Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "Opening Segments: Searchers & Taxi Driver"

The lush music of opening scene, with its embroidered lilting strings,
is feminine and domestic, of emotions tamed and smoothed. The house
we see has the feeling of any house in America, solid and settled.
But, of course, it's a house in a Western, situated along the
frontiers.
Ethan at first is hard to tell as stranger, friend, or foe, as
civilized or savage. And, he maintains this ambiguity throughout. As
he moves toward the house the family is gathered together as the
symbol of familial ideal. There's the gentle mother, the stolid
father, and their healthy offsprings. Though they stand together to
welcome Ethan, as a unit they almost seem impenetrable, a wall, a
barrier that holds Ethan back from what we call normal society.
Ethan is a lone figure standing in stark contrast to the family, of
man and woman and children and dog.
His brother has a complexion that's little darker and somewhat curly
hair. Perhaps, such features underly certain racial fears and
suspicions underlying the American experience, with its ideal of
racial purity in conflict with the multi-racial reality with
implications of miscegenation.
The dog barks at him (and later against Scar). On the porch is Debbie
holding a doll which looks innocent enough, but it also hints at
theme of repressed sexuality which becomes crucial later when Ethan
ponders that Debbie will give birth to half-breed babies.

The children welcome Ethan with more warmth and openness than their
parents. There's a sense of generational division, not just in terms
of historical but personal knowledge. To the kids, he's just uncle
Ethan, a visiting relative. But, to Aaron and his wife, there are
still some unsettled emotional matters. Is Ethan jealous? Does he
feel betrayed by his brother who won the girtl? Sexual jealousy is
later revived with Scar taking Debbie and the guitar player's claim
on Laurie which infuriates Marty. Also, the adults probably heard
about rumors about Ethan's unpleasant post-war adventures.

While Ethan and Aaron are cordial to one another, there's a sense of
smoldering, even savage, anger on the part of Ethan and a certain
defensiveness on the part of Aaron, like he's got a dangerous, wounded
animal on his premises.
The house that Ethan enters is spacious and solid in stark contrast to
the Indian typee of Scar's we see later. The typee, with its slit down
the middle has the semblance of a vagina. The frontal thrust of
Ethan's horse into the typee upon Scar's death expose the raw sexual
rage at the core of their conflict. In their fight over the woman,
it's as though Ethan and Scar want to other to be his bitch.
But, the house in the opening scene, while overflowing with feminine
warmth, isn't vaginal but womb like. It's a woman's domain as opposed
to the vast wilderness surrounding the home. It's a place of peace and
sanctity, where future civilization is bred and nurtured.
Ford emphasizes the ceiling, solid and heavy, seemingly impenetrable,
a symbol of strength but perhaps also of apprehension, as though a
roof is nice, but civilization always has something to hide, to cover
up, to hoarde. The importance of the roof and ceiling in a western was
perhaps expressed best in Red River where Clift comments how odd it is
to stand under one after herding cattle for months.
But, if the room resembles a womb, it's also a tomb for Ethan the
adventurer. Fixed and settled he's a nobody. It's in his nature to
prove himself tougher, superior, more resourceful than other men.
Domesticity ill-serves him, especially since the only woman he ever
loved went to another, perhaps most painfully to his own brother.
Moment by moment, it looks like Ethan's in a retirement home.
The children denude Ethan of items defining his manhood. His sword,
for instance, is reduced to a toy and goes to the son. Debbie asks if
there's something for her, and Ethan gives her a medal which later
ends up around Scar's neck, delineating the nature of woman in this
world of male competitiveness and brutality. Though an innocent gift,
the military medal also symbolizes pride of possession by Ethan and
that of conquest by Scar. Besides, Debbie asked for a locket, a
personal jewelry for women, but was given an official(public) piece
designated for men, further confusing Debbie's future role in relation
to men. Debbie says the locket Uncle Ethan gave to Lucy is rarely worn
because it makes Lucy's neck green. Apparently, Lucy wears that locket
on that occasion to be polite, and it says something about lies at the
center of human relationships. She wants to show appreciation so wears
something that turns her skin green. It also foreshadows that she dies
and her corpse rots; she was given a locket to enhance her womanly
charm but her womanliness led to rape and murder. It also suggests
that Ethan's presence or influence on others makes them uneasy, that
they have to show an effort.

Also, Ethan at first mistook Debbie for Lucy. Through the hectic war
years time stood still for Ethan, in striking contrast to how every
minute becomes unbearable as abducted Debbie is growing into
womanhood. In a way, Ethan fought for the confederacy to keep things
as they are, to keep a nation from growing. Ethan's fear of Debbie's
burgeoning womanhood is a microcosm of his fears for rest of America.
Also, Ethan's greeting Debbie as Lucy foreshadows how at the very end
he embraces grown Debbie as little Debbie, a self-delusion perhaps but
the only one that will give him peace of mind.
The boy asks when the war ended and why Ethan didn't return if it had
ended yrs ago. There's no answer and there's a growing tension within
this seemingly peaceful household. Obviously the war hasn't ended for
Ethan. For Ethan war isn't simply a matter of government and official
policy. It's rooted in his soul. Even if his side had won, he'd still
be in a state of war, in his suspicion of blacks, in his suspicion of
federal power, perhaps other states, other men, stifling institutions,
and Indians. To an extent, he searches for conflict, for a reason to
be away from home, to be triggerhappy.

