Rush 2: Murnau and Marx

In The Last Laugh, the uniform seems to me to represent working class dignity, agency, and control. When the porter is stripped of his uniform, it is symbolic of capitalism's stripping of these attributes from workers. His demotion is driven by a desire for quicker, more efficient, machine-like work with no respect for the personhood of the worker: in other words, profit. This old man is shown striving to recover his dignity in the metaphor of his uniform. He looks at it longingly as it hangs in the closet. In this light, it is a revolutionary act when he steals it back from its resting place. The bourgeoisie locked away the "fabric" of his rights and freewill, and he has to subversively steal it back. The tragedy is in the irony that even though he steals back the signifier, he has no ability to steal back the real rights that should have been signified by the wearing of it.