Taxi Driver A Study of Masculinity & Existentialism

The first thing people usually notice about the

taxi

driver

is how hypnotic he is. The film depicts a nightmarish portrait of mid-1970s New York City, with its stark use of vibrant red shadows and omniscient camera movements. Director Martin Soresi has explained that the idea for the film arose from his feeling that films often behave like dreams or drug-induced reveries and that the film's hypnotic sensibility operates as an attempt to incubate in the viewer the sensation of being in a state of limbo between sleep and wakefulness when writing the script that Paul Shrader has written. cited the Diaries and the assassination attempts of Arthur Bremer as inspiration for Travis's destructive ambition, as well as Dov's Notes from Underground, in which an isolated, bitter narrator delivers incoherent monologues much like the diary entries found in always present throughout the film and Trader states that he saw the script as an attempt to take the European existential hero and place him in an American context and in doing so the theme becomes more youthful in nature and if you listen to the diary entries from Travis, you will often find that they are childish and contain little or no real substance all my life needed was a sense of a place to go I don't think one should dedicate their life to morbid attention to themselves I think someone should become a person like other people, your worldview is not intellectual, but rather superficial and conceited.

Travis struggles with existential pain, but he is not smart enough to recognize the source of these problems. His biggest problem is that he cannot understand the source of his confusion and this causes him to project his anguish externally through Beats of Brutal Violence Now Soresi has commented that much of the film was inspired by John Forge the Searchers and that Travis in many senses is a contemporary manifestation of Ethan Edwards, a character who also narratively focused on rescuing women, let's go home, Debbie and there are tons. of Western and Native American images sprinkled throughout the film.

Travis dresses and behaves like a cowboy, his cab operates like his horse, metaphorically speaking, you are a real cowboy. You can notice that Sport wears Native American clothing and Travis Dawn has a mohawk haircut in his most destructive phase of the narrative and, like the Searchers, racism plays as a subtle backdrop for the film, stoking Travis' violent nature, he looks very similar to Ethan Edwards. Travis is a social reject, in fact Betsy comments on his strange personality at the beginning of the film, he is a profit and a dealer part truth part fiction walking contradiction and she is right Travis is a walking contradiction hates the scum of New York but he frequents porn theaters and drives around prostitutes he talks about maintaining a good diet but he constantly serves liquor for breakfast and daddy pills the truth Travis feels lonely and as a result is a mix of several ideologies, for example, notice how , although Travis mentions that he is not political, he puts Palentina stickers all over his apartment, why is Betsy, the woman he is attracted to, a political supporter of his? so he sticks to this, his entire courtship with her is based on the notion that Travis is desperate to fit in to reassimilate into a normal life after his time in Vietnam and this Segways I want to talk about

taxi

driver

wives because This film is essentially about Travis's relationship with these two women and whether it's the violently sexualized world of Iris or the politicized superficiality that Betsy surrounds herself with the lives these characters lead are parallel and, furthermore, reflected in the clouded attempts at heroism. by Travis, so let's see Start by looking at Betsy, she is first introduced to the audience in an angelic way as a woman who is pure.

Travis comments on this in one of his first journal entries saying that they can't touch her and notice how this specific shot makes an overt attempt to show the distance between the two of them just towards her from afar, as if he were window shopping in a style. of life that he can never be a part of, but while Betsy is pure iris she is anything but she gets thrown into Travis' car like a lost child, come on, man. I'm out of here, okay, but for Travis the bridging quality between these two women is the men in their lives.

What Travis notices and clings to with Betsy and Iris is that both women are puppets of social and political figures, but this perception is largely formed after Betsy romantically rejects Travis. You're in hell and you're going to die in hell like the rest of us come on now there's a cop on the other side of the street you're just like the rest of them he's unable to see Betsy's disdain as anything more than a superficial perception of her Persona and this is key to his character Travis develops hatred for lifestyles that reject him I am modern but you don't see yourself hello and as a result his repressed selfishness grows, he labels Palentino in sports. as figureheads for his Vic ation, Travis expresses this frustration at the beginning of the film ironically to Palentine.

I think the president should just clean up this whole mess here, he should just flush it down the toilet and palentine's reaction is to feed him a political liar. Flex his personality well, uh, I think I know what you mean, Travis, but it's not going to be easy, we're going to have to make some radical changes right now, if you compare the scene to the one where the sport is introduced for the first time. He demonstrates how differently these men use their strengths. Palentino was visible in Travis' taxi using his power of speech and his charisma.

Alternatively, we are not shown Sport's face, only his torso is shown through Travis' window and Scorsi frames this strategically because Sport is a man. He is characterized by his physical qualities, while Palentine is based on charm and this contrast between physicality and personality is demonstrated in other ways throughout the film, as well as, for example, this scene at the beginning of the film with Betsy and Tom, the taxi driver has been watching. We notice how when Betsy is initially upset by Travis's presence, she sends Tom, her guardian, to verbally excuse Travis. Hey, you're blocking our door, you think you'll want to move the cab, she uses politics to dismiss her problems, on the other hand, when Iris is upset by Travis' presence, she grabs a man's arm to protect her and wants to take a ride , yes, and then these themes of status and

masculinity

begin to sink into Travis' psyche, triggering his destructive Rampage.

He decides that he must defeat Sport and Palentine in this pseudo. Westernized battle to give her life a sense of purpose, as expressed in a 1976 interview with Roger eert Scorsese, and Trader explained that Taxi Driver is in many ways a feminist film and that Travis is an exploration of Scorsese's confusing male character. comments that Travis exhibits the goddess complex, a psychoanalytic condition first identified by Sigman Freud in which men cannot achieve intimacy in a romantic relationship and therefore tend to define women as madonnas or, In Travis's mind, Betsy and Iris become symbols of status and purity, so he deceives himself into believing that his revenge is motivated by altruism to rescue them from oppression, but in reality his actions are more attempts. great to show his

masculinity

towards the bullies in his life and because Betsy rejected him romantically, he resorts to expressing his masculinity in a way.

The psychosexual form of violence reeks of this now, what is fascinating about the Final Act of the film is the immortalization of Travis. He becomes an accidental hero and it is no secret that his intentions are monstrous in the world of gambling. Travis is a vigilante eager to advance society's decay. Iris is a cowboy, a lone ranger ready to rescue a captive, and in this sense, the audience mistakes Travis for a hero. Ironically, the film fulfills Travis's self-proclaimed destiny in an accidental and superficial sense. I read about you in the papers, how are you? Now many have speculated that the final scene of the film is a dream sequence, but I disagree with this for several reasons because while this scene has a dreamlike tone, there is an underlying hint of unease that defines the ending for me. more definitively.

The narrative perspective. of this film is unique and that is why we see the world through Travis's eyes and if you

study

this scene you will find that it is composed entirely of tight close-ups of Travis Betsy is only framed through his rearview mirror as if to present him with a step far from reality, but none of this means that what we are seeing is a dream sequence. Betsy's presence in this scene makes sense narratively speaking. The surreality is simply a product of Travis's fractured view of reality and the turning point is after Betsy leaves. when we see Travis' manic self appear again, it is at this moment that we see that Travis is still deeply unstable.

He is a time bomb waiting to explode again. This film is essentially a

study

of what happens to man in solitude, how loneliness shapes him and drives him. To points of madness and for me the most interesting facet of Taxi Driver is how Scorsi tricks us as an audience, we are seduced into liking Travis and finding the relatable condition of him in some ways, but at some point he betrays us and it is in this trick. that scorsi forces us to look at ourselves