When the family sits down to sup with Ethan their peace is interrupted
by the rowdy arrival of Marty on horseback. His arrival accentuate his
position as an outsider, both in terms of race and family ties. To
Ethan, he's an intruder into a nice white family setting. Ethan's mind
accepts him as a member, but his instincts see a red savage. Marty too
is conscious of his otherness and seems uneasy around Ethan.
Obviously, their relationship hasn't been warm in the past. Marty is,
in some ways, what Debbie later becomes in Indian community, an
accepted outsider, though Marty's case is far more complex for he is
not only of mixed culture but of mixed blood, presumably thru
consensual union, thereby representing both the tension and the hope
for peace among the races.

Interruption, or disruption, is a repeated motif throughout the movie,
especially centered around eating. First, it's Marty barging in(but
Ethan's arrival too is something of an interruption)for supper, and
later it's Indians attacking just when dinner table is being set,
setting a parallel between Marty and Indians. Eating is a time when
man is most relaxed. Food, especially in the frontier, has to be
fought for in terms of working the land, hunting, and raising cattle,
and not necessarily between Indians and whites as white settlers were
often at odds with one another. Eating is the end result of much
struggle, whether against fellow men, by killing animal, or toiling
against the land. It's one time when you want to be at ease, when you
want to say grace and reap the bounty of all the hard work and
sacrifice with contentment and satisfaction. People don't like to be
interrupted during eating no less than during sex.
Later we see Ethan shooting bisons which echoes the Indian's
interruption of white man's eating ritual. Ethan will ruin the Indian
dinner in turn by reducing their food supply; after all, Indians have
raided white man's cattle as well.
Some degree of camarderie between Ethan and Marty become evident when
they thunder into(thus rudely interrutping) the dancing and feasting
during Laurie's wedding, disrupting other people's peace and joy.
And, of course, there's Marty's being unable to finish his meal served
by Laurie when Ethan rushes off. Or, Marty being pestered by a Mexican
dancer at a restaurant just when he's about to eat. Between food and
woman he chooses the former.
Also, family breakfast in the opening segment is interrupted by
arrival of preacher and his deputies. Ethan is almost never seen
eating. He seems to subsist on the taste of his bile. He's dedication
to his quest is as total as a priest's celibacy.

It's not just eating that's interrupted in Searchers. Indeed, it's
hard to think of another movie with more disruptive incidents. Almost
nothing in Searchers begins and ends in peace, in harmony. From the
very beginning, the routine of family is interrupted by arrival of
Ethan. Then, that setting is interrupted by Preacher/Sheriff
recruiting deputies. Lucy and Brad are interrupted while kissing.
Then the family is interrupted by attacking Indians. The funeral is
rudely interrupted by a hastily departing Ethan. Brad, Lucy's enraged
beau, interrupts an Indian encampment by rushing in with guns
blazing. Marty is interrupted while taking a bath by Laurie. Ethan and
Marty are interrupted during sleep by a trader and his band of
killers. Ethan and Marty barge into Laurie's wedding, then followed by
soldiers. Then the soldiers attack the Indian encampment. Ford, by
focusing largely on Indian folk trying to save their children from
harm's way emphasizes less the military aspect as the psychological
impact of this see-sawing violence, how it disrupts the norms of both
whites and Indians. In the melee, the reverend's arse is punctured,
accentuating the inconvenience as well as the brutality of violence.
Violence is a pain in the ass, both figuratively and literally. It
keeps dragging us up from our asses and dragging them about. You can't
sit still, settle down, which is why Ole Mose's wish for a rocking
chair, while a childish fantasy, reverberates thru the entire movie.
Everyone would like to sit down and let the day go by peaceable,
Indians and whites, but is caught in a cycle of mayhem and bursts of
wild passions.
No two characters are as different than Old Mose and Ethan, but in the
end, they face similar fates, that of the Biblical Moses. In the
exodus, Moses can't make the final journey and must come to a rest, as
Mose does in his rocking chair and Ethan with history leaving him
behind in the dust.

The character of the reverend/sheriff cuts a ridiculous figure, but
culturally he represents the center of the film's universe. He barges
in on the family breakfast but immediately takes charge with his
authority and commanding presence. He exudes qualities of stability,
rootedness, and the sanctity of the law, no matter how compromised by
circumstances. He's the patriarchal figure of the movie, not Ethan
who's too obsessed with his personal obsessions to be an institutional
figure. Being at the center means having gravitational force, knowing
when to regroup and pull back, both physically and morally. After the
first skirmish with the Indians, Ethan shoots at retreating wounded
Indians whereas the reverend says that Indians should be allowed to
carry off their wounded. Reverend can hold the center, knows about
limits, about responsibility, of orchestrating a community, pulling in
it as pushing it out. While he quietly eats the donut and drinks
coffee, everyone--man, woman, and child--are out busy putting on
saddles, kissing, talking, or playing. He must be the legitimizaing
glue holding these disparate elements together; the haphazard and
frivolous antics of others must have guidance, whether thru direct
order or moral guidance. When Lucy and Brad are teased for kissing,
the reverend looks on amusedly and then kicks the door shut. But,
reverend as a symbol of civilization also represents the burial or
repression of certain truths, a need for compromise so as to get
along together.
The only other person in the house in that scene is Martha in another
room, unaware of the reverend and smoothing out, even patting, Ethan's
jacket. He was the real love of her life but her feelings must remain
buried. We should remember that Ethan later wraps Lucy in his jacket,
buries her, and says nothing of it to Brad. Even when he confesses
what he witnessed, he withholds much of the details. Unlike Scar who
openly parades the scalps of his enemies, civilized folk maintain a
veneer or decorum of decency which, in its emphasis on unsullied
purity, paradoxically fuels a savage rage of its own.

