[Film: The King of Comedy, Martin Scorsese, 1982]

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Schmuck for a Lifetime:

Introduction:

The King of Comedy—a financial-failure-turned-cult-classic about an obsessive aspiring stand-up comic who decides he is owed an appearance on the late night talk show hosted by his idol—represents a uniquely excellent demonstration of the power of ambiguity in art, and of the way that ambiguity, uncertainty, and indirectness are in fact fundamental attributes of art in general, and narrative art in particular. I’ll be drawing once again on my background in literary theory here, to pursue this angle.

Specifically, where I intend to focus is on the sequences in which protagonist Rupert Pupkin engages in elaborate role-playing and daydreaming regarding future social and professional events, and on the structural, narratological consequences that the presentation of those sequences has for the film’s ending.

As you might imagine from that intent, the nature of this article is such that it requires spoiling many plot details of The King of Comedy. So you should only continue reading if you do not mind spoilers, or have already seen the film.

The Fantasies of The King of Comedy:

Peppered throughout The King of Comedy are scenes in which it is revealed at some point that they are in-universe fiction, taking place in Rupert Pupkin’s imagination. These scenes are characterized by overwhelming success and celebrity for Pupkin, fawning adoration by all he encounters, and major opportunities being forced upon him. For example, the first of these sees Pupkin being literally begged by Jerry Langford to guest host his show for over a month.

While it is by no means unique for a movie to give us a literal depiction of a dream or desire, there are two ways in which the depth of psychological access provided here is noteworthy.

First, far less importantly (but somewhat interesting), it is atypical for the relevant creative team. For instance, contrast the mirror scene here with the one in earlier Scorsese-De Niro character study Taxi Driver. In Taxi Driver, Bickle’s famous self-defense fantasy plays out internally, with no onscreen representation of what he is imagining. Notice also that (unlike Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Casino, and others) no voiceover narration is ever employed. Narration signals precisely that we are inside someone’s head, inside a story they are telling. In The King of Comedy, we are reliant on other signals to discern fact from fiction—which brings us to the other point:

Second, more significantly, the content of the dreams lacks immediate, obvious signification of fictional status. This is a way that the film stands apart from most other films, not just those from the same creators. In Pupkin’s imagination, there is no cloudy border, musical cue, special color grading, or attention-grabbing transition like Ralphie in A Christmas Story or Garth in Wayne’s World. There are no obvious contradictions of physics within them, like in the dreams of Brazil’s Sam Lowry, The Big Lebowski’s Dude, and the characters in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

In The King of Comedy, fantasy plays out like reality. False scenes play out like true scenes. We may grow suspicious of how the occurrences in a scene jell with earlier occurrences in the movie, but it is only when intercut with Pupkin personally play-acting the parts that we receive confirmation that we are two layers deep in narrative.

The viewer may be tempted to seek additional textual evidence, stylistic trends or details that could prove decisive as to whether any given scene is real. Perhaps, for example, the intervention of an in-universe television screen, the fuzzy glow of cathode ray tubes, ironically signals a moment of canonical reality, by implying an actual in-universe broadcast. But no, the egregious flight of fancy in which Jerry Langford facilitates Pupkin’s marriage to Rita is not merely implied to be—but is depicted as—televised. That sequence also offers counterexample to other tempting criteria, such as the relative length of the scenes, and accompaniment by the aforementioned shots of Pupkin’s solitary reality.

In sum, it seems like the only consistent, reliable guide of when we are outside Pupkin’s head rather than in it . . . is when things don’t go his way: when he is disliked, rebuffed, frustrated, unsuccessful. That Rita accepts a date with him, for example, may raise skepticism by the viewer, until Pupkin’s presentation and gift of his own autograph so disturbs her that the date is abruptly concluded. Then we know his ego is not the guide of our experience at that time.

But having only this criterion to which to cling leaves us in a strange space as regards the ending of The King of Comedy. Does Rupert Pupkin actually emerge from incarceration into a life of celebrity, or does he not? The film shows him doing so, but it shows it in the way it showed his marriage to Rita: in a flurry of positivity, bereft of qualification, caveat, or correction. It is no stretch whatsoever to say that the ending could be happening inside Pupkin’s head.

