Taxi Driver - Analysis of the Movie - part 1: Introduction and plot synopsis

CATEGORY: MOVIES; WARNING: THIS ANALYSIS CONTAINS SPOILERS!!

[Image at left from the Wikipedia 'Taxi Driver' page; "Taxi Driver original movie poster",[a] licensed under fair use via Wikipedia.]











Welcome to the analysis of Taxi Driver. Buttons at the bottom of each post enable navigation through the parts of the analysis. Regarding the appearance of possible anti-Semitism on this blog, please see the 'Disclaimers' section near the bottom of this page.

Taxi Driver is a 1976 American thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, following the Vietnam War.



Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a lonely and depressed young man, an honorably discharged U.S. Marine, living in New York City. He becomes a taxi driver in order to cope with chronic insomnia, driving passengers every night around the boroughs of New York. He also spends time in seedy 'porn' theaters and keeps a diary.

Above left: Travis (standing) applies for a job as a taxi driver. Above right: Travis writes in his diary.

Eventually Travis develops a romantic attachment to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign volunteer for Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), who is running for a Presidential nomination. After watching her through her office window, Travis enters to volunteer as a pretext to talk to her (above left), and after her workday is over, he takes her out for coffee and some food (above right). During this get-together, Betsy tells Travis that he reminds her of a Kris Kristofferson song; she recites a portion of the lyrics from this song (as she remembers them): "He's a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction, a walking contradiction." When Travis says, "I'm no pusher - I never have pushed", Betsy explains that it is "just the part about the contradictions" that reminds her of Travis.

Above left and right: Travis isn't a drug dealer, but he is a substance abuser.

Not long after the meal with Betsy, Travis goes to a record store and buys the Kristofferson album (The Silver Tongued Devil and I, released in 1971), which includes the song Betsy quoted from, The Pilgrim - Chapter 33. The portion of the song Betsy recited is, in full, "He's a prophet, he's a pusher-- / He's a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he's stoned-- / He's a walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction." (listen on YouTube here).


Later, teenage prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster) enters Travis's cab, attempting to escape her pimp, "Sport" (Harvey Keitel). Sport drags Iris from the cab and throws Travis a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, which continually reminds him of her.

Top left: Iris in Travis's taxi. Top right: Iris's pimp, Sport, pulls Iris from the cab. Above left: Sport throws Travis a twenty-dollar bill. Above right: The crumpled bill continually reminds Travis of Iris.


Travis takes Betsy to see a sex film, which offends her, so she goes home alone. His attempts at reconciliation by sending flowers are rebuffed so he berates her at the campaign office, before being kicked out by Tom (Albert Brooks).

Travis confides in fellow taxi driver Wizard (the balding man in the screencap at left) about his worrisome thoughts. Wizard advises Travis to go out and get laid or get drunk, then a little later in the conversation, he tells Travis to relax and things will be fine.


Disgusted by the street crime and prostitution that he witnesses throughout the city, Travis finds a focus for his frustration and begins a program of intense physical training (below left). He buys guns from dealer Easy Andy (below right).

Travis constructs a sleeve gun to attach to his arm (shown at left); he then practices drawing his weapons.


One night, Travis enters a convenience store moments before an attempted armed robbery and he shoots and kills the robber. The shop owner takes responsibility for the shooting, taking Travis's handgun.


Some time later, Travis hires Iris, but instead of having sex with her, he tries to dissuade her from continuing in prostitution (below left). They meet for breakfast the next day (below right), and during the meal, he attempts to persuade her to return home to her parents.

Later, after shaving his head into a mohawk, Travis attends a public rally at which he intends to assassinate Senator Palantine, but Secret Service agents notice him and he flees.

Above left: Travis at Senator Palantine's rally. Above right: Senator Palantine (center, with arms outstretched) speaking at the rally.


Travis returns to his apartment and then drives to the East Village, where he confronts Sport. Travis shoots and injures him, then walks into Iris's brothel and shoots the brothel's bouncer, injuring him. After Sport shoots Travis in the neck, seriously wounding him, Travis shoots Sport dead. A thug appears and shoots Travis in the arm, but Travis reveals his sleeve gun and kills the thug. The bouncer continues to harass Travis, so Travis stabs him, then shoots him in the head, killing him. As a horrified Iris cries, Travis attempts suicide but, out of ammunition, resigns himself to a sofa until police arrive. When they do, he places his index finger against his temple gesturing the act of shooting himself.

