify technicization”.

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Comments on Free Indirect Discourse (1965) (extract), in Id., Empirismo eretico, Garzanti, Milano, 1972