The unnervingly casual home invasion sequence that concludes the second act showcases the pervasive, far-reaching, delusional nature of Rupert Pupkin’s internal fantasy. There he goes beyond the professional aspiration embodied by his efforts to will a meeting and accompanying performance obligation into existence in the office scenes—demonstrating the genuine expectation that he is owed (indeed has already earned and obtained) the obedience, understanding, and even friendship of a man he barely knows. Given the derision by the law enforcement officers, we can be confident it is in-universe fact that he pulls off his kidnapping-for-television plot; but as for what comes after . . . with this character serving as our primary point-of-view, it’s simply unclear.

Now, why does this matter? Folks often express distaste for ambiguous endings of stories, for unresolved threads. What is the value of this approach? What is different about The King of Comedy as a work of art because, on reflection, we aren’t sure exactly how the story concludes?

The Ambiguities of The King of Comedy:

One of the main aspects that distinguishes an artistic work treating any given topic from an academic essay or scientific study covering that same topic—is the indirectness and indeterminacy of the treatment in the artwork. We call Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky a novel rather than a work of philosophy because accessing its philosophical content is cumbersome and involved. When we are exposed to philosophical ideals as we read it, this is done softly, incompletely, even at times indirectly. The value, status, and details of the themes in Crime and Punishment (or any other acclaimed novel) are ambiguous, requiring interpretive effort in the mind of the reader to access and assess.

This convolution and indirection is not incidental or arbitrary. In a safe context, it exposes us to ideas in the way they are encountered in life: enmeshed or embedded in circumstances. Messy and real, not abstracted and refined. We are shown how they operate at a level of remove, as rules for action, conversation, or aesthetics. Yet it’s not mere practicality or realism that gives ambiguity in art its principal value (although it is valuable for the straightforward emotional or intellectual learning that can come from those attributes).

Rather, the major value of artistic ambiguity is exploration. Internal, mental, ideological exploration.

To immerse oneself in a work of art is to enter a transitional or liminal space. Not just because the events within it are fictional, but also because artistic works are spaces of testing, play, and transition. In a game with an open world, or a simulation focus, or a cosmetic character creator—there are no wrong choices, per se. While success and failure may occur at times, strictly speaking correctness and incorrectness do not enter into the experimentation among identity, empathy, ethics, priority, and storytelling that happens in such moments of play. Films conventionally offer firmer material and more restricted liminality than that, but make no mistake: they are still full of moments of play in this sense. Even the most narratologically straightforward film in existence is packed with ambiguity—made of ambiguity—because it’s full of characters, places, and events, and these are things that only attain value and meaning through conscious and unconscious interpretation by the viewer. Viewers may consider the ethics and behavior of the characters, or the nature of the characters’ world—but crucially they don’t need to; they are not less exposed to ambiguity by letting the film wash over them as storytelling or entertainment. If a person comes away from a movie with a simple decision in their mind as to whether or not they liked it, then they’ve waded out into ambiguity and done some interpretation there. They’ve done a bit of exploring, and their horizons have been broadened by that much.

But what is the merit of ‘louder’ ambiguity? Of the more obvious form of uncertainty or even misdirection seen in the plot of certain projects, and especially at the conclusion of so many—where it feels like a concluding plot point, for which (in-universe) there is presumably some fact-of-the-matter, has been withheld? Well, if liminality as a feature of art is valuable because of the mental exploration it fosters, then to layer on additional ambiguity is to open the door for additional exploration. Not necessarily deeper exploration, mind you—just more of it. It may be deeper exploration, if it is implemented with care in a work that is sufficiently engaging, but that is not the direct outcome of adding it.

Most directly, an ambiguous ending is in effect a demand for effort on the part of the viewer. It says that—to come away from the artwork with a feeling of closure, completeness, and contentment, it will be necessary to personally put in the mental effort to reach that state. Ambiguous events in stories invite debate, discussion, and analysis. Not just between people, but within any given person. This, I feel, is why so many people dislike obvious ambiguous endings; they feel they’ve been handed a homework assignment as they’re wrapping up their evening’s entertainment. I do have some sympathy for such viewers, although I also can’t help feeling folks are getting a little too allergic to being offered an optional assignment now and then.

