Taxi Driver A Study of Masculinity & Existentialism

the first thing that people often note about taxi driver is how hypnotic it is the film depicts a nightmarish portrayal of mid-1970s New York City with its stark use of shadows vibrant reds and omniscient camera movement director Martin Scorsese has explained that the idea for the film arose from his feeling that movies often behave as dreams or drug-induced reveries and that the hypnotic sensibility of the film operates as an attempt to incubate the viewer with the feeling of being in a limbo state between sleeping and waking in writing the script Paul Schrader has cited the Diaries and assassination attempts Arthur Bremer as inspiration for Travis's destructive and vision as well as Dostoyevsky's notes from the underground in which an isolated and bitter narrator delivers rambling monologues much like the diary entries that are ever-present throughout the film in Schrader states that he saw the script as an attempt to take the European existential hero and place him in an American context and by doing so the subject matter devolves to become more juvenile in nature and if you listen to Travis's journal entries you'll often find that their childlike and contain little or no actual substance all my life needed was a sense of some place to go I don't believe the one should devote his life to morbid self attention I believe that someone should become a person like other people his worldview isn't intellectual but rather shallow and conceited Travis struggles with existential grief but isn't smart enough to recognize the source of these issues his biggest problem is he can't understand the source of his turmoil and this causes him to project his anguish externally through strokes of brutal violence now Scorsese has remarked that much of the film was inspired by John Ford's The Searchers and the Travis in many ways is a contemporary manifestation of Ethan Edwards a character who was also narrative Li focused with rescuing women let's go home Debbie and there's tons of Western and Native American imagery littered throughout the film Travis dresses and behaves like a cowboy his taxicab operating as his horse metaphorically speaking [ __ ] you're a real cowboy sport can be noted as wearing Native American clothing and Travis Don's a mohawk haircut and his most destructive phase of the narrative and like The Searchers racism plays as a subtle backdrop to the film stoking Travis's violent nature you see much like Ethan Edwards Travis is a societal reject in fact Betsi remarks on his strange personality early in the film he's a prophet and a pusher it's partly true partly fiction walking contradiction and she's right Travis is a walking contradiction he hates the scum meanness of New York but frequents porno theaters and drives around prostitutes he talks about maintaining a good diet but he pours liquor on his breakfast and pops pills constantly the truth is Travis is lonely and as a result he's a mishmash of various ideologies for example note how even though Travis mentions he isn't political he puts Palantine stickers all over his apartment why because Betsy the woman he's attracted to is a political supporter of him so he latches on to this his whole courtship with her is based around this notion that Travis is desperate to fit in to reassimilate himself into a normal life after his time in Vietnam and this segues into what I want to talk about the women of taxi driver because this film is at part about Travis's relationship with these two women and whether it be the violently sexualized world of virus or the politicized superficiality that Betsy surrounds herself with the lives of these characters lead are paralleled and furthermore mirrored by Travis's clouded attempts so let's begin by looking at Betsy she is first introduced to the audience in an angelic manner as a woman who was pure Travis remarks on this in one of his first journal entries saying they cannot touch and notice how this shot in specific makes an overt attempt to display the distance between the two Travis only looks at her from afar as if window-shopping on a lifestyle that he can never truly be a part of but while Betsy is pure iris is anything but she's dumped into Travis's car like a lost child but for Travis the bridge quality between these two women is the men in their lives what Travis notices and clings on to with Betsy and iris is that both of these women are puppets to social and political figures but this perception is largely formed after Betsy rejects Travis romantically you're in a hell and you're gonna die in a hell like a wreck mono there's a cross street you like the rest of them he's incapable of seeing Betsy's dismissiveness as anything other than a superficial perception of his persona and this is key to his character Travis develops hatred for the lifestyles that reject him I'm hip what is your hook to him and