The figure of the reverend is funny but crucial because he's half
sheriff/half preacher and in the frontiers there has yet to clear
demarcations between various functions. It's like in Israel where
whether baker, clerk, lawyer, or rabbi, you're expected to
periodically serve in the military. Also, in a way, seeing him with a
donut and coffee is the variation of the much beloved image in modern
times of a cop taking his break in a donut shop.

The significance of items to personal memory is further developed
thru the medal, the scalp of Marty's mother, Brad spotting Lucy's
dress, etc.
In the wilderness without the usual the kind of recordkeeping that we
take for granted, the world is like a scattered tomb of missing
pieces. Everybody has to play detective to some degree, an
archaeologist of sorts. Also, alot of items have the feeling of
trophy, something to be won or wrestled from another. So when Ethan
finally scalps Scar he's taking back another piece.

Searchers is revisionist not only in presenting a more ambiguous
picture of white/Indian conflict but in the personality of Ethan. It's
probably Wayne's darkest role, perhaps foreshadowed by his role in Red
River. Wayne always embodied the individualist, a man who stands on
his own two feet, and doesn't cower to outside authority. In many
respects, he represents the vitality of the American spirit, the
cowboy. But, there are implications of brute anarchism in all of
Wayne's characters. A man so sure of himself, so confident and
unwilling to bend to others' orders even when others are right, a deep
suspicion not only of authority but everyone, a contempt for weakness.
And, we see these traits early on. While he's warm and friendly to
Aaron's children, whenever Aaron asks even a slightly prying question,
Ethan's eyes narrow and there's a scent of venom in his breath. He's
resourceful, resilient, and proud but also suspicious verging on the
paranoid, arrogant, and ruthless.
When Ethan hands over gold coins to Aaron it's suggested Ethan's been
doing what Jesse James later became famous for: raiding the victorious
Northerners. Aaron stuffs the gold under his seat after the kids have
gone to bed, and what initially seemed like the bastion of feminine
domesticity takes on a certain gloom, a place of sin, whose outward
peace and sanctity conceals(perhaps even depends on) a certain
illegality and aggression. It's the variation on the argument that all
Americans are neo-imperialists because their wealth and well-being are
the product of exploiting the third world masses, a notion still
espoused by English Departments dabbling in French theory across
America.

The opening and ending of Searchers share a certain rough symmetry. If
in the opening Ethan and Marty arrive separately, they arrive together
to crash Laurie's wedding.
Both opening and ending have a group of men going out to confront
Indians. If the first excursion ended with Debbie's kidnapping, the
final one ends with Debbie's return home(or her abduction from the
Indians). If Ethan came back to a burning house which becomes his
spiritual home of smoldering rage, at the end everyone returns to a
tranquil home. Ethan, who alone entered the burnt house and stood
above the slaughtered, stands alone outside at the end, again a lone
figure as at the beginning of the movie.

--------------------

The smoky imagery(steam from the sewers? car emissions? fog?) in the
opening scene suggests drug induced haze, like the opium fantasies in
Once Upon a Time In America. We might also recall the fog in One Flew
over the Cuckoo's Nest, where a similarly imbalanced and disaffected
character is adrift in the modern world. Both Kesey and Scorsese were
obviously influenced by psychedelia of the 50s and 60s. We should note
that the 50s psychedelia, more muted and underground, fused with
certain elements of pulp and noir in the writings of Burroughs, and
Taxi Driver, though an archetypal 70s film, borrowed elements from
noir of the 40s and 50s.

Bernard Hermann's score isn't really appropriate inasmuch the entire
movie is Bickle's subjective nightmare/pipe dream. The music is too
hip and smooth even with its dissonant edges, whereas Bickle is
completely square almost to the point of being a geometic abstraction.
But, the music can be appreciated as a final, over-reaching act by a
composer who knew it to be his last work, his final testament. In this
unwitting way, its passion and ambitious thrust parallel Bickle's
mission which too has a ring of finality to it, an insane
devil-may-care bravura attitude pushing him over-the-top. So, both the
music and Bickle's mad mission, as final statements, as summations of
a career, are complementary. And, by not faithfully expressing
Bickle's mental state, the music is perhaps all the more faithful
since Bickle's mind is a contradiction, a cipher to himself and
others.
The music, alternately slippery in its slick, brassy contours and
heavy in its gothic ominousness sets a schizophrenic mood swaying
between moods of seduction and apprenhension. Lurking through much of
the movie is a bassline melody, music of shadows, as though a giant
insect was crawling inside Bickle.

We see a taxi appear in slo-motion amidst the smoke, like a shark,
like a space craft in 2001. It's not just another car, but a monster
out of hell. The 'smoke' is ambiguous. Most obviously, a symbol of the
fires of hell, but it also looks dreamy, cloudy, and otherworldly.

In the extreme close up of Bickle's eyes we can see a layer of film as
though his eyes are open wounds, raw and inflamed. The urban colors
reflect on his face, perhaps inspired by the opening scene of Godard's
Contempt. These alternating colors from traffic lights and neon signs
create a lurid effect but also give the effect of stained glass
windows.

The opening scene of Taxi Driver predates the opening scene of
Apocalypse Now(as altered for the final screenplay), which also begins
with smoke and a close up of a disturbed individual. It's also
noteworthy that both Milius and Schrader share quasi-fascist
sensibilities, a paradoxical impulse toward both violence and order
founded upon mystical notions of the self. Think of medicine man Kurtz
and one of Schrader's hero's Yukio Mishima who wanted to revive
ancient values in modern Japan. Also, it's interesting that Schrader's
conception of Bickle is almost identical to Milius's description of
Dirty Harry: God's Lonely Man.