Above left: Travis shoots the bouncer in Iris's building. Above right: Travis feigns shooting himself with his left index finger.


Later, after recuperating from being in a coma, Travis receives a letter (below left) from Iris's parents who thank him for saving her and the media hail him as a hero. Travis then returns to his job and encounters Betsy as a fare. While riding in his cab, she mentions that she read about him in the paper. Travis drops her off for free (below right). He glances anxiously at something (or someone) in his rear view mirror as he drives away.[b]

a. Poster for Taxi Driver: The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.
b. Wikipedia, 'Taxi Driver'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_Driver.

All song lyrics in this post are believed to be used in accordance with the U.S. Copyright Fair Use Act (Title 17 U.S. Code).

Taxi Driver analysis - part 6: Wrapping up: References to Taxi Driver in other films

Top left: The inception team picks up Robert Fischer, in Christopher Nolan's Inception. Top right: Betty and Rita are headed to Diane Selwyn's apartment, in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. Above left: Cab driver Esmarelda VillaLobos has picked up boxer Butch Coolidge, in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Above right: Most of the action in Michael Mann's Collateral centers around taxi driver Max Durocher and his passenger, Vincent.

Taxi Driver analysis - part 5: Scorsese's hint to us about the ending of '2001'

CATEGORY: MOVIES

  

Top Left: At the moment when Travis (with his back to us), confronts the bouncer in the building out of which Iris operates (recall from part 2 of this analysis, that this building represents the monolith from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey), the bouncer raises his right hand toward Travis, and he is heard saying, "Hey--!" just before being shot in the hand by Travis, at which point he abruptly stops speaking. Within a metaphorical context, what the bouncer has said here can be considered to be a word fragment that sounds like the first part of the word "hail", as in, "Hail Hitler!" (spoken in German as "Heil Hitler!", by those loyal to Nazism). Since Travis represents the historical hippies (within a certain context, as discussed in part 2), director Martin Scorsese, by here drawing a correspondence between Travis and Nazism, is metaphorically depicting the hippies themselves as being like Nazis. Also, it is said that Roman soldiers mocked Jesus at his crucifixion by saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" Scorsese is making a reference to this statement also (in addition to "Hail Hitler"), but the implication isn't that Travis represents Jesus - instead, a 'correspondence' between Nazis and certain evil Jews (and by implication, between hippies and these Jews) is here being drawn. Top right: Spectators giving the Nazi salute during German occupation of Czechoslovakia, 1938.[a] Generally speaking, a person raising his or her arm in order to flag down a taxi, looks not unlike someone giving a Nazi salute. Thus, the fact that the people of New York City 'hail' Travis as he drives around in his cab, serves as further indication that the entities he represents are the evil ones just mentioned (hippies/evil Jews). It also symbolizes the idea that the American public itself, as represented by the populace of New York City, where the film is set, has effectively come to be loyal to all that Travis represents. Above left and right: Astronaut David Bowman raises his right hand toward the monolith at the end of A Space Odyssey. (The monolith is the large black rectangular object at the foot of Bowman's bed, as shown in the above right screencap.) The hint Scorsese has given us about A Space Odyssey, via the Taxi Driver scene depicted in the top left screencap, is that the gesture by Bowman represents, in part, a Nazi salute to the monolith. Since the monolith was planted by an alien race, and since this alien race represents 'evil femininity' (i.e., radical feminism, as indicated in the 2001 analysis), Bowman is here giving a Nazi salute to radical feminism (and to 'evil Jewishness', as explained in the 2001 analysis).


a. Image from the Wikipedia 'Nazi salute' page; Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H13160, Beim Einmarsch deutscher Truppen in Eger by Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H13160, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons.


