Always there is an ironic turn that doesn’t simply play along with the slapstick parody of melodrama, but extends it to a send up of the slapstick gag/film itself. Her detachment is distinct from say a dead-pan response or a kind of “straight man” comedic characterization. That is to say, Normand’s performance as female star adds another level of commentary onto the slapstick’s already meta-cinematic investigation of melodrama’s certainty. It isn’t that slapstick doesn’t have a plot, we already know what that plot is and slapstick mocks and destabilizes the clarity of melodrama specifically, narrative form more generally, and epistemological certitude ultimately. As Jennifer Bean states what these action/adventure stars represent is the visualization of cinema as a machine of uncertainty. Here I would add to our above taxonomy by saying Mabel Normand’s slapstick performance – emerging from fashion context – pushes back against the hyperbolic gesture with irony and infelicity. Mimesis and the body have met and joined forces with consciousness. We are left with a space where real/fiction has completely dissolved, an almost surrealist dream space, not where all is uncertain, but where all is possible.