Surprisingly little has been written about celebrity impersonation and the human behavior surrounding the practice, on the part both of the impersonator and of the audience. Therefore, in Kerry Ferris and Scott Harris’s Stargazing: Celebrity, Fame and Social Interaction, the two rely on the seminal work of sociologist Erving Goffman in Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience to come up with a viable theory for the practice. Ferris and Harris suggest that a celebrity impersonation involves

Goffman coined the term “frame” to describe an imaginary structure that guides a person in his/her reading of interactional experiences. Such frames help us to understand the rules, so to speak, about what can be expected, what simply won’t happen, and/or how we should react. The impersonation frame, while not specifically considered by Goffman, clearly fits within a simple theatrical frame, as Ferris and Harris argue,Footnote ² but also must be considered as “frame sophistication,” a situation that requires a manipulation of multiple contextual layers, that requires both the performer and the audience to identify and disregard those layers.Footnote ³ The impersonator may both present an authentic impersonation to his/her audience and “play” with that impersonation such that the audience knows they are witnessing improvisation. This audience then experiences both a formally theatrical performance and a jab in the ribs. “Operating within the impersonation frame means juggling multiple personae, contexts and levels of awareness,” note Ferris and Harris.Footnote ⁴

An impersonation, any impersonation, of Chaplin’s Little Tramp is complicated by the fact that the original was silent – appearing mostly in silent films. Due to this fact, the impersonator has the additional challenge of connecting with his/her audience without the assistance of verbal interaction with that audience. Pantomime is thought to cross both lingual and cultural boundaries, but at the same time it is not something familiar to today’s audiences.

Charlie Chaplin entered films in 1914 at the Keystone Studios in Glendale, California. He had created his Little Tramp persona by the second film in February of that year (Kid Auto Races at Venice) and had become world famous by 1915, the year of “Chaplinitis,” as it was known in America. Chaplin’s transcultural and transnational appeal formed along with increasing access to his films. His signing of the First National Films contract in 1917 meant that he had more control over who received the films and when. His formation with Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks of the United Artists in 1919 gave him total control over distribution and all other aspects of production. By 1921, Chaplin had traveled back home to England to gauge his growing worldwide appeal. Not only was he able to introduce the premiere of his most recent film, The Kid, during this visit, but he also traveled to both Paris and Berlin as well, to take the temperature regarding his films in both locales. France had had the benefit of access to the Chaplin films for many years by this point, but Germany had not and would only achieve access in the years following his visit. By 1930, Chaplin films had reached as far afield as Bali, Malaysia, Japan and China, thereby adding to a list of countries that covered most of the world (Central and South America had been given access in the 1910s). From that time to this, Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp has been impersonated by persons of all races, genders, creeds and ethnicities. The Little Tramp appealed to everyone because he was both small and plucky, independent and anti-authoritarian. He was a lover of women, children, animals and peace in general. He was not easily fooled. He could alter nearly any seemingly hopeless situation to his advantage. Who couldn’t find one or more of these characteristics to admire or wish for him- or herself? By dressing as Charlie, professionally or not, a person could at least “try on” one or more of these characteristics, and like the cinematic Charlie, possibly become just as admired and just as popular.

Impersonating Charlie Chaplin, therefore, became a lucrative thing to do for many performers in the 1910s and 1920s. Several even “made” their careers simply on their impersonations. Billie Ritchie, born William Hill, a fellow Karno’s London Comedian on the British music hall stage, along with Chaplin, adopted the costume and comportment for a series of films, such as Father Was a Loafer (1915) and Love and Surgery (1914) with Henry Lehrman’s L-Ko comedies beginning in about 1914. Ritchie used to demand that he had developed the characterization first (since he had joined Karno ten years before Chaplin), so he was one of the impersonators that Chaplin refused to sue, perhaps due to some guilt on his part. A little later, Billy West, who was born in Russia and whose real name was Roy Benjamin Weisberg, enjoyed fame as a Chaplin impersonator beginning in 1917 with a five-year contract from King Bee films, in which he was to inhabit nothing but the Chaplin attire – and both was ignored by Charlie himself and became very successful, largely due to the fact that he could turn out two films a month, as opposed to Chaplin’s one or fewer. Other silent-film comedians, like Harold Lloyd in his “Lonesome Luke” characterization and Charlie’s own brother Syd Chaplin, as “Reginald Gussle,” began their comedy film careers in these somewhat oblique Little Tramp representations, only to morph into more recognizable personae on their own years later.

