Study Questions: Week Eight

Popular Postmodernism: Movies About Movies (and TV)

Raging Bull (1980) and The King of Comedy (1983)

These very different films are good examples of Scorsese's versatility as a filmmaker, the influence of earlier films on his work, and his interest in the ways in which media-fed fantasies of fame and fortune blur the distinctions between illusion and reality.

Raging Bull: Give me a Stage Where There's Bullhick And Rage. That's Entertainment

1. Why does the film begin with the scene in Jake La Motta's (Robert DI Niro) dressing room at a New York night club in 1958? How does this introduction the the film's protagonist influence a viewer's opinion of him?

2. Why has Scorsese chosen to shoot the film in black and white? How does it lend the film a sense of period (1941-1958)? How does it link the film to two popular film genres of that period (film noir and the boxing film)?

3. In an earlier film Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Paul Newman plays the middleweight boxer Rocky Graziano, whose rise from the New York slums to the championship, is treated as a version of the American Dream. Supported by a loyal wife, Graziano transcends the corruption of the fight game to find success and happiness. The same American myth receives a fictional treatment in Sylvester Stallone's Rocky (1976) and its sequels. How does Scorsese use the genre conventions to paint a darker portrait of a boxer's life and the dream he pursues?

4. How does the visual imagery of Jake's first meeting with Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) -- especially the uses of blacks and whites, light and dark -- establish her as his ideal at the expense of her humanity? What specific images suggest that, as an ideal, she will never be attainable?

5. In what ways are Jake's attitude toward his profession and his treatment of his wife similar? How do both exemplify what his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) describes as Jake's "hard-headedness"? In what ways is his "hardheadedness" a version of the idea of individualism which is so highly prized in our society?

6. How do the sequence of fight sequences, the toll they take on his face and emotions, illustrate the costs of this individualism? How does the evolving relationship with his brother illustrate the same costs?

7. Why does Jake' discovery that he is part of a system -- no title unless he cooperates with Tommy Como (Nicholas Colasanto) -- break Jake, destroy his dream?

8. In two important scenes Jake suddenly switches from the raging bull to a child in tears, in the scene mentioned above and in the scene when he begs Vickie after attacking her and his brother. What does this sudden switch reveal about Jake' failure to become a mature adult? What does say about the myth of individual which he exemplifies?

8. Scorsese often favors long tracking shots in which the camera follows a character in a way which reveals (often without words) an important facet of that character. What do these shots of Jake walking from his dressing room to the ring tell us? A crucial tracking shot culminates his defeat by Sugar Ray Robinson. The camera slowly travels along the rope of the boxing and finally stops on a dripping gout of blood. What is the meaning of the shot, and what does it foretell of Jake's fate?

9. The climax of most boxing films is the protagonist's penultimate fight, but Raging Bull goes on to dramatize Jake's life as an ex-champ. What is the significance of these sequences, especially the scene in his Florida bar? Consider the events from his initial standup comic routine to the parking lot scene in which Vickie leaves him.

10. Alone, in solitary confinement, Jake beats the wall and cries, "Why? Why? Why?" What answer does the film offer to this question? Does the final scene in which Jake quotes from On the Waterfront suggest that he has found the answer? What might suggest that he has become a self-parody? Are we asked, at the end of the film to sympathize with Jake, or has he forfeited any sympathetic understanding?

11. Taxi Driver and, in more specific ways, Raging Bull are the products of Scorsese's ethnic heritage. But, at the same time, his central characters embody characteristically American cultural myths. How these larger themes serve to transform the Italian-American community into a symbol of America itself, much as Francis Ford Coppola did in The Godfather (1972), The Godfather, Part II (1974), and The Godfather, Part III (1990)? In what ways might using an ethnic community be regarded as an example of cultural assimilation?

The King of Comedy: Better To Be King for a Night Than a Schmuck for a Lifetime.

1. The film opens with an encounter between the film's protagonist Rupert Pupkin (Robert Di Niro) and his celebrity idol Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis). In the drive to Jerry's apartment, both Rupert and Jerry speak in the cliched language of celebrity news magazines. Listen carefully to the tired philosophizing, the empty language and explain why you think Scorsese and his screenwriter selected it. How might it be connected to the fantasy sequences in the first half of the film? What does Rupert mean when ha says that he has "had this conversation in my head." How does the fantasy sequence reveal just how much of Rupert's reality is "in his head" and was put there by TV, and how does his comment prepare us for it?

2. For Rupert the borderline between dreams and reality dissolves in the course of the film. How does casting Jerry Lewis as Jerry and the introduction of Lisa Minelli, Tony Randall, and Dr. Joyce Brothers as themselves serve blur a similar borderline within the narrative itself?

3. How does the sequence in which Jerry watches Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street emphasize King of Comedy's being a film about film?

4. What is the purpose of including Rita (Diahnne Abbott) in the film? What does she reveal about Rupert's conception of love and happiness? What is the real irony in Rupert's philosophizing in the bar where she is introduced (remember he mentions "the final irony of life")? He also discusses Marilyn Monroe, whom he describes as "not a great actress, but she did have a gift for comedy" and concludes by remarking that she, like many famous people, died tragically and alone? Does Rupert's repeating comments made many, many times about the actress suggest that he doesn't understanding the meaning of the words? In what ways is he inadvertently describing himself and calling into question the world of celebrity which he longs for? How does the scene of Jerry at home make the same point?

5. Is the scene where Rupert interviews the photos of Jerry and Lisa Minelli humorous or frightening? What is its thematic significance? What is the significance of the voice of Rupert's mother (Scorsese's own mother)? How does it serve as the intrusion of reality into his fantasies, and what does it reveal about Rupert's real-life circumstances? Why can't he understand that he is being brushed off?

6. How does Rupert's encounter with the staff of Langford's headquarters mark a radical change in the way his fantasies play themselves out? In what ways might this contact with the actual world of TV comedy have triggered this change?

7. What is the difference between what Rupert means and in what we understand when he tells Masha (Sandra Bernhard) that he and Jerry "have a real relationship, no fantasy worlds"?

8. How do the social backgrounds of Rupert and Masha suggest that the obsession with celebrity has influenced all strata of American society? How does her behavior in the seduction scene make the phrase "I love you" so frightening?

9. Why does the FBI agent want to arrest not only Rupert, but also the person who wrote his routine? Is the routine funny? In what ways does it expose the barren isolation of his life just as Masha's confessions to Jerry reveal hers?

10. In the end is a viewer able to identify and/or sympathize with Rupert? Or does the concluding sequence (in which he fulfills his desire for fame) present him as beyond human feelings (much like Norman in Psycho)? Are we to believe this sequence is real or another of Rupert's fantasies. Why? Why not?