subscribe to this pageFor almost all of human existence, people have had some knowledge of those with whom they had social contact and ties with. Clapp argues the city changed that condition, and, as cities became larger and more socially heterogeneous, the number of people who were strangers and alien to one another increased exponentially. To the author, Travis Bickle’s menacing demeanor in Taxi Driver has become the “face” for the culture of urban alienation and an abstraction of the anonymity, loneliness, social disengagement, and moral detachment for which the big city is regarded as the prime cause of.
Although the article does not specifically focus on Taxi Driver in particular, its perspective gives the audience a vehicle through which they could partially sympathize for Travis Bickle and better understand his character. From the sociological viewpoint of the author, Travis is likely emotionally damaged from his Vietnam experience and is lonely, bitter, and extremely alienated from society. When we first come across Travis on the screen or in the streets, he seems suspended somewhere between our pity and our revulsion. After reading this article, one can not help but think that maybe the daunting metropolis is to blame for Travis’ severe alienation from society and that he is just another lost and helpless lonely soul searching for an answer or a solution. For Clapp, Travis Bickle’s line “well, I’m the only one here”, which is his personal response in the mirror to the more famous line “Are you talking to me?”, sums up his alienation and estranged madness.
"Dispelling myths about Vietnam veterans." USA Today 16 November 2000: A1
Like the title suggests, this article concentrates on going over and dispelling some of the myths that are associated with the Vietnam veteran. For generations, the American public has been bombarded by Hollywood and the media with the same image of the demoralized Vietnam War veteran; much like Travis Bickle is in Taxi Driver. The negative stereotypes surrounding the Vietnam War veteran have been ingrained into the minds of the masses, and usually portray a social outcast who has been physically and psychologically damaged in the war. The article points out that many of the Vietnam soldiers Americans have come to know through movies such as The Deer Hunter, Coming Home and Taxi Driver perpetuate the suicidal, anarchist, angry, and depressed depiction of the veteran. On the contrary, the article suggests that these stereotypes are myths and most veterans are happy, stable, and successful. Some other myths the article dismisses are that 100,000 Vietnam vets committed suicide and that up to 50% have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder.
Although this article does not discuss Taxi Driver whatsoever, it’s relevant to the film because it stresses the negative stereotypes, which have been so deeply embedded into the consciousness of the public, associated with Vietnam veterans, such as Travis Bickle is in Taxi Driver. Travis Bickle is exactly the type of character which perpetuates the myths corresponding to veterans into the psyche of the American people and the type of person this article attempts to dispel as being untrue. He is angry, suicidal, lonely, and alienated from urban society. Whether we can hypothesize that all of Travis’ problems are a direct result of the Vietnam War is not clear, however him being a veteran is pertinent to the film. As the article asserts that most stereotypical Vietnam veterans oppose their country and its leaders, which is another myth, Travis directs his frustrated anger at a promising presidential candidate in an apparent assassination attempt.
Many of Travis’ emotions in Taxi Driver, such as feelings of rejection, resentment for society, and cynicism towards politicians, are reflective of the fictitious stereotypes of the veteran’s talked about in this article. This article places a character such as Travis Bickle into the realm of fiction, away from society and reality, which is exactly where he belongs.
This article basically talks about Martin Scorsese and his portrayal and direction of New York City on film. Not limiting itself to just Taxi Driver, the article discusses a number of Martin Scorsese movies which are all based in New York City, such as: the aforementioned Taxi Driver (1976), New York New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), After Hours (1985), New York Stories (1989), Goodfellas (1990), and The Age of Innocence (1993). Through his cinematic brilliance, Martin Scorsese effectively captures the relentless energy and the bold grittiness of the city, making him the archetypal New York City director.
According to the author, Scorsese is the master of the big city movie and his vision in presenting New York to people all over the world is unparalleled. The author also points out that Scorsese has appeared in most of his films, including Taxi Driver, in which he plays one of Travis Bickle’s passengers who wants to shoot his wife with a .44 magnum.
