Clearly, Slapstick left a distinguishable mark on American film. Yet, how can a fundamental, respected practice in early film history be regarded today as “low-brow” or childish? An interesting way to answer this question is to take a cue from Singing In The Rain and look at how the transition from silent films to “talkies” would have affected the comedic film genre. We have deduced that a distinct decline in the Slapstick tradition seems to have begun with the early introduction of sound. This fall from grace has largely been explained as "essentializing aesthetic history (i.e. sound killed the 'art' of comic pantomime)" (King, 3). The perception that slapstick's deterioration was, first and foremost, a matter of aesthetics, is well established as "a falling off, as it is often framed, from the beauties of comic pantomime toward the blunt physicality of, say, the Three Stooges" (King, 3). In his 1949 essay, "Comedy's Greatest Era," James Agee writes, "'the only thing wrong with screen comedy today is that it takes place on a screen which talks'" (King, 3). With this information in mind, it seems clear that sound became an obstacle to the expressive possibilities of comic performance.