At any rate, here is where the more subtle approach in The King of Comedy strikes me as so potent, so uniquely powerful. It would be easy, I believe, for many viewers to miss that it has an ambiguous ending at all. Its ambiguity is ambiguous. And to such surface-level viewers it does not provide a poor experience. To take the ending of the film at face value is to be told, ‘American society will accept any form of notoriety and attention-seeking, no matter how dangerous, as a legitimate path to fame.’ And to be told that does invite reflection. Such a story, and the characters that make it up, can provide fodder for extensive consideration in the way any great story can.

Yet those that notice the ambiguity are offered a greater variety of points to consider. They are asked to consider the question, ‘Would American society accept any form of notoriety and attention-seeking, no matter how dangerous, as a legitimate path to fame?’ And I do believe that this more inquisitive implicit formulation invites at least a shade deeper of reflection on that subject. But they are also asked other questions, which would have been mere hypotheticals and inventions without the ambiguity; questions like: ‘Does our view of Pupkin’s crime change based upon whether his ultimate outcome is good or bad?’ ‘Is it actually possible to accurately assess one’s own capabilities or talent at a trade like performance or comedy?’ ‘Can a fantasy ever substitute for reality?’ The conceptual borderlands represented by ambiguity have a way of leading their travelers down such rabbit holes and tangents.

Moreover, recognizing the depth of the ambiguity represented by the end of The King of Comedy also means seeing how the ending comes into a more involved conversation with Sandra Bernhard’s character of Masha. We are never privy to the world from Masha’s point-of-view. When she sits opposite the remarkably hilarious stone-faced performance of Jerry Lewis in a duct tape cocoon throughout the climax of the film, she shares her fantasies about how she thought this ‘date’ would go. But as when watching Travis Bickle inquire whether someone is talkin’ to him, we see only the quiet reality which underlies the fantasy. Even as she projects connection and eroticism onto the proceedings, we see only delusion. When she makes a move to bring any of the described fantasies into the room, the moves feel unprovoked, startling, disturbing.

Is Pupkin a figure like this, sitting in his cell at the end of the movie and living an imagined life? Or is he a celebrity? The way the film has been shot and edited lets us say he may be either, and both are illuminating. As it may be the former, we are tasked to examine our minds. As it may be the latter, to examine our world.

Conclusion:

It’s a cliché to say that an older work is ‘more relevant than ever,’ but it’s hard not to feel that’s the case here. It may have already been true in the early 80s that there was concerningly limited cultural difference between a celebrity and a notorious criminal, but we now find ourselves in a media landscape replete with thousands of online micro-celebrities, and a political landscape of uncommonly transparent corruption. It is no idle fantasy to say that violence or crime by anyone anywhere can beget (or fail to impede) legitimate fame; in the internet age, anything that draws a crowd can beget fame. Never before have the lines separating obscurity, notoriety, and fame been more blurred, nor the level of access to famous individuals been so high. Never before has the boundary between imagined success and actual success been so thin.

Now, just as a concluding aside, there are other reasons that viewers may dislike ambiguous plot events—even if they’re perfectly willing to invest mental effort in their consumption of art. High-quality artistic creation requires a high degree of invention, and to always defer to layers of ambiguity is to deaden or ignore some of the variety on offer. And if overused, or used in a work with simplistic dialogue and theming, obvious ambiguity can feel like a cheap way to claw for some unearned depth (or even an obtrusive advertisement for a future sequel which will resolve the mystery).

But to offer blanket dislike for ambiguity in art is to unthinkingly offer blanket dislike for art. In artistic contexts we can safely and productively explore the way that ideas and events are mixed into our lives, and into our minds. Watching The King of Comedy and accepting its ending uncritically is still being exposed to the ambiguity inherent to art, in the way its story and characters are inconsistently, exploratorily built out of themes of aspiration, fame, criminality, validation, and talent. Yet the unusually realistic shooting and editing style of the imagination sequences throughout the film, which denies us a reliable distinction between reality and imagination, allows the film to accrete additional ambiguity. To think more actively about the film is to notice its events are less certain than they seem, its themes broader, its content richer for reflection.