Although this article does not specifically mention Taxi Driver with great detail, it brings attention to an otherwise overlooked element of the film: Scorsese’s use of New York City as the setting for Taxi Driver functions as an unnoticed, albeit essential supporting role in the movie. If it could, the setting of the film should get its own credit in the cast of characters for Taxi Driver. The movie would not be the same if it wasn’t filmed in New York, for the city enhances Taxi Driver’s dark and murky atmosphere and provides the perfect backdrop for Travis Bickle’s loneliness and alienation. Starting with the opening hazy shot of a steaming sewer underneath a yellow checkered cab to scenes of porno theaters, looting junkies, and corrupt pimps, and even if the movie did not mention the city at all, any average viewer would recognize that the film had to be made in New York City just by the ambiance and vibe it projects, which Scorsese manages to luminously and cleverly capture for the screen. The aura of New York City lurks in the background of every scene and shot in Taxi Driver, sort of playing the role of the ultimate supporting character, giving the film its distinct look and feel. Can you think of a better and more fitting location for this film? I sure can’t.
Additionally, in a city that’s famous for its diversity, heterogeneous social worlds and distinct boroughs it’s plain to see how one distressed veteran, such as Travis Bickle, can get so alienated and estranged from society that he turns to violence to fight the corrupt moral decay of the city.
"Postmodern Antihero: Capitalism and Heroism in Taxi Driver" Bright Lights Film Journal 47 (2005).
The author of this article compares Taxi Driver to a number of other film genres, as it combines elements of noir, the Western, horror, and urban melodrama. Iannucci believes Travis’s lack of a distinct identity compels him to compose an exoteric identity which is externally influenced by personalities such as the “gunslinger” and the Indian. In reality, what Travis Bickle does is create a postmodern antiheroic identity that is nostalgic and pop culture oriented. The author argues that Travis employs a Western-style philosophical approach to life by solving a complex contemporary problem with an individual solution. The film’s climactic ending shows how absurd the Western idealistic depiction of heroism is because the media in the film not only ignores Travis’s actions but also glorifies a psychopathic killer as a noble citizen. According to Iannucci, Travis’s search for vengeance under the guise of violence makes him an antihero because it is more insane than courageous. In addition, Scorsese’s camerawork is discussed as he implies characters’ ambiguities and complexities with the use of editing and odd framing angles. Scorsese uses dissolve sequence to create a deformity that permits the viewer to understand Travis’s consciousness and point of view.
Although Travis lives in the city, he stands bent by his own loneliness and trapped by his own isolation because he cannot seem to connect with anyone on a personal level. The value of this article is that it allows the violence of a film like Taxi Driver to be understood a little deeper as it dwells into the psyche of Travis Bickle. Travis’s contradictory intentions are confusing because he attempts to rid the city of violence by committing the ultimate act of violence, which is murder. His logic is irrational and circular as his solution suggest that violence is the only answer to alienation and loneliness. Travis takes it upon himself to play the role of Iris’s protector and save her from the evil realms of prostitution. His “antiheroic” actions stem from the need to save Iris and perhaps impress Betsy, thus, giving his life a “sense of direction”.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1998.3.S39 A3 1989
In this chapter from a book on Scorsese films, Martin Scorsese offers his own commentary on the film Taxi Driver. Scorsese discusses the early stages of production and how Brian De Palma introduced him to Paul Schrader. Scorsese included original drawings done by himself for the climactic ending. He talks about how much of Taxi Driver arose from his feeling that movies are like dreams, or like taking dope and that he tried to induce the feeling of being almost awake. Scorsese calls Travis an “avenging angel” floating through the streets of New York City, which was meant to represent all cities. Scorsese calls attention to improvisation in Taxi Driver’s many scenes, such as in the scene between De Niro and Cybill Shepherd in the coffee-shop. The director cites Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man and Jack Hazan’s A Bigger Splash as inspiration for his camerawork in Taxi Driver. He also confirms the fact that Arthur Bremer and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground influenced Paul Schrader’s script.