From CU of Bickle's eyes we then to a subjective shot, the car window,
with the streaking raindrops turning the cityscape into an neonlit
impressionistic wonderland, a hallucinatory kaleidoscope of melting
colors. In this hazy dream state, this city looks tolerable, even
luridly opulent. Where clarity is painful, better to let your mind
just flow. The smooth and curvy sax music seduces us into a momentary
lull but then the ominous drumbeats harden the images into unforgiving
mawkishness, as though this world is a wagon without a wheel, lurching
toward the edge.

We then find ourselves looking thru a door into an office at a taxi
cab company and follow Bickle into the room. The 'smoke' lingers upon
Bickle's entry, suggesting perhaps that the entire movie is a
flashback.

Bickle enters the office of a taxi company. Bickle isn't here simply
to get a job. He's trying to find a place in society, a sense of
purpose. He has one thing in common with Ricci in Bicycle Thieves in
subconsciously seeking some cosmic answer. Ricci in Bicycle Thieves
searches the impossible, a stolen bicycle in a huge city of strangers,
as though cosmic sense of justice would restore the bike(it never
occurs to him to do the obvious which is to steal another man's
bike--it seems so easy, what without no one caring--until the very
end; in that sense, Ricci was searching not just for a bike but for
something grander, that righteousness is rewarded(ironically, just
when Ricci loses this confidence and steals a bike, the very thing he
sought--sense of justice, law, fraternity among lawabiding men--come
showering down against him). Bickle too searching for something though
it's vague. In one sense, his dilemma is an existential quandry. Where
do we fit in society, in the world, in the cosmos? What is the holy
grail of life, indeed, where do we start? Bickle's problem is the lack
of tangible goal or target, something that can't be said for Ricci's
missing bike and Ethan's abducted niece. We might say Betsy and Iris
are used by Bickle to dramatize a cleancut narrative giving his
confused life a semblance of meaning.

Bicke has one thing in common with Ethan. He's also a war veteran,
also on the losing side. But, if the Civil War was morally clearly
delineated from the perspective of both North and South, the Vietnam
War was, for many Americans, an enigma. It must have seemed all the
more so to Bickle, an oddball to begin with. Thrown into an military
unit made up of demoralized, distrustful men of different ethnic and
racial backgrounds in a land of suspicious, even hostile, natives,
Bickle became a double nutcase, by nature and by socio-political
nurture. As the story progresses, the contrast between Ethan and
Bickle become more apparent. Ethan may be a dark, twisted character
but he's search is fueled by sexual RAGE whereas at the root of
Bickle's violence is sexual frustration; one is virile, the other is
pathetic. Also, Ethan, despite his duality as civilized and savage
man, lives in a world where boundary between the two is understood;
besides, Ethan is quite functional and well-suited for either world.
Bickle, however, fits into neither world. He has nothing of Ethan's
manliness and swagger. Bickle's personality is awkward and rigid.
Besides, it's one thing to have civilization on one side and savagery
on the other. What do you do when savagery is in the very heart of
civilization, where the borderlines have become fuzzy? Taxi Driver, in
this regard, reflects the psychological Vietnamization of America, as
well as the Watergate-bred cynicism that dissolved the boundary
between law and criminality. It also reflect's the silent majority's
disgust with the filth that poured out of the pandora's box of sixties
hedonism.

At the taxi office, Bickle is looked upon with suspicion by the
manager or clerk. It's NY after all, with its share of loonies per
square mile. It's a world of strangers, of alienation and distrust,
which was one of the reasons that sent Bickle to the Taxi company.
But, upon learning of Bickle's duty as a Marine, the manager opens up.
Bickle isn't the only one who's eager to find fellow citizens,
comrades in the world of strangers. Whatever the Vietnam War meant,
military service signifies unity, purpose, values, ideals, and
organization. Veterans share a sense of having gone thru an
extraordinary bonding experience like the German veterans of WWI for
whom that experience became a unifying brotherhood and rallying cry,
the German version of Remember the Alamo(or Versailles). There's a
faint sense of this camaraderie between Bickle and the manager but NY
is a not a place for simple ideals or crusades, one of the reason why
Bickle can't find any meaning in the political campaigns which operate
to a degree on a nodding-n-winking cynicism. Also, Vietnam war was
sadly a disuniting force in America, not least within the military
itself.

Bickle says he wants something to do, to occupy his time. His priority
isn't money but having a purposeful mission in life, having a final
destination instead of going around in circles. He says he'll do
anything, go anytime, anywhere. It sounds both highly motivated and
the product of sheer boredom. Being a cabbie is both the most ideal
and the worst occupation for Bickle. Most ideal because he's an
insomniac with no close ties or obligations, a man stuck in a lonely
room who needs movement and distractions. But, it also excersabates
Bickle's sense of aimlessness and more exposed to and irritated by
every wart of the urban jungle.

Bickle, wearing an army jacket and driving a taxi cab, belongs to
both something and nothing. Anyone can notice the similarity between a
cab and a police car. Like squad cars, taxis come in uniform colors
and shapes, suggesting organization, discipline, and purpose. And,
this is something Bickle needs; he needs to be fed purpose and
meaning. He's not intellectual or learned enough to develop his own
moral or ideological framework; he's too square to blend into the
sleazo city and too weird to fit into the normal, 'bourgeois' world.
So, driving the taxi initially adds some sense to Bickle's life, but
neverending destinations for countless dispirited or degenerate
passengers intensify his morbidity. He has no final destination, no
clear road map. Metaphorically, he's on an existential jungle journey.