The impersonation contract must first exist between the celebrity impersonator and his or her audience, such that the audience knows that the impersonator is not the real celebrity but buys into the performance anyway, through a suspension of disbelief that makes the interaction between the two a game. Three Charlie Chaplin look-alikes – one based in Kabul, Afghanistan, one in Kampala, Uganda and one in Tanzania – have done their utmost to take this old theory, meet its parameters and set it on its head at the same time, creating a new trend in Chaplin impersonation, one that asks considerably more of Goffman’s virtual “contract” between the performer and his audience and that utilizes the “silent” Little Tramp persona and his particular style of comedy as a vehicle to alleviate local social and political situations.

Karim Asir is a thirty-one-year-old Afghani male who grew up in Iran, where he saw Chaplin films on television frequently. After his family moved back to Afghanistan when he was twelve, he was devastated to discover what the Taliban had done to his country, like everyone else. After convincing his parents to allow him to major in theatre, Asir graduated from Kabul University, then set about finding a way to address some of Afghanistan’s social problems through entertainment. He found like-minded people at Kabul University’s Parwana Cultural and Artistic Theatre Organization and soon began regular appearances as the Little Tramp as part of Parwana’s performances. His vision of the Little Tramp only obliquely resembles the original, but because it includes the cane, the suit and the moustache, it seems to succeed. His hat is not a derby but a fedora and the mismatched nature of his attire is essentially missing, yet his small stature and overall comportment allow the correlation. He related to Shirin Jaafari in an interview for Public Radio International (PRI) that he was very nervous at first to impersonate Chaplin on the streets of Kabul, but was soon drawing crowds: “‘At first they didn’t know that this is an Afghan,’ he recalls. ‘They said, “Oh, my God! Charlie Chaplin is in Afghanistan!” But someone said, “Oh, Charlie Chaplin is dead. Who is this?” Then someone said, “OK, I think this guy is from Afghanistan.”’”Footnote ⁵ Despite such positive responses, Asir has been criticized for what some see as his making fun of some of Afghanistan’s most serious problems, or that, in general, his performances run counter to the tenets of conservative Islam – receiving threats on his life from such conservative groupsFootnote ⁶ – but Asir asserts that his Chaplin sketches provide an escape from the daily hardships Afghanis face, while attempting to teach lessons at the same time. The Little Tramp persona then becomes the perfect vehicle for him, due to Charlie’s “dust-yourself-off, forget-your-troubles and get-going” philosophy. By early 2019, Asir and the Parwana troupe had been invited as far afield as India (the Ishara International Puppet Festival) and Asir himself, as “Afghani Charlie Chaplin,” has since received over a million views on YouTube for his nine silent short black-and-white films. Shortly after the PRI interview ran, Asir’s story was picked up by news services all over the world and he enjoyed his more than fifteen minutes of fame. That fame unfortunately led to threats from Al Quaida in 2021, leading to his permanent move to Bochum, Germany in November 2022, where he continues his theatrical exploits, often using the Chaplin persona in his efforts. He premiered a documentary film entitled Laughing in Afghanistan, directed by Anneta Papathanassiou, in late November 2023.Footnote ⁷

