Travis Bickle- Psychopath or Vigilante?

Rating: Null/10 (20 April 1999)

A Psychological Perspective of Taxi Driver (1976)
With Scorcese directing, with such titles as Mean Streets (1973) and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974); it was not entirely unusual for the character to be any less than perfect than expected by the conscientious likes of Hollywood. Scripted by Paul Schrader, Taxi Driver gave Robert De Niro a chance to show the world his consummate acting abilities as Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran turned psychotic vigilante. The film generated controversy on its release for the topic of extreme violence centering on the character Iris (Jodie Foster), who happened to be a twelve-year-old prostitute was needless to say a topic found disturbing to those used to typical Hollywood principles. Scorsese knew he had only a small but dedicated following, so he was prepared to take certain risks making his films only on a relatively small budget. The rebellious pairing of Schrader and Scorsese allowed a film and character to be extraordinarily less rounded than the Hollywood counterpart made the same year, Avildsen's essentially bigoted and racist, but paradoxically enjoyable  Rocky. Hollywood isn't interested in the narrative; it's more fascinated with the concept of hero. However, Travis is humiliated about his job and therefore himself and so therefore possesses less heroic qualities than the character played by Stallone. Travis has an imaginary and delusional occupation in where he works' for the government: in his depressed monologue he reads a letter to his parents: `I would tell you my address but the secretive nature of my work forbids it.' This particular sequence where we hear Travis telling a white lie is the very point in the film where he knew he had to make a `stand against the scum' on the streets. His parents would think he was someone of importance in society rather than the continuing image of a son that perpetuates in a sub culture which society despises. But we can actually see the true Travis Bickle driving around the hostile environment through the attributed hallucinatory misc-en-scene. We witness this filmic confliction as we see him and his cab in shallow focus (therefore in great detail) and the rest of society is simply blurred in a colourful but disorientating array. The audience sees red, green and amber lights emerge and quickly disappear though they were splashes of a passing of Travis's (hazy) memory. Every passenger is the same to him the only difference to his routine is the changing of traffic lights. It is suggested that he is pointing the blame of society's ills on what Travis calls the `Whores, Fairies, Junkies and Queens' of the New York street culture he has to dutifully serve. Travis later adds that, `Someday, I hope that they'll all be washed away. Perhaps he feels like Noah in Genesis here because sinners, miscreants and people of diseased reputations have become too much for him to tolerate and he feels that it would be God's justice that they should all be swept away by a great flood? Travis later again mentions at home in his diary monologue, `I am God's only man' so therefore he is His servant. An important key in understanding his anxieties is within the conversation with Wizard (John Boyle) when he wisely said: `The job becomes the man / you become the job.' Therefore Travis would feel inadvertently raped at regular intervals when he had to clean the blood and come off the back. The next scene we see a purchase of an arsenal of weaponry, shaking off the old Travis (Noah) and suddenly acquires a deadly vendetta against all those that sicken him. So that the world was free of less evil and it would be a safer place for people like Iris, but personally it is likely he had scarred his mind after the terrible conflict in Vietnam. In the reason why he wanted a job as a taxi driver, Travis reluctantly says to his future boss: `I can't sleep nights'; insomnia and regular nightmares are the very key to an unhealthy mind. So Travis decides not to sleep but his job inadvertently causes his hatred of society, and becomes sicker still as the days pass by until he vents his rage and crumbles within in the process.