Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver

The other soul he chooses to redeem belongs to a 12-year-old prostitute, a drug-using runaway who does not of necessity aspire to be saved. After Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, he contemplated a modern bon ton that would in the absence of much(prenominal) a myth descend into nihilism. He theorized that lacking the intro of new festivals and myths would leave society with void of meaninglessness. It is this phenomenon with which modern society grapples in an increasingly secularized and commercialized world. Lacking a mutually agreed upon myth in society, it is difficult for individuals to form pregnant bonds with humanity. It is exactly this dilemma that frustrates and eventually enrages Bickle. As he says in the scene where he prepares himself as a human arsenal, afterward his efforts to connect with humanity has failed, "Are you talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here." Travis has a desperate need to make some kind of linkup with the social interaction he sees about him, only if he fails miserably at ever chance: "He asks a girl out on a date, and takes her to a erotica movie. He sucks up to a political candidate, and ends by alarm him. He tries to make small talk with a clandestine Service agent. He wants to befriend a child prostitute, but scares her away" (Ebert 1). When Travis asks "Who you talkin' to" he is, in fact, talking to himself.

We see in Travis' dilemma a very modern

Dirks, T. Taxi Driver. (Review). Available: http://www.filmsite.org/taxi.html, 1976, pp. 1-27.

Stephens, B. Scorsese's ?Taxi Driver' Marks 20 Years. San Francisco Examiner. Available: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1996/02/16/weekend12402.dtl, Feb. 16, 1996, pp. 1-4.

Cannon, D. Taxi Driver. (Review). Available: http://www.film.u-net.com/movies/reviews/taxi_driver.html, 1997, pp. 1-2.

Travis is not offended by scum. After all, the deepest relationship he has in the film is with a 12-year-old drug using whore. This is no accident, for only a 12-year-old could be influenced by the mentality of such an uneducated, socially inappropriate and uncivilised human being.

This is why Betsy, a more sophisticated woman, rejects Travis for the psychotic person he is. What Travis is rattling offended by is the fact that he cannot get other people to live up to his illusions and ideals of what non-scum should truly be. He misapprehends everyone. He views Betsy as an angel of purity and he sees the 12-year-old drug using whore who likes it as a dupe only. This is why he sets up his particular morality as being superior to the morality of others. This blind noble-mindedness manifests itself in spite of appearance him as anger, hostility and eventually explosive violence because macrocosm will not shape itself to his expectations. It is a blind idealism that is specially American, all the more so more than both decades ago. At the end of the film he is perceived as heroic because the very society he detests considers him a justify vigilante, a self-appointed scum cleaner. However, showing the dogmatic and callow ideology within this film, and a moral righteousness that is particularly American, the letter from Iris' parents is supposed to put a patina of redemption over all of Travis' murderous mayhem. Whether the ending scene of the film is a dream or reality, it is meant to portray Travis receiving the respect from others he has so long sought. Yet,
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