In the office, the manager faces Bickle across the desk. Behind
Bickle is another man, perhaps a clerk. It's as though Bickle's
opposition come in pairs, that he's outnumbered and always alone
whereas others have the modicum of partnership and community. For
example, we later see Sport with other pimps. Palantine has his
supporters and his agents. Betsy has Brooks. His cabbie friends are
always hanging together and gabbing. Bickle is always the one alone.

Asked a few questions about his past and qualifications, Bickle says
his
driving record is 'clean like my conscience'. A joke to be sure but
Bickle is rebuked in no uncertain terms. But, the city has too many
jokers, too many characters. The manager just wants someone who can
fit into the role and do his job, which is perhaps what Bickle wants
except he also needs meaning as well as work. Later, upon meeting
Betsy for the first time he says he wants to volunteer for Palantine,
but he doesn't want to be a mere cog in a the wheel. But, Bickle's
search for order and peace always brings him closer to chaos, often
unwittingly. Even in the porn theater where he goes to relax, after
buying his popcorn, candy, and drink and sits down he's inundated with
chaos, of images of intertwined limbs and animal groans. .

Boyle is gabbing with another taxi driver thru a window behind the
manager. We can't hear what he's saying but that's the point. His
endless babble is inconsequential. That's one sure way to make life
tolerable. What Boyle says to other cabbies is a matter of habit, like
breathing air. Boyle has gotten used to the foul air of the city
whereas Bickle can always detect the smell. Anyway, Boyle's easy and
garrulous manner with some guy in the background is in pointed
contrast to the tension between Bickle and the manager.

The office has the spartan feel of an army recruitment office and
seedy ambience of a pimp den, which illustrates the ambiguity of
Bickle's position in the city, as well as the position of most people,
as hardworking stiff and cynical whore. On one level, Bickle is
recruited into an order of cabbies with a purpose in life, but on
another level, he's become just another whore to the big pimp called
NYC. As a taxi driver, Bickle becomes half-guardian and half-whore,
or as Kurtz would say, just another grocery clerk sent to pick up the
bill.
The taxi office also takes on the semblance of a clinic for Bickle's
reason for applying--ostensibly anway--is to deal with his
sleeplessness.

When asked whether he'll work Jewish holidays Bickle says there's no
problem. He's available anytime. One of his problems is the lack of
identity, whether ethnic, religious, or otherwise. His obsessive and
total dedication to his duty as a cabbie(he'll take anyone without
prejudice to anywhere)suggests almost a religious devotion. We may
speculate that Bickle is searching for meaning, for an identity, even
if it means being a cabbie, but of course driving a cab doesn't offer
much in the way of spiritual or moral sustenance. Unlike some jobs
that are well secluded in its milieu--whether high class or low
class--thereby, providing some sense of predictability to one's daily
routine, Bickle's job itself induces a kind of schizophrenia,
servicing respectable people to the lowliest filth of the street.
Questioned about his qualifications, Bickle answeres '26' for his age
and 'clean... like my conscience' for his physical. Yet,
paradoxically, it's Bickle's cleanliness that makes him sick, for he
hasn't been immunized against the diseases of the city. He's s
spiritual germ freak, the filth really messes him up(he's a walking
Nazi exhibition on Degenerate Art). Yet, more unsettling is Bickle,
for all his righteous rage, can't always distinguish between clean and
unclean as we learn later when he takes Betsy to a porno. Also,
Bickle's joke about his conscience being clean like his body forebodes
what happens in the movie. For Bickle, the mind and body must come
together, be integrated into his simpleminded but weird idea of
sanctification.
For education, Bickle says 'here and there', which shows throughout
the movie. While certainly not dumb or retarded, there's something
about him that approaches autism. He says he served in the Marines and
was honorably discharged, but we're not sure how much of this is true.
Later, he writes to his parents that he's working for the government,
a complete falsehood unless Bickle confuses government with moral
order of his own making.

When Bickle's mentions his service in the Marines, the manager opens
up somewhat, even being a little friendly. This is what's missing in
Bickle's life, a sense of meaningful community. It must also be
missing in the manager for he warms to Bickle's veteran status.

In the office we see the first instance of desk as a motif. In an
overhead scene, we see it filled with documents, cluttered with messy
details. The overhead shot also connotes a sense of objectivity, a
world of facts and figures, something that Bickle the extremely
subjective individual sees as a barrier between himself and the world.
Bickle is not an accountant or bureaucrat but a prophet, a crusader.
Though there's a methodology to his madness, the enervating impulses
are religious. Bickles looks down upon the desk as a wall that
separates him from others. The candy counter at the porn theater has
the same effect, so does Betsy's desk at Palantine's headquarters. For
Bickle, unassuming things take on Kafkaesque proportions. Even the
pimp in the hallway outside Iris's room has his own desk.

The contrast between Schrader and Bickle is interesting, all the more
so since Bickle hatched from Schrader's intense subjective mental
state(while hallucinating while being treated for ulcer in a hospital;
at one point Bickle says he thinks he has stomach cancer). Bickle as a
character is incomplete or too academic, too much a theory or
conception. Schrader came from a stuffy background of calivinism and
when he attended pornos or even regular movies he sweated thru them as
though devil was breathing down his neck. He 'ran' from his roots; in
this regard he's closer to Iris. Also, Schrader is a smart,
perceptive person whereas Bickle's mind is fuzzy. To what extent
Bickle's fuzziness is a faithful portrayal of psychotic mentality or
the product of Schrader's confusion is anyone's guess. But, Bickle's
freaky character arises from the lack of coherent context for his
Biblical fury. He doesn't think pornos are dirty or wrong, even takes
Betsy to a showing. But, when he looks at the street whores, druggies,
etc. he's disgusted and wishes God would piss them all away.

