Article: Portraits of the postmodern person in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull; and The King of Comedy

In Martin Scorsese's 1982 film, The King of Comedy, the protagonist, Rupert Pupkin, becomes a comedian by playing one on TV. Through this amusing yet startling narrative premise, the film articulates a postmodern theory of identity that links Scorsese's major films. In addition to The King of Comedy, his Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), in particular, demonstrate an aesthetically subversive approach to character by portraying identity in the traditional sense as a fabrication. Each film insists that selfhood is externally rather than internally produced, an effect of signification, and the protagonist, played in each case by Robert De Niro, must perform or enact his selfhood. ...

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