Clapp,A . ""Are You Talking to Me?"" Visual Anthropology [0894-9468] 18.1 (2005). 1-18.

This article examines urban alienation, and the “overdeveloped, overcontrolled” city as the epicenter of social alienation. The author argues that New York has become the main cinematic setting for depicting urban alienation because of its intensity, diverse social world, sheer size, spatial structure, and its dominating skyline. Clapp asserts this belief started with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926), in which a futuristic giant city was based on New York.
For 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.

Clapp, James A. ""Are You Talking to Me?"--New York and the Cinema of Urban Alienation" Visual anthropology [0894-9468] 18.1 (2005). 1-18.

This article looks at urban alienation generally, and New York City in particular: the “overdeveloped, overcontrolled city” as a setting for social alienation. Clapp sees this tradition beginning with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, which was based on New York City. Applied to Taxi Driver, it is appropriate then that we see in Scorsese’s work certain staples of Expressionism in the treatment of the urban environment.

Clapp’s subject here is urbanization, and how film has become perhaps the primary medium by which the problems of urbanization are expressed. As human communities grow larger and larger, Clapp argues, people cease to be part of meaningful communities, and instead become “strangers.” New York is the token in this respect, being larger, faster paced, and more diverse than most other cities. As such, it has become the main cinematic setting for depicting urban alienation. For Clapp, Travis Bickle’s line “Are you talkin’ to me?” concisely sums up this alienation, wrapped in suspicion and cynicism that could only grow in the total absence of community.

This perspective contains a more sociological spin on the themes present in Taxi Driver, though it does not spend much time examining that film in particular. Clapp provides a paradigm by which the nebulous identification which the audience feels for Travis may be reasonably explained. Applying his view, the specific historical context of Vietnam and 1970’s political turmoil is only part of the picture in understanding Taxi Driver. When the City itself is seen as a character in its own right, it becomes apparent that the audience identifies with Travis because they have a similar relationship to the giant, impersonal metropolis.