Taxi Driver Film Blog

1. What is this film about and what does it reveal about the 1970s? Pick a single theme and use at least two to three fully described scenes from the film as evidence to support your points. Make sure you connect the scenes you select to key ideas in your argument explaining what the film is about and what it reveals about the 1970s.

This film was about Travis Bickle, who served as a marine until 1973. Originally from a rural area, Bickle ends up in New York City in 1975. After becoming a taxi driver, he meets a woman named Betsey and scares her away as a result of his ritual of watching in-theatre porn, and inviting her along. His failed attempt of a relationship with Betsey pushes the already unstable Travis into an obsessive, violent fanatic. Along the way he meets Iris, a prostitute and her pimp, Sport. Racism is a theme throughout the film, even though Travis never says anything specifically racist. The only way the viewer really knows his attitude towards black men is in the way he sees them. He is always noticing black men and he is slightly scared of them, while still harboring a hatred for them. The film often shows groups of black men, walking around town or in the diner, as if they are strange to Travis. Sometimes, they were shot in slow motion, with Travis stares. They are kind of like an obsession of his – a fascination. For example, none of the other drivers have an issue with the black driver, Charlie T. But Travis does not feel comfortable sitting with Charlie T. His suspicions are justified, to him, when he is leaving the diner with Wizard and Charlie T makes a gun with his fingers and pretends to shoot Travis. Travis is bothered by this gesture. Sometimes, Travis displays a little bit of jealousy for black people — like the couple dancing while he was watching American Bandstand. It’s almost like Travis wants to be as happy as they are — but does not necessarily understand why he is unable to be, considering he is a while male.

Throughout the film, though, there are really only two other characters that are racist. One of them is a passenger that gets into Travis’s cab. He asks him to wait, while he watches a woman through a window. He explains that the woman is his wife, and the man suspects that she has been cheating on him with a black man. He refers to this man as a “nigger” while also talking about shooting his wife with a .44 Magnum. The passenger is able to say things that Travis agrees with, but would not say himself. The third racist character in the film is the man who runs the convenience store. When Travis is in a convenience store, a black man walks in and tries to hold up the store. Travis shoots him, and then worries about what will happen because he has an unregistered gun. The storeowner tells him not to worry and simply beats the dead man with a crowbar. The racism that is present both in the world around him and in his own head, is symbolic of the country’s changing atmosphere and government feeling at this time.

2. Connect either Iris, Betsy, or Tom to Chapter 7 in The Seventies. Think of how the screenwriter might suggest he is reacting to women's liberation, cultural feminism, or the crisis of masculinity. Use at least two fully described scenes from the film to make your point.

Betsey is what Travis considers her his ideal woman. She is blonde and very beautiful. She works for the Palatine presidential campaign. At first, she uses her date with Travis as a kind of “experiment” but she soon looses interest because he takes her to a porn film. During her date with Travis, Betsey quotes a song by Kris Kristofferson song. She uses them to describe Travis as, “a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction. A walking contradiction.” Betsey, at this point, thinks she understands Travis, but she does not. She is partially right, though. Travis is a walking contradiction. He is disgusted by sex/prostitutes, but he watches pornography and gives cab rides to prostitutes. He also wants to be healthy and work on his body, but he is always taking pills and drinking. Betsey does not know these details about him. The author’s use of Travis’s self-contradictions and Betsey’s song lyrics, the crisis of masculinity is approached. In post-war America, being a man “had been defined more by its negations than by itself.” (Schulman 179) Basically, masculinity was measured by the degree to which a man was not womanly. Betsy’s lack of understanding when it comes to Travis Is symbolic of this crisis of masculinity because she was not able to read him very well at all. The crisis of masculinity changes what the definition of a man.

3. Do you think this film deserves to be listed as one of the top 100 films ever produced in the United States? Why or why not? Use at least two scenes (not the same ones you have already discussed) from the film to make your argument. (American Film Institute ranking as the 52 greatest film ever made).

Yes, I do. I think that Taxi Driver does a great job depicting New York City in the 1970s. Because the film is from the perspective of Travis Bickle, the filth of New York is exaggerated. When the movie was filmed, in 1975, New York really was a dirty city. This was a year after the city filed for bankruptcy, and then the city trash collectors went on strike. Because of this, the streets filled with garbage. There was not any money in the budget for cleaning. The film accurately portrays New York City in this moment in history. The nation was in the middle of an important presidential campaign and the overall feeling of the nation was turning away from Vietnam. It's significant to Travis Bickle because, as an ex-marine, he sees the filth of the city as equal to the lack of help he received as a veteran. Subsequently, Travis hates how dirty New York is. He wishes for a great rain to wash it all away. It's not just the literal trash that affects Travis, it is also the people he considers trash. From the people in Harlem to the prostitutes. Even the hippies in Times square bother him. He mentions that someday a "real" rain with clean up the city. Taxi Driver does a very good job depicting New York and the National attitude as a whole in 1975.

4. What do you think the last scenes in the film (from the newspapers on the wall to Betsy's cab ride) signify? Since it appears Travis Bickle has become a "savior" to the New York press and potentially to Betsy, then what, as Bruce Schulman asks, "kind of nation has America become?"