One thing Schrader and his invention do have in common: Bickle says he
spends days and nights on the subways and buses; in other words,
leading an aimless existence and perhaps this is a projection of
Schrader's own career as an artist; if you're gonna daydream all day
and mope about with fantasies, why not put them down on paper and make
it into a career? At least that way, you get paid. Aimlessness as the
aim of life.

Bickle is by nature an idealist. He can't settle for what most people
accept in life. That he fixates on Betsy and then later on saving a
pitiful version of damsel in distress illustrate Bickle's need to
possess a superior prize or be occupied with a meaningful cause. But,
he can't formulate a sane philosophy or constuctive social behavior on
his own. Nor, can he really belong to an organization due to his
oddness. It's hard to imagine him being accepted into the police
force, never mind the FBI. But, he seeks that kind of charged
intensity, to be dressed up and armed, one of the few and the proud.
Yet, there's something contemplative about Bickle. When one of the
passengers rant about how his wife is with 'a nigger' and he's going
to blow 'her pussy' away with a magnum 44, Bickle, whom we might
almost expect to understand or sympathize with this enraged bourgeois
character, looks upon him with suspicion. While Bickle wants to
belong, there's something too individualistic--not so much in the
moral or rational sense but in the primal, or emotional, sense--about
his character that allow him to be sheep.
Bickle's problem isn't merely his inexpressiveness. Sometimes, he's
too eloquent. He withholds his feelings until the dam bursts with the
flood of his emotions. But he can't communicate. He can't tune into
the frequencies of other people.

Bickle's dependence on the taxi perhaps says something about the role
of machines in human society. What sets a machine apart from man is
its cold efficiency, it's ability to 'live' without thought or
questions, its purposeful design, its obedience. In contrast, man is
in a constant state of doubt. This perhaps explains Bickle's
fascination with guns, a deadlier machine which defies the oppressive
weight of time with its efficiency and speed. More than a phallic
symbol of sexual frustration, it is an extension of man's desire to be
purposeful, consequential, forceful, and respected. For Bickle the gun
isn't just a weapon. He begins to hold it while watching TV. In the
porn theater he uses his finger like a gun, pointing it at the screen.
It becomes the one way he can connect with the rest of society even if
entailing death.
Man's relation to machines, guns in particular, was perhaps most
brilliantly explored in Full Metal Jacket.
The gun also represents the countering, even shutting down, all the
meaningless energy around us. Notice how Bickle holds the gun at the
constantly humming TV with its streams of insipid images. Or, consider
what the gun dealer tells Bickle about how a magnum 44. can stop a car
from a mile away. If we identify Bickle with his taxi, then this
imagery of destroying a car evokes a suicidal impulse. To stop moving,
to come to a standstill, to finally rest, as if being alive itself is
form of insomnia and only death will bring peace. It's interesting
that Schrader later made a film called Light Sleeper. And, of course
Fight Club is the latest movie about the alienation of modern man and
his need to reconnect to his primal instincts, even at the risk of
violent death.

Bickle looks like an unassuming, amiable, passive personality to
onlookers, yet when we listen to his journal entries there's rage; a
more dangerous--hidden and unpredictable--kind of rage, than, for
example, the rage of the black guy we see later, walking down the
street yelling he wants to kill. Bickle's festering rage grows in
intensity and is calibrated for maximum destructive efficiency.

The notion of washing away the filth, which obsesses Bickle, has
Biblical overtones but it also has analogies to bloodletting and
ejaculation. Bickle wants clean purifying water to clean away the
streets but is it also the manifestation of a certain self-loathing, a
desire of wash away his own mental and spiritual pollution emanating
from the constant production of squishy bodily fluids? Is there a
little General Ripper here?

The manager at the cab office asks Bickle is he's 'moonlighting', a
term foreign to Bickle. Bickle is so square he might as well be cabbie
from another planet. Perhaps, it suggests a reversal of values.
Bickle is a cowboy in the world of savages. Bickle, the straight and
upright man has become the outsider, the foreigner at the core of
civilization inhabited by tribal savages with their slang and lingo.
The cowboy has become the Indian, a man without a home, and not in the
uh shucks laughing manner of Joe Buck.
Also, the topic of moonlighting may hint at the Bickle's mental
double duty as sane square and psychotic, a sort of half man, half
beast, the werewolf. .

After the interview, Bickle walks around the garage which is dark,
dingy, and busy. He walks out into sunlight; it is daytime. Going from
darkness to brightness suggests Bickle's sense of time is skewed,
night being day, day being night, interior and exterior sharing a
porous barrier. There is no fixed time for Bickle, he's a man adrift,
unanchored to social gravity.

We next see Bickle writing a journal. His small apartment looks like a
jail cell, cluttered and claustrophic, and Bickle's writings have the
air of conviction in prison writings by famous dissidents. Bickle's
journal is both therapeutic and dangerous. The former because he
focuses on need for meaning and order. But, just as the Bible forged a
myth for a people, Bickle forges a personal myth. The journal becomes
the Bickle Bible, his jeremiad. It's ultimately destructive because
Bickle gives semblance of order and meaning to what's essentially
absurd and lunatic. And, it's this self-imposed sense of order and
destiny that pushes Bickle over the edge. Bickle is pushed toward
some goal, toward something that may largely be a figment of his
imagination, like a fairytale of prince saving a damsel in distress,
like his self-diagnosis of the stomach cancer.