    

Taxi Driver analysis - part 4: The hidden plot; the film's ending portion is a dream

CATEGORY: MOVIES

  

In terms of Jungian psychology (i.e., analytic psychology: the psychological theory of Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung), Betsy (above left) and Iris (above right), taken together, represent Travis's anima: his feminine inner personality. Betsy represents that part of his anima that serves as the mediator between his unconscious and conscious mind, and Iris represents that part of his anima that's been 'cross-contaminated' with negative aspects of his psychological shadow. The shadow is an unconscious complex defined as the repressed, suppressed or disowned qualities of the conscious self.[a]


Taxi Driver's hidden plot

The basic hidden plot in the movie is that Betsy is a 'mole' in Senator Palantine's campaign, working for some individual or group that doesn't want him to become the President. Her task is to find someone who will assassinate the Senator, such that anyone who subsequently investigates the assassination won't be able to trace it to her or the people she's working for. Betsy sometimes walks through the 'sleazy' portion of the city (that is near the campaign office) alone, hoping an 'unstable' man (a man with a highly 'unresolved' anima, such as Travis) will approach her and ask her out. When she encounters Travis, she senses that she may have found her man. Then, she subtly 'burrows' her way into Travis's unconscious, and using her consequent power as the mediator between his unconscious and conscious mind, she informs him that he is a "walking contradiction". She effectively talks him into buying the Kristofferson album containing this lyric (The Silver Tongued Devil and I). Travis listens to the album, and effectively becomes the "I" of its title (this identification happens at an unconscious level). Having become motivated to 'work with the Devil', and after being disappointed by Palantine's reaction to his suggestion to 'clean up' New York City, he attempts to 'act out' the extreme right-wing end of his contradictory nature by going to the Senator's rally to try and assassinate him. When this fails, he later goes to Iris's building and shoots three men there (including Sport), thus helping to clean up New York.


Ultimately, Scorsese's movie is, in part, an 'allegory' for Arthur Bremer's assassination attempt on Democrat presidential hopeful George Wallace in Laurel, Maryland in 1972. The manipulation of Travis (representing Bremer) by Betsy in Taxi Driver, indicates that Scorsese believes Bremer himself was psychologically manipulated by a woman he met while she was working for the Wallace campaign, and that this manipulation started Bremer on the road to his attempt on Wallace's life. This woman was working as a 'mole' in Wallace's camp for some individual or group that didn't want Wallace to be elected. By the time Wallace was campaigning, his hard-line stance against racial integration had greatly softened; the party that wanted him dead feared that this and other factors indicated that if Wallace became president, he would restore the U.S. to a true democracy.

Betsy (above left), sitting in the campaign office, sees Travis (above right) staring at her from his cab on the street outside. Note the color design of the cup he is drinking from (click image to enlarge).

As can be seen at left, Betsy has cups of the same design as Travis's, sitting in her work area. These are drinks that Betsy bought while walking through the sleazy part of the city, trying to ensnare a man - she here sees and recognizes Travis's cup, and thus knows that he visits the seedy part of town, so she realizes he might be the unstable man she's looking for.

Above left: Later, when Travis enters the campaign office and starts conversing with Betsy, she can tell from the way he talks when he 'comes on' to her, that he views her as somewhat 'pure' and thus, that he tends to see things in black and white. She knows this is characteristic of some men who are uncomfortable around women due to having unresolved feelings about them as a group (essentially, a manifestation of the unresolved anima mentioned above). Ultimately, she senses that he may have the nascent mindset of the killer she is looking for. This is why she agrees to go out with him - she believes she may eventually be able to manipulate him into assassinating Palantine. In fact, it is during this conversation that Betsy subtly begins working her way into Travis's psyche, in part by responding to him in a manner that she senses he wants her to. Above right: During the conversation, Betsy pretends to demure. She doesn't want to appear 'easy to get'.

Later in the movie, Betsy rejects Travis after he takes her to see a 'porn' film. This was by design - Betsy knew where things were headed when Travis brought her to the front of the seedy theater, even before they entered it. Her planned complete and final rejection of him was designed to leave him feeling emasculated, thus setting him up to commit a 'manly' act - the killing of someone in a position of power.

Top left: While conversing with Travis while being driven in his cab, Senator Palantine (in center in back seat) seems to empathize with Travis's stated desire to clean up New York City. Top right: However, after exiting the taxi and shaking hands with Travis, the Senator makes eye contact with a coworker as if to say, "that cab driver was a nut." Above left: Travis, who noticed this interaction, is disappointed that the Senator did not seriously consider his advice. Above right: A long-barreled gun Travis later purchases, here serves as a phallic symbol. According to plan, Travis thinks he has found a way to alleviate his feeling of emasculation.