Freddie Mulindwa, a twenty-six-year-old Ugandan man living in Kampala, has a similar motivation to Asir, but many of the likenesses end there. Mulindwa has a high-school education and no theatre troupe or organization of any kind to back his efforts financially, so his creative output waxes and wanes, but what he does produce is truly brilliant. In a personal communication, he related that he had been studying Chaplin since the age of seven, after seeing the boxing match scene between the Little Tramp and his much larger opponent in Chaplin’s 1931 film City Lights.Footnote ⁸ He was so entranced by that performance that he went looking for more Chaplin films, finding The Kid (1921), Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), and Easy Street (1917). Little did he know at the time that in these particular three films, he was witnessing the evolution of Chaplin’s persona as it had occurred on screen.

Next, Mulindwa created his own incarnation of Chaplin’s Little Tramp character by putting together pieces of his father’s clothing. He then “performed” for his family on his birthday and was a big hit. With this newfound confidence, he soon began writing and producing short videos, engaging his brothers and friends in the unusual practice of performing silent slapstick comedy for Ugandan audiences and others across the world through YouTube. Mulindwa has been performing the character now for over fourteen years. He related that he chose the Chaplin character because “he translated well his body language … & everyone could know what he always meant though he never spoke a word.” Mulindwa’s goals for his performances are to inspire African youth to be creative, to make the world a better place through comedy and to help the poor and needy along the way. His more immediate desires are to acquire a home for his troupe of young actors and enough funding to continue his filmmaking and other performances.Footnote ⁹

Mulindwa chose the stage name “Sheriff NEXT Trouble,” because most of his film plots revolve around misunderstandings between local law enforcement and his Chaplin character (much as Charlie did before him). This unique name is only one of many ways in which Mulindwa has made the character totally his own (Chaplin-inspired, rather than a true celebrity impersonation). In his stories he incorporates the local scenery and local problems, but also some supernatural elements particular to Ugandans. He features the tramp character in music videos in addition to his own films, and songwriters therefore like to write songs for him. And while his costume is of the same hodgepodge nature as Chaplin’s, Mulindwa’s pants are truly clownlike, rather than Little Tramp-like, in their patchwork composition, and his hat is more like that of Chico Marx than of the Little Tramp. Still, what Mulindwa most succeeds at is the physicality and almost dancer-like quality of the original character; he moves like Chaplin with an expertise many such impersonators fail to match.

As Ferris and Harris note, “Impersonator performances invoke the personae of the real artists being impersonated, as well as providing the audience with all sorts of cues and clues that what they are seeing is not the real thing.”Footnote ¹⁰ In the case of both Asir and Mulindwa, amazingly, audiences seem to be somewhat familiar with the original Charlie Chaplin and his Little Tramp persona. Asir has noted in interviews that he watched Chaplin films on television in Iran when he was growing up, so perhaps this was the case for many in his audience. Mulindwa found the Little Tramp online, so perhaps his audience members have done the same. The contract that Asir (Afghani Charlie Chaplin) and Mulindwa (Sheriff NEXT Trouble) respectively seem to have “signed” with their audiences, then, only requires of those audiences that they buy into the impersonators’ performances as superficially or tangentially near or related to Chaplin’s iconic Little Tramp character as needed for recognition. What each impersonator is counting on is not his audience’s one-to-one correlation of the performance with Chaplin’s in the same persona, but for the audience to recognize the Little Tramp’s influence – however obliquely – and then to connect this appearance with commonly held ideas about what the Little Tramp persona stands for outside and beyond himself. These ideas include anti-authoritarian pluckiness; the ability to overcome inadequacies like poverty, fear and social ineptitude; and an unbiased love and caring for those outside himself.

