My Problem with Martin Scorsese's 'Taxi Driver'

*This is a dark movie with darker implications, Shootings, Suicide, and things of a sexual nature like underage prostitution, rape, and sexual assualt are all discussed in this. Please keep that in mind. There is another disclaimer before the darkest secion feel free to read and just skip that section if you would like.*

If you watch cinema or are involved in any way with the cinema community you’d know that Taxi Driver is one of the Holy Grail movies along with Pulp fiction, 2001, and the godfather 2. Typically this is seen as Martin Scorsese’s best movie, which is high praise since Martin is a directing legend. Back during the movie's release it was seen as THE descent into madness movie. This movie led the way for movies like Whiplash, black Swan, The Shining and Joker. Travis Bickle was the symbol of an evil loner that would shoot up a school and his character has had a legacy of attempted assassinations and school shootings.

Famously in 1981 just a few months after Reagan's inauguration John Hinkcley JR. attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster after seeing her in Taxi Driver. How famous the story is makes it seem less weird than it is. John Hinkley Jr. lost the connection between the movies and reality, he saw Jodie Foster in the movie and felt he wanted her. He dived into Travis Bickle and almost became him. When Travis plotted to kill Senator Palantine, he plotted to kill Reagan. He decided that THAT was the move to get Jodie’s attention and would make her fall in love with him. While I am not sure which version of Jodie he was lusting over either the Jodie in the movie who was fourteen years old or Jodie at the time of the assassination where she was nineteen which while not perfect is better than lusting after a fourteen year old. Given that this was before the internet and he probably only saw her in movies and this one was his favorite, I would assume that he was looking at the Taxi Driver aged Jodie. Which is one of the many reasons John Hinkley Jr. had an unstable mental state. From there even though as far as I am aware no School shooters have stated that Taxi Driver was an inspiration for their crimes. Yet, somehow Travis Bickle and Taxi Driver still get brought up in conversation when something like that happens. Maybe it is just a popular movie and in most people’s minds he is the most famous lone shooter since the movie is forty five years old, and this is where most of the “parent generation” minds go. I don’t know if there is a way to get a definitive answer on that. Whenever there's a new shooting I’ve heard people in person or on the internet make the connection between the shooter and Travis

The thing that I do not understand about the movie is that Travis is the pinnacle of a lonely, insane, killer madman, but the movie does not start off that way. Throughout the course of the movie Travis becomes this insane character through the events of the movie. The huge one and only reason why this movie does not work now, is that comparatively to now and people now his life is not that bad. I am going to go through comparing each event in the movie and explain how myself and most of my peers I know have had similar experiences as Travis Bickle. Before I go through the events I do want to predicate that I am only going through the events of the movie as it is shown. In the beginning Travis mentions he was a vietnam vet, given that this movie came out in 1976 and that he is looking for a job it is extremely likely that he just got back and is looking for a job now that he is back in the U.S. I am not going to mention what is going on in his mind from what happened over there. Not as any way to demean veterans or the work they do, but because outside of the one line at the beginning the movie also puts this to the side. If we had flashbacks of his time in Vietnam and the Senator in the movie did something with a law that affected his unit or made them do something that lost men I would completely understand and this article would not exist. Given that in the opening scene we are introduced to Travis and his soon to be boss in a job interview. Which isn’t that much of an interview, the boss basically sits there as Travis says he is a vet, is willing to work nights and long hours. The boss thanks him for his service, and gives him that job on the spot. Now comparing that situation to now, can you imagine walking into a job site asking for a job in street clothes and getting it immediately? Even though people are very desperate for work, you still need to get in contact with them, have a proper interview and wait until they contact you saying you got the job. That's only in a desperate work environment, just a year or two ago it was much harder to get accepted to a job. The job itself is part of what sends Travis into his insanity. Since he works long hours and late nights he doesn’t have any social life and does nothing but work, and sleep. My response to this is Okay… And? I personally and people I know have had to completely cut out a social life for long hours trying to get more money. Working fifty to sixty hours a week often through the night is completely normal for college students trying to make money between semesters. Also he doesn’t have a non existent social life, there are several guys that Travis goes and gets drinks with, not often but after watching the movie it seems like they meet up at least once a week. Many people point out that he is a loner in this group of guys, but they talk to him and never cut him off like a group of friends would if they were purposely excluding him. I never understood that argument as to why Travis is so lonely, because when you watch the movie it never feels like he’s cut out socially from the beginning of the movie. From there the next large plot point is Betsy. Betsy is a worker for the campaign of Senator Palantine for president. Travis describes her as an angel, and between taxi passengers he goes in and asks her out, and she agrees. Again compared to these days, socially walking right up to someone at their job and asking them out would result in a no or depending on how creepy you are a slap or pepper spray. If they were at a bar or a more social setting, or even Betsy having a more customer service job like a barista I would believe because that's more socially acceptable. This isn’t an understandable response since many women have to deal with an almost constant barrage of weird guys trying to ask them out either in person or on social media. In person the threat of sexual assault is always looming and on social media just getting messages asking for nudes or stuff much much more gross than that. From there they go out on a date, it's just a little cafe lunch where they talk a little and it seems to go decently well. They go out again this time at the movies, however he’s so socially cut off that thinks it's fine to take her to a Rated X movie also known as a Porno. She leaves the date and never wants to talk to him again. From there he tries to apologize and make it up to her over the phone then again in person at her job, which doesn’t go well. From there he has a customer who has him drive to his apartment. This passenger starts talking to Travis about that apartment is his wife and the man she is cheating on him with. He goes on about how he is gonna kill her for betraying and cheating on him. The passenger is played by Martin Scorsese so clearly he thought this scene was important. This is the scene that first gets the idea of killing into Travis’s mind. I believe it is at this point where Travis makes up his mind to kill Senator Palantine just because Betsy spends all her time with her job on his campaign team. This has not really been built up at all, even later in the movie we find that Travis is still a caring guy when he tries to save Iris, who I will get to. He starts buying guns, which is where I would like to point out another thing with this movie. While Travis is working long, nightly hours he is phenomenally well off. He lives in a Manhattan apartment. Even if the apartment is very old it is still a manhattan apartment with 100% of the rent on him. Plus he has enough disposable income to go out and buy two guns which are very expensive to someone with little disposable income. Travis is financially sitting decent, not great, but not close to homeless either. He starts talking to Palatine's secret service agents, and practicing shooting Palpatine's face on TV with no bullets in the chamber. He discovers that the little girl that he had run in earlier with in his taxi is a prostitute and the guy yelling at her in the earlier scene was not her dad but her pimp. The way he discovers this is he tries to get a prostitute and he gets into Iris’s room. He takes her to breakfast and tries to save her but she refuses, later finding out that she’s being brainwashed to stay.