Then we see different parts of the cab fixed within the frame while in
the background the ephemeral streetscape changes as the cab moves
along.
Bickle's narration then continues about how he wishes a rain would
come and wash away the scum. He describes the people in the worst
possible way. The manner of his expression is both polluted and
judgmental. In calling the night people animals, junkies, fairies,
etc. he becomes smeared with the very plague he wants eradicated. We
sense a total disgust on the part of Bickle toward these people of the
street. For Bickle everynight is Halloween where monsters and goblins
are real.

The cutting from one part of the cab to the other convey a certain,
cleancut militancy. And, like a police car the cab go thru all the
boundaries of the city. We may compare Bickle's daily routine with the
behavior of animals, especially predators, who mark boundaries out of
territorial instinct. The police is perceived as being the thin blue
line between civilization and barbarity. Bickle, while traversing thru
these same boundary lines, can only be an observer. Slowly, Bickle
develops a sense of right and wrong, but this has the effect of
frustrating his sense of impotence. He's a frontline soldier without
a gun, without orders, and increasingly he can't tell which side is
the enemy; perhaps both(he must defend civilization from barbarism and
the exploited, little people from the big Lie of the Establishment).
Bickle abhors the decay, sees himself as someone who stands between
filth and cleanliness, falls for a woman who becomes the vision of
purity, but when rejected by this woman, feels betrayed.

Bickle's position within the cab is ambiguous. It both brings him into
and insulates him from this 'venal' world. His use of the word
'spook' illustrates Bickle's position. He doesn't use the word
'nigger' which would suggest a particular racial hostility but he
doesn't use 'black' either with its then-progressive connotations.
Instead, blacks are spooks to be tolerated if not exactly befriended.

Then, an older man and a blonde wigged woman enters into the taxi.
This couple later foreshadows the Palantine/Betsy pairing in Bicke's
psyche. The blondewigged hooker is black, implying this is a phony
world of put-on, self-deception, and fraud. Also, the age difference
between the apparently wealthy white male and the black hooker is
later paralleled by similar differences between Palantine and Betsy,
and later between Sport and Iris. In a way, Bickle's is a children's
crusade against the evil, corrupting, and manipulative father figure.
He's the cabbie in the rye.
What the man says in the cab, about there being a big fat tip if
everything goes right could have applied to either the hooker or
Bickle, further stressing the ambiguous role of being a cabbie; is a
cabbie the commander of his vessel or simply a servant, a whore,
bandied about?

From Bickle's narration, it's very common for a male/female couple to
enter his cab for lewd purposes. Venality is the norm; so, later when
Sport takes Iris OUT of the cab, it has a disruptive effect on Bickle,
who would have been less disturbed had Sport and Iris been
unscrupulous passengers.

Bickle says that after every night he cleans off the cum, sometimes
the blood. It's probaby safe to say that Bickle, as the unreliable
narrator, is exaggerating. But, it suggests how much the venality of
the city seeps into every part of one's life. But, it also evokes a
sense of sexual frustration, as though his cab driving is a form of
masturbation, the same frustrated journey that goes nowhere. When
Bickle says sometimes he has to clean the blood as well as the cum,
the two become identified, and in the movie Bickle's bloodletting
becomes a sort of sexual act. Certainly, much of the rage and
exhilaration accompanying his violence is quasi-sexual. After all,
notice how when he shoots sport, Bickle is standing on a lower
position and his gun almost on level plane with Sport's groin. It's an
attack near the enemy's manliness. Or, when Bickle kills the last
pimp, Bickle's on his knees while the pimp's head is about on the
level of his groin so that bloodspattering on the wall looks like
Bickle's ejaculation. Though the script is by Schrader we can notice
how alot of this converged with Scorsese's ideas about sexuality and
violence, perhaps most disturbingly(and touchingly)expressed in Mean
Streets where Keitel says he had a dream where he came blood,
suggesting sin and lust, cleansing and redemption all in one stroke.
In the original screenplay all the pimps were supposed to be black.
To what extent this is a reflection of Schrader's hostile feeling
toward blacks or a faithful depiction of urban reality is unclear.
But, clearly, there is a sense of racial tension.
The pimps Bickle sees in the hamburger joint are black. Also, the
stick up man is black, and Bickle looks upon a bunch of black rowdies
walking by with apprehension. Even the least threatening black's--a
fellow cabbie--playful sticking his finger unnerves Bickle. Bickle
pays him back a loan and again the idea owing someone something,
someone having power over you creates a sense of unease. Also, a
passenger--Scorsese himself--rants on about killing a 'nigger' and his
cheating wife. Also, Betsy the cool all-American blonde is the sort
of vision in the white male psyche needing to be guarded from black
savages. To a large extent, urban America is an Africanized setting,
where tribal muscle power matter more, where law and order has broken
down, where the mode of life is nomadic, buildings crumbling down back
to nature. Bickle is the opposite of everything that we associate with
blackness. He's square, rigid, meditative. He's like Bressonian
character stuck in Harlem. And, there's Brooks the clever Jew pawing
at the blonde shikse which has Wagnerian overtones. Brooks is the
Niebelung.