Reading Scorsese’s perspective on his own film provides very interesting insight into Taxi Driver and more information about the mysterious Travis. It was crucial to Travis Bickle’s character that he was a war veteran, making his experiences after the war more intense, threatening, and filled with paranoia. Bickle chose to drive his taxi anywhere in the city as a way to feed his hate. Scorsese highlights the religious symbology in Taxi Driver comparing him to a saint who wants to clean up life and his mind. The violence at the end of the film is somewhat justified in the sense that Scorsese wanted Travis to kill all those people to stop them once and for all. Travis attempts suicide at the end of the movie as a way to mimic the Samurai’s “death with honour” principle.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1998.3.S39 M55 2004
Miliora provides a solid analysis of Scorsese’s movies, including Taxi Driver, and presents new and compelling ideas about the film. The book deals heavily with Scorsese’s portrayal of masculinity and his characters’ obsession with phallic symbols. Travis is a typical Scorsese-esque phallic-narcissistic character, demonstrating his supremacy by using a gun as a way to symbolize his phallic superiority. This might explain why Travis goes berserk following Betsy’s rejection, since he can’t rationalize her dismissal and it challenges his phallic supremacy. Travis finally vindicates himself from Betsy’s rejection in a scene following the brutal ending when she gets in his cab and Travis shows no interest in her and maintains a rejecting attitude towards Betsy. He is now a “somebody”, recognized and affirmed as a real man, a courageous hero by the press.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1998.3.S39 N93 2004
Nyce repeatedly mentions how the breakdown of communication in Taxi Driver was the catalyst for Travis’ final surge of violence. Travis fails to register the feelings of others, as evident in his mistake of taking Betsy to see a porn movie. The scene shows how self-enclosed and naïve Travis is and after the incident he calls Betsy “cold and distant, just like the others.” In the scene where Scorsese plays a distressed man who tells Travis about his cheating wife and how he wants to mutilate her with a .44 magnum, Scorsese plays the role of a similar figure to Travis. However, he is more articulate and confident in his actions. He’s essentially an extension of Travis’ rage and emphasizes Travis’ growing sickness. Another failure of communication, which ultimately leads to Travis’ demise, occurs when Travis attempts to confide in Wizzard. De Niro masterfully acts out Travis’ growing sickness which he can’t express because he can’t articulate it. This is the only time in the film when Travis’ tries to open up and seek support; nevertheless, he miserably fails as the emotions Travis has bottled up inside of him are too strong for words. Just before the assassination attempt, Travis writes in his diary, “Now I see it clearly; my whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me.” This statement of fate signifies Travis’ sorrow and resignation from normalcy with violence being his only solution. The scene in which Travis shoots Sport and the others is the culmination of Travis Bickle’s failure to communicate with society as his rage from within surfaces.
Swensen, Andrew J. "THE ANGUISH OF GOD'S LONELY MEN: DOSTOEVSKY'S UNDERGROUND MAN AND SCORSESE'S TRAVIS BICKLE" Renascence; Summer2001, Vol. 53 Issue 4, p267, 20p
In this article, Swensen examines the relationship between Scorsese’s Travis Bickle and Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. Swensen points out that both works depict a persona which is alternatively a variation, a corruption, and an inversion of the idea of the hero; transforming the hero into a concept of the “antihero”. Swensen argues that both Scorsese and Dostoevsky construct a narrative of the isolated and anonymous individual amidst a dense labyrinthine city with its frenzied temptation and vice. The overcrowding, exploitation, greed, and scum of society create a social norm of cynical indifference morally corrupting the substance of the individual, as evident in Travis Bickle.
Swensen compares Dostoevsky’s Underground Man to Scorsese’s Travis Bickle, both protagonists of their novels, as they see a decaying metropolitan society as a “hell on earth”. Similar to how Dostoevsky places the frame of a third-person “editor” around the hero’s text, Swensen argues that Scorsese uses diegetic and extra-diegetic camera perspectives to mimic Travis’ eyes and vision. Swensen gives us a more immediate connection between the two in the fact that Scorsese approached Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver’s screenwriter) with the intention of adapting Dostoevsky’s Note from Underground into a film. Swensen also talks about how Taxi Driver reflects the influence of French Existentialism, and the mise-en-scene, lighting, and setting, particularly in the murk and darkness of the film, owe a debt to film noir.
In Swensen’s view, the front seat of Travis’ taxi and his dilapidated apartment become the epicenter and the locus of isolation for Travis. These settings become the “underground” and stand opposed to the space of society, the alien and hostile “aboveground”. Swensen calls attention to Scorsese’s depiction of Travis’ apartment, which parallels the developing insanity of a character like Travis Bickle. His minimally furnished but cluttered apartment reflects Travis’ mental disruption. From a camera pan across the apartment, we see cracked paint, scattered books, a dangling and bare light bulb, a small table covered with pill bottles, a metal cot, and numerous posters from slow Palantine’s political campaign. This imagery renders an unsettling glimpse of the anti-social, alienated, and maniacal anxiety emerging from within Travis, which surfaces in the climatic ending.