Karim Asir, more than Freddie Mulindwa, suggests that his motivation is largely sociopolitical. In essence, he suggests that he expects his impersonation contract with his audience – mostly young Afghanis of both sexes – to demand that they not necessarily believe that he is the reincarnation of Chaplin’s Little Tramp himself, but that he simply remind them visually of the Little Tramp’s most appealing characteristics. Because of that belief, he is able to impart advice, suggestions and even warnings about sociopolitical problems in twenty-first-century Afghanistan. Asir relies on the fact that his impersonation is effective enough to convince his audience that he is anti-authoritarian, plucky, caring and fearless. With those Little Tramp characteristics – ones each audience member admires and respects in anyone – Asir can then recommend that Afghanis pay attention to the state of their environment and treat others with dignity, or whatever else he cares to promote.

Freddie Mulindwa’s motivation is similar, but not as sophisticated. He wishes his audience to simply identify his characterization as similar to Chaplin and, because of that, to be identified with his penchant for humor, entertainment and independence. He hopes to persuade his young countrymen and -women to pursue their creativity in order for them to make their day-to-day existence more meaningful. Mulindwa does not shy away from bawdy imagery; his Little Tramp pees in an oil drum, has trouble, along with others, finding the proper place to defecate, and uses urine as a hair tonic when the actual product is unavailable. Mulindwa’s Little Tramp is the Keystone Studios’ Little Tramp of 1914, when Chaplin was just trying him out on the world and was, from his experiences on the music hall stage in England, used to giving way to the entertainment prospects of the human body and all its many functions, socially acceptable or not.

This freedom from ethics, morals and other societal restrictions is what makes Mulindwa’s Little Tramp so compelling and attractive. Because he is unashamedly willing to urinate in an oil can, essentially out in public, Mulindwa’s character becomes the quintessential free human being – the ur-human – that we all secretly desire to be. Mulindwa is not pushing a sociopolitical argument like Asir, but rather harking back to the basest human individual existence, unfettered by the multiple anxieties of the modern world.

New on the scene in 2025 is Tanzanian Fanuel John Masaki (@zerobrainer0), who, at twenty-five years old, was named one of the top TikTokers in Africa, as of February of that year. He has done this with his singular, Chaplin-inspired short comedy films. The costume is not the Little Tramp’s but is instead composed of items he came across cleaning a church one day: a weathered hat, similar in style to a military type, with a peaked cap – olive green, adorned with gold piping and a single metal button on one side – and a long overcoat. Of the hat, Masaki noted, “When I started wearing it in the first few videos, people reacted to it positively, so I kept wearing it.”Footnote ¹¹

Michal Ruprecht, in an interview with Masaki for National Public Radio (NPR), noted that, in the costume, the young man plays soccer in a Chaplinesque way, with “exaggerated, off-kilter movements that echo the English actor, minus the mustache and cane.” Masaki admitted being a huge fan of Chaplin: “I used to watch him a lot when I was younger. Like Charlie Chaplin, I don’t speak during my skits. I draw a lot of inspiration from his work.”Footnote ¹²

Masaki grew up in the Kilimanjaro region with six siblings and not much money. Still, he dropped out of engineering school in his last year, due to his love of storytelling. He immediately began posting on TikTok, under the “zerobrainer0” username. Like his predecessors Asir and Mulindwa, Masaki has larger goals for his performances, hoping his videos will allow Tanzanians to take their minds off their country’s increasing political problems. “I like that my content is not political,” he says; “My work is helping my fans who lost loved ones wipe their tears away. It’s bringing back smiles, happiness and warmth – all of that.”Footnote ¹³

Taken together, Asir, Mulindwa and Masaki promote a Chaplin impersonation for the twenty-first century, one that understands, on one hand, that the problems of the world must be taken up and solved by every individual, and on the other, that any individual must be in touch with his or her humanity as it exists in its purest and most untainted form. Chaplin referred to himself proudly as a citizen of the world. Truly, his Little Tramp character has provided a blank canvas for performers around that world to paint upon in whatever form appeals to them. Forty-nine years after his death, Chaplin continues to resonate through a characterization that has far outgrown any purpose or significance he had hoped for it and, it seems, will continue to do so.