*This section gets very dark and personal, Suicide is talked about in legnth and they are personal experiences I had with my classmates. If you do not want to read this continue after this section.*

Now is when I feel the need to talk about the New York nightlife scenes. There are several sequences where it is showing people walking around and the nightlife of New York, in which there are a lot of bad things that happen at night. These scenes are to show the scum of mankind and how exposed Travis is to it. The reason this isn't really a good answer to the question “Why Travis becomes who he is.” because nothing is really shown that bad and simply knowing or seeing bad things in life is not enough to mentally change someone like that. Using this compared to now there are several things that someone might see on the new york streets, are murder, rape, and drugs. In some form or fashion The average high schooler and college student knows, sees, or takes part of these. If you don’t believe me it’s true. First one murder, growing up everyone elementary to high school has to do school shooter drills. At some point they have to think about what would happen if one of their own peers wanted to kill them, which is a terrifying thought for elementary school kids. Also common thing high schoolers deal with that you do not see on the streets, suicide. With increased pressure on grades, what college to go to, more aggressive psychological bullying, and increased anxiety and depression levels, students attempting and committing suicide is now the norm. I remember the first attempted suicide amoungst my peers was when I was eight years old in 4th grade, which is a fact that will probably shock older readers. When I graduated there were six students who had killed themselves before they graduated in my class, meaning the likelihood of a student killing themselves in my class was 1.7%. That being the known ones, nobody can really know for sure how many attempts because it's very difficult to talk to people about something like that. I personally had to continue with a group project in a digital design class with me and another student after our third group member killed himself the night before, and it wasn’t assigned partners, these were my friends. Also in high school I knew of several people who attempted Suicide, some of them kept it from their parents. Schools would tell teachers to have “Easy days'' when there was a student funeral because of the amount of people going to the funeral and the mental toll it took on everyone. Then there’s rape, obviously I never witnessed a rape personally, but the movie never implies that Travis did either, but witht the heavy influence of underage prostitution sexual assult and rape are parts of Travis’s decent. Some disgusting statistics on that: one in five women are sexually assaulted before the age of fourteen and one in three in their lifetime. Which doesn’t include verbal abuse or anything digitally. So for many women sexual assault is commonplace, but as a society we never talk about it so they feel alone anyway. Then onto drugs, this is similar to the last two things where it's become fairly common for people of a young age to be around or take drugs. I have worked with and had positions where there were fifteen to seventeen that I never saw sober. So none of these scenes even fazed me.

To continue with the movie Travis also decides to try and rescue Iris from her pimp whether she wants to leave or not and he decides to take the, “I could die running into the brothel and killing everyone” strategy instead of calling the cops, taking her with him outside the city, or anything else. From there his decision was made. Then in the third act he attempts and fails at assassinating Palatine and successfully kills Iris’s pimps. Then at the end of the movie he is hailed as a hero for getting those people off the streets. It is a theory that this is a fantasy Travis has and he is really in the hospital after his injuries from the shootout, but if you take it at face value, he is a hero at the end of the movie. So, not only does he not have ‘that’ bad of a life he gets to live happily in the end.

My point being that there are thousands of people who have it worse, financially, socially, and romantically than him. He is a man who got rejected by one girl, works nights, long hours, and sees people doing what people do and he has now become the epitome of loneliness, and desperation, which is not believable to me at all. When I watched the movie I was blown away by how quickly and abruptly he decides to start assassinating politicians, saving a girl from a brothel and then subsequently trying to kill himself. He is not the best off, but also definitely not the bottom of the barrel either. So the next time you hear anything about Taxi Driver just consider that people these days might have it worse than the lonely insane man from this movie.