Dempsey, Michael. "Taxi Driver Review" Film Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4, (1976 ), pp. 37-41
Michael Dempsey’s article provides a critical review of Taxi Driver. The film’s major characters and scenes are highlighted and discussed thoroughly. Certain plot line improbabilities are reviewed to point out some of the film’s shortcomings. For example, Dempsey questions Travis’ naivety in taking Betsy to see a hard-core porno movie on their second date. Travis’ gaffe is difficult to accept as he claims not to have known that any other kind of movie exists or that pornography would upset the woman he has cast as his “angel.” Who can believe that a cabdriver, witnessing and hearing every variety of human kinkiness, spending hours himself in scummy porn theaters, would be this naP?ve? Dempsey asserts that Scorsese and Schrader have both gone on record saying that Travis’ blunder with Betsy is an unconscious act of self-destruction and proof of how isolated from human life Travis has become. Dempsey argues that Scorsese and Schrader purposely eliminated Taxi Driver’s lead female character because they preferred the certainty of blood and a more commercial “shoot-em up” climatic ending to the chance of love.
Interestingly, Dempsey interprets the film in a religious context, citing the repressive Protestant fundamentalism of Schrader’s youth and its effect on the script. He compares Travis to a mythic icon or secular saint, a lowlife Christ that has come to “cleanse the temple of moneylenders.” When a dealer lays out his inventory of guns for Travis, painstakingly cataloguing the power and caliber of each, Dempsey argues the scene is intentionally sacramental with Travis and the dealer handling the weapons like chalices. When Travis prepares for violence with exercising, dieting, fast-draw target practice before a mirror, and a Mohawk haircut, Dempsey asserts that these ritual preparations of the body looks like a priest vesting for Mass. The author also discusses how the ending conforms to some Hollywood cliches, such as the revenge ending, which provides a purely physical jolt and obtains nothing more than a reflex-reaction.
Ultimately, this article breaks down Taxi Driver’s minor plot impossibilities and how religious connotations tie into the understanding of the film.
"Travis gave punks a hair of aggression." The Toronto Star 12 Feb. 2005: H02
This article discusses one of Taxi Driver’s momentous scenes: the unveiling of Travis Bickle’s famous Mohawk. According to the director Martin Scorsese, the camera was to track rightward through a crowd of people attending a political rally. After observing a few anonymous midriffs, the camera was to stop at what, at this point in Taxi Driver, would be a familiar figure: the army jacket-wearing cab driver Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, viewed only from chest to thigh, his hands pouring pills into his palm. As Travis lifts the tablets to his mouth, the camera was to follow the hand upward to reveal the character's face. For the first time in the movie, we’d be seeing the Mohawk. The camera work had to be executed with perfection because the appearance of the Mohawk symbolized Travis’ moment of truth. This was when the audience was to realize that Travis had crossed the point of no return into insanity. Bickle’s Mohawk signified a special situation and that he was ready to get to the work of purification.
Bickle’s Mohawk had a huge impact on culture in America as it became a symbol of punk aggression influencing art, music, and the whole post-Vietnam war “punk” movement. The Mohawk was seen everywhere from Joe Strummer of The Clash to Mr. T when he entered the ring to fight Rocky Balboa.
The article also talks about the inspiration for Travis Bickle’s character, which the screenwriter, Paul Schrader, primarily based on two sources. The first one being Arthur Bremer, a paranoid schizophrenic who took a crippling shot at presidential candidate George Wallace. The second source of inspiration for Travis Bickle was Schrader himself. Right before writing the script, Schrader was in a lonely and alienated position much like the character he based upon himself was. Schrader lost his girlfriend and the apartment he was sleeping in, and he spent a few weeks living alone, desperate, depressed, and drunk in his car. Schrader made Travis a Vietnam veteran because the national trauma of the war seemed to blend perfectly with Bickle’s paranoid psychosis.
This article is important and relevant to Taxi Driver because it gives one a sense of where a unique character such as Travis Bickle can be conjured up from and where the inspiration for his personality came from.