subscribe to this page
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.
tagged martin_scorsese masculinity paul_schrader phallic_supremacy taxi_driver travis_bickle by feldman5 ...and 1 other person ...on 10-APR-08
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.
tagged martin_scorsese paul_schrader taxi_driver travis_bickle by feldman5 ...and 1 other person ...on 10-APR-08
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.
tagged arthur avenging_angelnew_york_city bremer camerawork dostoevsky dreams martin_scorsese note_from_underground paul_schrader taxi_driver travis_bickle by feldman5 ...and 1 other person ...on 10-APR-08
"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.
tagged alienation paul_schrader scorsese taxi_driver travis_bickle veteran vietnam vietnam_veteran warmartin_scorsese by feldman5 ...on 10-APR-08
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.
tagged dostoevsky french_existentialism martin_scorsese note_from_underground paul_schrader scorsese taxi_driver travis_bickle by feldman5 ...on 10-APR-08