as a result his repressed egotism grows he labels Palantine in sport as figureheads for his vexation Travis expresses this frustration early in the film ironically to Palantine think that the president should just clean up this whole message to just flush it right down the [ __ ] toilet and valentine's reaction is to feed him a political livery to flex his personality well uh I think I know what Jemaine Travis but it's not gonna be easy we're gonna have to make some radical changes damn straight now if you compare the scene to the one in which sport is first introduced the framing demonstrates just how different these men utilize their strengths Palantine was in full view in Travis's cab using his power of speech and charisma alternatively we aren't shown sports face only his torso is shown through Travis's window and Scorsese frames this strategically because sport is a man characterized by his physical qualities whereas Palantine relies on charm and this contrast of physicality versus personality is demonstrated in other ways throughout the film as well for example take this scene in the beginning of the film with Betsy and Tom that taxi driver has been staring at us notice how when Betsy is initially bothered by Travis's presence she sends Tom her guardian to verbally excuse Travis you're blocking our doorway to thank you she uses politics to dismiss her problems on the other hand when iris is bothered by Travis's presence she grabs the arm of a man to protect her and so these themes of status and masculinity begin to sink into Travis's psyche triggering his destructive rampage he decides that he must defeat sport and Palantine in this pseudo westernized battle in order to give his life a sense of purpose as he puts it in a 1976 interview with Roger Ebert Scorsese and trader explained that taxi driver in many ways is a feminist film and that Travis is an exploration of the confused masculine character Scorsese remarks that Travis exhibits the goddess [ __ ] complex a psychoanalytic condition first identified by Sigmund Freud in which men cannot achieve intimacy in a loving relationship and thus tend to define women as either Madonna's or [ __ ] in Travis's mind Betsy and iris become symbols of status and purity and so he deludes himself into believing his avenge Minh is motivated by altruism to rescue them from oppression but in reality his actions are larger attempts to display his masculinity towards the aggressors in his life and because he was romantically rejected by Betsy he resorts to expressing his masculinity in a psychosexual form of violence stuck on this now what's fascinating about the final act of the film is Travis's immortalization he becomes an accidental hero and it's no secret that he's monstrous and his intentions in Betsy's world Travis is a vigilante eager to advance the decay of society in Iris's he's a cowboy a Lone Ranger ready to rescue a captive and in this regard Travis is mistaken by the public as a hero ironically the film fulfills Travis's self-declared destiny in an accidental and superficial sense the papers are you now many have speculated that the film's final scene is a dream sequence but I take issue with this for a number of reasons because while this scene has a dreamlike tone there is an underlying hint of unease that to me defines the ending more definitively the narrative perspective of this film is singular and because of that we view the world through Travis's eyes and if you study this scene you'll find it's entirely composed of tight close-ups of Travis Betsy is only framed through his rear view mirror as if to present her a step removed from reality but none of this is to say that what we're seeing is a dream sequence Betsy's presence in this scene makes sense narrative Lee speaking the surreal 'ti is simply a product of Travis's fracture view of reality and the pivotal moment is after Betsy leaves when we see Travis's manic being show up again it's in this moment that we see Travis is still deeply unstable he's a ticking time bomb waiting to blow again this film is in essence a study of what happens to man in solitude how loneliness shapes him drives him to points of insanity and to me the most interesting facet of taxi driver is how Scorsese fools us as an audience were seduced into liking Travis into finding his condition relatable in some senses but at some point he betrays us and it's in this trick that Scorsese forces us to look inward at ourselves

Channel: More Than Meets The Lens

Views: 4,099,672

Keywords: taxi driver, Taxi Driver: A Study of Masculinity and Existentialism, martin scorsese, taxi, driver, scorsese, analysis, film essay, movies, casey neistat, pewdepie, nerdwriter, every frame a painting, kaptain kristian, film, movie essay, raging bull, goodfellas, taxi driver analysis, robert deniro, harvey keitel

Id: -pAcJ0lFu94

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2016