Taxi Driver (1976)

2 years ago

Taxi Driver (1976)

MAN IN A ROOM

by Tess Lynch

I’ve found writing about Taxi Driver to be no easy feat. That’s not to say you should go easy on me, but rather to explain my approach to writing about it is to use a synecdoche of sorts: instead of talking about Taxi Driver — its ins and outs, its child prostitutes and politicians, the horrifying and glittering New York in its frame — I want to talk about the Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle.

Travis Bickle, the character, was something of a muse to writer Paul Schrader, who penned Taxi Driver (‘76), American Gigolo (‘80), Light Sleeper (‘92) and The Walker (‘07) as a sort of series, depicting the Bickle character in different stages of life. This series, according to Wikipedia, is sometimes referred to as the “Man In A Room” or “Night Worker” series; Bickle (or, in subsequent films, his likeness) often suffers from insomnia, leading him to work at night — in this case, driving a taxi. Whether the insomnia (and corresponding occupation that confronts Travis with the counter-culture, the greasy underbelly of 1970’s New York at 3 AM) serves as a catalyst for what happens to Travis and those he encounters, or is just a symptom of a crazy-at-any-time-of-day kind of dude, is up for interpretation. What I mean is, when you start seeing things like Travis Bickle sees things, in his manic drive for some kind of moral righteousness, you can almost — almost — mistake him for someone you know.

Schrader, who also directed the really-great Auto Focus, had this to say about the characters to whom he’s drawn:

I’m interested in characters quite often—but not always—who act in counter-productive ways: people who want to do or be one thing but behave in a way that undermines it, which I guess is the heart and soul of Freudian analysis. Certain people live it large—in a case like Bob Crane, who was walking around saying, “I’m normal, I’m a family man” while all the while a tail trails out behind him… In a case like his celebrity just becomes an enabling factor that allows him to become more counter-productive and self-destructive.

Travis Bickle’s violent misadventures do two things: they destroy all of our sympathies for him, and they deliver unto Bickle rewards which contradict his intentions, and our expectations. When Travis tries to kill himself, his weapons are empty; in this film, the protagonist wants to self-destruct. What he gets is the opposite: he’s built up into a hero.

Travis tries to escape his lonely, isolated existence by finding love with Betsy (the never-again-as-charming Cybill Shepherd); her rejection is what causes Bickle to break. After buying spooky weapons, he delivers his “You talkin’ to me?” speech to his mirror. If you’ll allow me to get really Liberal Arts BS-Master on you, I’d say that this scene is where Bickle figuratively shoots his mirror image — the elements of his character that allowed him to appear normal to us, to others — and fractures into something, or someone, who is completely and visibly rejecting mainstream society.

After this episode, Bickle gives himself a mohawk. He prepares to give in to the violence, the skewed moral judgments, which have comprised his inside world, his journal and thoughts, never making it into the postcards he sends to his parents or the image he projects to the outside world. He makes visible what has been invisible — his isolation and alienation. But when he does this, through a series of serendipitous encounters and impulsive maneuvers, Bickle has to deviate from his plan. His violence becomes random, and, strangely, society accepts him. Not only is he accepted, he’s revered for his violence. He’s made into a celebrity.

The topic of whether or not Bickle served in the Marines is touchy — while it seems clear, in the screenplay and the finished film, that Bickle was discharged (honorably, he claims) after serving from ‘68-70 — and Stephen Hunter, in his review of the film, posited that perhaps Bickle is an assumed identity. Bickle always reminded me a bit of Septimus Smith from Mrs. Dalloway, another veteran whose war-induced hallucinations isolate him from any kind of connection — with society, with his wife. He ultimately commits suicide, just as Bickle attempts to do. Bickle also reminds me of Elvis in the film The King, a man who, after his discharge from the Navy, embarks on a similar path of vengeful violence.

What makes Travis Bickle, and the other Travis Bickles before and after him, an iconic character is that — whether he served in war or simply used its artifacts as his idols, his costume — he personifies the contrast of how society responds to violence. The fact that people killed by Bickle happened to be The Enemy, we realize, is inconsequential. To him, A Man In A Room, everyone outside is The Enemy.

Tess Lynch is a freelance writer and actress living in Los Angeles. She tumbls here.