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December 17, 2004
Taxi Driver discussion
What a great discussion we had on the film "Taxi Driver." Elaine called me this morning with more reflections and I told her I would open up this thread so she could make her insights known to the readers. I also hope Robin, Eric and Drew will comment on later ideas that might have come up about the film. I have been thinking about the historicial significance of this film: a time when America was adjusting to the trauma of the aftermath of the Vietnam War, massive unemployment and a real questioning of the American Dream. The movie questions the extent to which people can be both moral and free of social conventions and obligations. The freedoms promised in the 70's did not bring about a utopian society but created a sort of laissez-faire social condition which encouraged the "garbage" behaviors that Travis Bickle wanted to clean up. Travis was both without adequate social connections which could have mediated his delusions and a reflection of the split in that very society between the Puritan and the Libertine. David O
Posted by lyceum at December 17, 2004 9:28 AM
Comments
Racism in Taxi Driver
Robin brought up racism in Taxi Driver during the discussion but we never followed up on it. Scorsese seemed to be going for "realism" (that theme once again) in the racism department. Scorsese even cameod himself as a jealous racist husband whose wife was sleeping with black man. I had to ask myself whether Scorsese was focusing on the racism theme too much, which seemed a mere satelliting theme which however at times almost intruded upon Travis' development.
But then again, what's interesting is that, despite Travis' zeal for cleaning up the scum, he didn't seem to consider blacks to be the root of the problem. None of the "bad men" Travis targeted were black. His first urban victim was a black armed robber, but this was more of a random act on Travis' part, and Travis didn't seem to participate in the shop owner's deep grudge against the blackness of the assailant. Maybe Scorsese was wanting to be clear, in portraying a heavily racist society, that when a moralist like Travis talks about the "scum" of the streets, this blunt moralism need not be fueled by heavy race prejudice. So the moralistic racism surrounding Travis could have actually been a foil to Travis' moralism. (Not that Travis was a civil rights activist!) Drew
Posted by: Drew at December 17, 2004 7:21 PM
First, I do agree with Drew's assertion regarding Scorsese's focus, as far as Travis' motivations are considered, away from a simple, flat racism. In fact, I read on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), a fantastic reference tool for almost any motion picture, that: "In Paul Schrader's original screenplay, the characters of Sport, the Mafioso and the hotel clerk were all black. Martin Scorsese felt that, combined with other events in the film, this would have stacked the deck too much towards racism, and suggested that those characters be changed to white men. Schrader relented." So it is undeniable that was never intended to be the crux of the film or of Travis' deep seething disgust for the city, but I don't quite think that the racism permeating the movie serves as a mere foil, giving a stark contrast to Travis' 'moralism' (a good distinction, I must add, as opposed to 'morality'). Instead, I think that racism in the film functions more as a mirror, an image of a more universal, societal anxiety reflecting the personal, acute paranoia that Bickle manifests. Just think back to the scene in which Travis arrives at the dinner to meet up with all the other cabbies. As he sits, he gazes mordantly at the audience of stern, sunglass-shaded black faces staring right back at him. Even though Travis has just left the shadows of the streets to enter the well lit sanctuary of the all night greasy spoon, he still is pursued by an element of darkness; the staring faces become a veritable wall of otherness, of stubborn and violent distance where minds that Travis will never know look upon him and judge him. But rather than simply playing on Travis' racism, as a character, I think Scorsese in fact taps into the audience's latent sense of racism to illustrate the uncanny and hostile landscape through which Travis' mind is slowly sinking. Considering the climate of race in the Seventies, I can only imagine the visceral affect such techniques might have had on the film’s original audience.
Posted by: Robin S at December 21, 2004 10:43 PM
During our discussion, after I had mentioned the interpretation of the final sequence as a fantasy, I recall Drew making the comment that it would make sense that the finale was fantasy, as it would be hard to believe that an act like Travis' could be seen as heroic. At the time I thought the same, that surely people would view vigilantism as violent and dangerous first and foremost. That is until I read about the 1984 incident of Bernhard Goetz. Check it out.
Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Goetz
Or here:
http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Cohen1.html
Posted by: Robin S at December 22, 2004 11:02 PM