Charlie Chaplin’s A King in New York (1957) is certainly not considered his masterpiece. In fact, to a contemporary audience, it may even feel somewhat tedious and overly calculated. Yet, more than half a century after its premiere, the film has aged in intriguing ways. It now appears to have matured, revealing unexpected depth and prescience.

We follow the dethroned King Shadov (a reflection of any modern Eastern autocrat), robbed of his status and unable to accept his new reality, ultimately defeated by the logic of television commercials and the physical and mental degradation they inflict on human dignity. Advertising, in the film, takes the form of a seductress, drawing the protagonist toward his downfall through sexual desire. This can be interpreted less as traditional Hollywood chauvinism and more as a psychoanalytic gesture: Ann Key (Dawn Addams), as a representation of the objet petit autre, materializes the void left by the king’s absent wife—a spouse who, we’re told, never truly loved him.

The king’s previous world of political power has been swept away by revolution, and he now must learn to navigate a new symbolic order—the American “democracy.” But this new l’Autre is not embodied in politicians (who barely appear in the film–at the end they represent the ultimate power of violence) but in a faceless system: monopolistic capitalism, sustained by advertising and banal reality shows that commodify aristocratic glitz and his comedic talent.

Ann Key’s Real Life Surprise Party showcases Chaplin’s remarkable ability to expose the structural mechanisms of dehumanization—a skill he demonstrated earlier in Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940). But here, his insight is almost prophetic. While Chaplin clearly drew inspiration from existing television formats like Queen for a Day or Edward R. Murrow’s Person to Person, the true era of “real” reality TV was yet to come. A King in New York reveals that the principles behind such media—manipulation, spectacle, commodification—were already immanent in the television and advertising culture of the 1950s.

No wonder that Ann Key’s show must mimic the core logic of the advertising industry: manipulation and deception. Though her name recalls “anarchy,” it is not Ann but the young boy (from a “progressive” school of the disobedience) Rupert (Michael Chaplin) who articulates the rational, critical voice that unveils the destructive logic of capitalism’s political economy. In one of the film’s most astonishing moments, Rupert delivers a monologue that could have been written today:

“I dislike all forms of government. And I don’t like the word rule. Leadership in government is political power, and political power is an official form of antagonizing the people. Politics are rules imposed upon the people.

It’s incorrigible that in this atomic age of speed, we are shut in and shut out by passports. And free speech—does that exist? And free enterprise? Today it’s all monopoly. Can I go into the automobile business and compete with the other truck? Not a chance. Can I go into the grocery business and compete with the chain store? Not a chance. Monopoly is the menace of free enterprise.

It’s a crime that when the world cries for atomic energy, you want to make atomic bombs. You want to wipe out civilization, destroy all life on this planet. You and your kind think atomic bombs can solve your problems.

Today man has too much power. The Roman Empire collapsed with the assassination of Caesar—and why? Because of too much power. Feudalism collapsed with the French Revolution—and why? Because of too much power.

And today the whole world will blow up—and why? The monopoly of power is a menace to freedom. It’s grave, and it victimizes every individual. And where is the individual? Locked in terror, because he is draped in hate instead of love.

If civilization is to survive, we must combat power until peace and the dignity of man are restored.”

Rupert’s monologue is not simply political commentary; it reveals how tightly Chaplin wove the film’s dramaturgy. The king was exiled after disagreeing with his country’s revolutionaries about the use of atomic power. Now, ironically, he believes he can recover his wealth by selling blueprints for atomic power plants—this time to the capitalist oligarchy of the United States. But in Chaplin’s America, politicians are irrelevant; the real power lies with the media and advertising industries, which commodify human lives and dignity. This is the “too much power” that Rupert denounces—and which, inevitably, leads to collapse.

We come to understand that the king’s objet petit autre represents not merely the void of a lost spouse (or of his royal dignity), but a deeper absence: the impossibility of authentic human connection in a system where even intimacy is subject to commodification. When the king is forced to undergo physical transformation—to literally change his face, and fails—his humiliation is complete. He has lost not just his power, but the dignity of age and the elegance of a gentleman. His identity as a monarch is devoured by the machinery of autocratic capitalism. It is only then, in his complete degradation, that he can stand beside the communist boy (“A royal communist!”)—no longer a ruler, but a fellow victim of the system.

Chaplin’s performance in A King in New York is far from his best. But the structural clarity and modern relevance of his social critique surpass even some of his earlier films. For that reason alone, this film deserves a second look—perhaps now more than ever. As Rupert concludes: “Only with world cooperation and understanding are we secure!”