“He's a prophet… he’s a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction. A walking contradiction.” (Taxi Driver) We are all encapsulated in our own self-concept. It can make it impossible for us to understand how our actions are doing more damage than good. As human beings, if we cannot find the source of our turmoil we are doomed for our anguish to be projected externally as strokes of violence. In the film Taxi Driver, Travis is not doing enough to fix his problems. He is constantly putting himself into situations that confirm his negative view on the world, trying to find purpose in relationships that he sabotages and tries to find purpose through death.
Taxi Driver is a 1976 film directed by Martin Scorcese and written by Paul Schrader. It won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. (Wikipedia) Travis Bickle is a 26-year old honorably discharged Marine, dealing with inter-city solitude in 1970s New York. He takes up a taxi job to cope with his insomnia, driving passengers all over the city. He spends his spare time at porn theatres and writing in his diary. Travis becomes infatuated with Betsy, a campaign volunteer for candidate Charles Palatine. Their relationship turns sour when he takes Betsy to a porn movie. He tries to persuade a child prostitute, Iris, to desert her lifestyle but fails. “As Travis grows increasingly more paranoid of his situations, he begins to see these relationships he develops as 'missions' of which he will need to be the saviour” (Jones).
From the first sequence, we see a taxi at night driving through the smoke, giving the ominous feel of a horror movie. This anxious tone is build up throughout the film and we are then introduced to our main character, Travis Bickle, from a shot of his shifting eyes. This is significant because the events that are to follow happen primarily from his bias perspective. Paul Schrader, the writer of the film, used the genre film noir as a mode to transcribe a theme (Belton,226). Film noir usually uses shadows, wide-angle lenses and jarring juxtapositions for aesthetics (Belton, 226). Thematically, it deals with existential issues such as “the alienation, loneliness and isolation of the individual in industrialized, mass society” (Belton, 226). Themes presented in this film is loneliness, self-hatred, obsession and the need to belong. Travis is a loner who is constantly looking for negativity in the world to validate his idea that people are scum. When Travis enters the depot to apply to become a taxi driver, our focal point isn’t on Travis’s future boss. Instead we see two taxi drivers in the background arguing, this becomes a major occurrence. There is need to put emphasis on the confrontations that happen in the background of his world.
We can also draw a conclusion on Travis’s isolation in that scene. He is separated from Wizard, arguably his only confidant, from a window. When he drives his taxi throughout the film he is separated from his passengers or the world from a window and stares at them only through the rear-view mirror. He keeps his distance, showing the audience how removed he is from the world. It is important to understand that his isolation and eventual downfall is all self-inflicted. In his May 10th diary entry, he states, “All the animals come out at night – whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal.” (Taxi Driver) He clearly hates dealing with this fraction of society that he finds himself in, but it is important to address that he is the one who puts himself in these situations. When he applies to be a taxi driver, Travis is asked by the personnel officer, “Wanna work uptown nights- South Bronx, Harlem?” Travis replies, “I’ll work anytime, anywhere” (Taxi Driver). The main reason he is lonely and despises his surroundings is that he forces himself to operate in the worst parts of humanity.
There is a motif in the movie that relationships and love being the solution to his loneliness. Travis informs his future employer “I can’t sleep.” The Personnel Officer answers “There’s porno theatres for that.” Travis responses “I tried that” (Taxi Driver). After getting his first fare, we see him go into the porn theater and flirt with the Concession Girl, who rejects him. The female form is always on his mind, it is part of the reason he constantly visits the adult theater and looks in longing at a couple sitting on the hood of a car at night. Travis’s idea of a relationship is very twisted, he is so consumed in his version of the world he does not think of other’s perceptions or feelings. When Travis enters the offices, he brings his instability and he urges Betsy that she is the one who is lonely and unhappy. These are adjectives that perfectly describe his feelings but he is using them to have a chance to woo Betsy. On both scenes that he is with Betsy he wears the same suit as if he is trying to impersonate normal people. His impersonation only goes as far as his garments because he takes Betsy out to a porn movie the second time they meet. Betsy’s representation of innocence is something he wants to destroy because there is a need to bring her down to his level. When she rejects him, it amplifies his self-hatred and proves to him that the world is terrible and has no virtue.
Filmgraded.com states, “In any event, I am uncomfortable with the two partly overlapping plots of Travis' obsessions with Shepherd and Foster. It is as if Scorsese and Schrader had two distinct story ideas and decided to pursue both.” However, Betsy and Iris are parallels. Betsy stands for innocence, the goddess or “well-washed middle-class gentility” (Patterson). While Iris represents the women of the seedier side of womanhood-the whores and the jezebels. Travis believes these women do not belong in their worlds and they need to be saved from the “hell” of the city. Travis berates Betsy by saying, “You're in a hell, and you're gonna die in hell like the rest of 'em. You're like the rest of 'em” (Taxi Driver) Travis was trying to find a purpose through women but is let down. This is due to the fact that he is hoping a relationship will give him the power to overcome his flaws and a sense of belonging.
Ultimately, Travis has no identity and decides the only way he can gain one is through violence. Since “society will not accept him, then he will make society a reflection of his will” (Abrams). Travis confides in a fellow taxi-driver, Wizard, about his thoughts that are becoming more erratic and violent. Wizard assures him that things will work out leaving Travis alone with his unstable psyche. He is obsessed with cleaning up the streets of filth. At first, he believes “a real rain will come” but later he begins to personalize it. (Skoble) At first, he tells candidate Palatine to clean up the streets, but later he takes matters into his own hands. He takes responsibility to clean up the streets by attempting to assassinate Charles Palatine. Travis’s own self-hatred has manifested into the hatred of all people. He sees Palatine as a beckon of hope and happiness. Travis can’t have happiness and he despises that others can achieve it. He wants to kill the man who evokes a sense of community. The problem is Travis sticks out like a sore thumb, with his bulky jacket and Mohawk. Authorities quickly chase him off the scene, Travis is unable to kill Palatine who is a major figure in everyday life. Travis decides to go after Matthew “Sport”, Iris’s pimp instead. He invades her pimp’s brothel and initiates a violent gunfight. To the viewer, they may believe he is trying to “rescue” Iris, but once everyone is dead he tries to kill himself in front of her. He used Iris as an excuse to murder strangers in a world that ostracizes him. Overall, Travis is a loner to the extreme, he is too weird for everyday life and too straight for the criminals. If Travis successfully killed Palatine he would be seen as a criminal, but since he killed Sport and the child abuser he is seen as a hero. He has not resolved his loneliness, insomnia or negativity. Instead, he has vindicated his twisted idea of how the world works through how the public defines him- a hero.
Wizard tells Travis that “You, you, you become, you get a job, you become the job. One guy lives in Brooklyn, one guy lives in Sutton Place, you get a lawyer, another guy's a doctor, another guy dies, another guy gets well, and you know, people are born. I envy you your youth. Go out and get laid. Get drunk, you know, do anything. 'Cause you got no choice anyway. I mean we're all fucked, more or less you know.” (Taxi Driver) Wizard is partially correct and partially wrong. You become something by doing it, but you have a choice. As a human being, we are scared of change, we get comfortable in our sorrows and despair. We forget that there is something better, but that takes courage and grit. We have a choice, nothing ever just happens, we build our own destiny. If we do not want to grow, we will engineer our downfall. We become the Taxi Driver.