The Senator was 'set up' by being directed to enter Travis's cab instead of taking his limousine (as per normal procedure). The man sitting to the Senator's left in the top left screencap above, is a corrupt Secret Service agent. During the ride, he says that the party should have waited for the limousine instead of taking a cab - the agent says this in anticipation of the chance that the other passenger in the cab (Palantine's coworker) would later (after the planned assassination) be questioned about why a cab was taken that night; the corrupt man would, by making this statement, avoid any suspicion being directed at himself. This man knew what Travis looked like (and thus knew which cab to put the Senator in) via someone (Betsy, or another mole) having described Travis's appearance to him, or even more likely, from viewing a photograph of Travis. It's probably the case that either someone took a photo of Travis unbeknownst to him, or else his taxi driver license, containing a photo of him, was obtained by the evil parties who want the senator dead, from the taxi company Travis works for. All of this is part of the Bremer/Wallace 'allegory' - which is not to be taken so literally as to indicate that, for example, the real-life mole's name was Betsy, or some such thing. Generally speaking, what we are supposed to realize is that some violent acts that are blamed (by police, the media, etc.) on 'lone-gunmen nuts', are ultimately committed by governmental or other powerful entities, without these acts being traceable to these entities. The individual gunmen themselves do not know that they are being manipulated, and instead believe that they are acting alone. It is crucial to understand what we have done here: We have connected supposed 'lone gunmam'/'lone nut' assassination (and other violent act) scenarios to so-called 'conspiracy theories' claiming that powerful parties are behind some of these acts. And, we have described in relative detail how it is that a certain kind of man, i.e., one with a highly unresolved anima (Travis), can be manipulated by evil parties.

Top left: At the first Palantine rally that Travis goes to, the tall man who questions him is a (non-corrupt) Secret Service agent, here taking down Travis's name and address under the pretext that he will have information sent to Travis about how to join the Service. (Travis gives him false information.) Top right: After the man is done talking to Travis, who has started to walk away, he motions to his fellow agent (who, unbeknownst to him, is corrupt; this is the same agent who was riding in Travis's taxi), to go after Travis and snap some pictures of him. Above left: The (corrupt) man, holding his camera, gets ready to pursue Travis. Above right: Initially, Travis, as he walks away, is facing away from the man with the camera.

Above left: While still walking away, Travis turns around a couple of times, exposing his face. His reason for doing so is that he wants his photo to be taken - he figures he will be identified as a hero after he assassinates the Senator, and he wants the public, via stories about him in the media, to know what he looked like. Travis knows the man has a camera because he saw him with it while Palantine was giving his speech. The man, since he has a camera, probably appears to the other people at the rally to be a member of the press. However, Travis recognizes him from the earlier cab ride. Above right: The agent with the camera, although he is positioned to snap a photo of Travis, intentionally delays long enough so that Travis gets lost in the crowd. The man exclaims, "Damn it!" while subsequently lowering his camera, so as to appear to his fellow agent (in case he's within hearing range), to not have been able to get any photos.

Above left: Later, at the second Palantine rally Travis attends, we see him about to draw his gun in preparation for shooting the Senator. Above right: The (non-corrupt) agent spots Travis and motions for the (corrupt) agent to go after him.

Above: The film's 'give-away' that the man sent to chase Travis is not acting in earnest, and is thus corrupt, is his body position upon colliding with the man in the orange shirt, while appearing to vigorously pursue Travis: A person who coincidentally collided with another individual while running quickly in pursuit of someone, would collide with their body in a mainly upright position, since this is the body's basic position while running. Instead, however, the agent bends forward at the waist and bends his knees just long enough prior to the collision, to avoid going down too hard on the pavement, indicating that he is really feigning an accidental collision. The point is that the agent didn't really want to 'catch' Travis, and he made things appear such that the collision prevented him from doing so.



The film's ending portion is a dream




Above left: After Travis has killed the men in Iris's rooming house, he attempts to commit suicide, but he's out of bullets. Above right: The fact that Travis knows he's about to die, is indicated by his feigned shooting of himself in front of the police while sitting on the couch.








While Travis is sitting on the couch bleeding from his neck, he fades out of consciousness and begins to experience a dream. Everything we see in the movie after this point in time, consists of the contents of this dream. The view of the dying Travis from above, suggests that he is here in a metaphorical Hell.





Above left and right: Travis's being depicted as a hero by the media (above left), giving a cab ride to Betsy (above right), etc., constitute the dream sequence he experiences just before he dies, from excessive bleeding due to the injuries he sustained during the shoot-out in Iris's building.


a. Wikipedia, 'Analytical psychology'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_psychology.