At the porno where Bickle goes after his shift, Bickle tries to talk
to a woman behind the counter. She is black and this suggests Bickle
is not a 'racist' in the classic sense. He doesn't carry around an
ideology of politics or society. But, like the taxi manager and later
Betsy(at Palantine office and then in coffee shop), she sits behind a
desk or counter that clearly demarcates Bickle's position vis-a-vis
others. When Bickle tries to further the conversation, she calls for
the manager, Troy. Just as behind Betsy there is Palantine and behind
Iris there is Sport, there is a man behind this woman. Why is he named
'Troy'? An allusion to Helen of Troy perhaps, that man's fighting
energy derives from his desire of the woman, which is true in the case
of Bickle. Also, there is a small replica of venus of milo near the
counter. The statue, a symbol of eternal and transcendant beauty, is
in a theater reverberting with porn noises. Vision of eternal beauty
side by side with sleaze and filth, and it pretty much sum up Bickle's
experience(or non-experience) of sexuality.
One also senses Schrader is driving at a paradox. That sexuality and
the sexual act, which begat and produce life, is inseparably linked,
if not downright identitcal, to the very forces that drive us toward
death and destruction, that man's drive toward orgasm is both
self-perpetuation and self-imolation, that the life juice in his
balls are as unstable as the subatomic cumponents of plutononium.

As Bickle narrates, Betsy is the great Helen of his imagination. The
Betsy of his mind is part fact, part fiction, just like what Betsy
later says about Bickle being 'part pusher, part prophet'. Reality is
not simply what is but how we perceive things. And, Bickle's
imagination of Betsy is a poor bet on reality.
Betsy works for the Palantine campaign in a long white building whose
main door as its narrowest tip. The building looks like a massive
phallic fortress, moby dick. The Palantine poster has the Senator
looking slightly down, like a dominant sexual position, peering down
on a conquered sexual mate. As Betsy and Albert Brooks says, they are
trying to sell the man as mouthwash, as a sex symbol.

As Bickle talks of Betsy, we get wide angle shots and a more
fast-paced hubbub of traffic and people. Betsy the great hope makes
Bickle less morosely introspective. Bickle life gains some degree of
momentum, a sense of regularity. The world seems more tolerable,
hopeful, with less of that 'morbid self-absorption'. Bickle, in his
hope of rising into Betsy's world, feels lighter and the filth of the
streets has a weaker grip. Betsy is like a ticket away from all this;
it's the only time Bickle enters into something approaching a state of
bliss.

Between Brooks and Betsy there is lightness and a sense of ease which
Bickle seeks but can't attain because it's not in his 'prophet'-like
nature. There's a stark contrast between the repartee between Brooks
and Betsy and almost stiff conversation between Bickle and
Betsy--verbally and in terms of body language.

Brooks is occupied with troubles arising from mislabeled campaign
buttons that read 'WE are the people' instead of 'we ARE the people'.
It says something about the silliness of modern politics, the silly
semantics involved, the empty symbolisms. But, this confusion of
identity is for Bickle no joke because of his inability to define "I"
and "am". What is he? Is he part of the NY filth and lunacy? Is he
clean and respectable? Is he a taxi driver? A crusader? Sane? Insane?
And is Bickle an "I" or a "we"? Is he a unique individual or the
archetypal manifestation of NY neurosis? What for politicians is a
matter of clever semantics become the main locus of Bickle's
disintegration.

When discussing Palantine, Betsy and Brooks speak in almost mocking
and aloof tones, as though they are going thru the 'progressive' or
'commited' motions . Betsy says first push the man, then push the
issue, which in a dark and disturbed way is what happens with Bickle
as the personal swerves into the political. But, Betsy's remark also
invokes the motto at the end of Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: When
legend becomes fact, print the legend. Modern politics isn't much
different than the politics of old frontier days. Facts matter less
than than appearances. And, Bickle reacts to Palantine the myth
instead of Palantine the man, who's probably a decent, complex,
well-meaning individual. The existential malaise that surrounds
Bickle's hostility to Palantine also echoes the rage expressed by the
medical student against the Mifune character in High and Low. Both
Bickle and the medical student react to myths, much of it
self-generated to justify one's rage and exasperation.

Brooks' comments about Palantine as mouthwash, thus a pharmaceutical,
suggests politics isn't only a hygenic product but as a drug, an
opiate. And, one of Bickle's ideas is that everyone is drugged,
whether Iris by Sport or the masses under the power of politicians who
are merely big pimps, using the media and whatnot to put people into
some dazed slumber. This sense of paranoia is a perhaps a staple of
noir, and there are noirish qualities about Taxi Driver, just as the
most paranoid sci-fi films--Dark City and Matrix--also heavily derive
from noir.

Brooks represents the demasculated white man. As much as Bickle hates
the streets, he's been sharpened by primal survivalist instincts, just
as Ethan in Searchers share some of the Indian's contempt for
civilized society. Bickle partly sees Brooks thru the black man's
eyes. He's a wimpy honkey, with no masculin spine at the center of his
being, a clever kid improvising a semblance of a life. Brooks also
represents the Jew out to get the blonde shikse; in this dynamic,
Bickle is the tough, honorable white male whose feminie ideal, the
blonde Betsy, is coming under attack by the growing power of black
barbarians who are taking over the streets--where Brooks would be
useless as a defender--and the clever Jew who cocoons himself from
reality of decay and survival by creating an innocuous priveleged
world of empty. Bickle stands between Rodney King and Al Franken.

Betsy walks over to Brooks and pretends to trip and spills what turn
out to be pieces of paper. Brooks puts up with the silliness because
he likes her. And, she puts up with him because of his winning wit and
humor.
Betsy challenges Brooks to try lighting a match with only one hand
with fingers missing which proves impossible. Betsy says she saw a man
do it and Brooks thinks the man must be Italian, but no, he's black.
Brooks says, if indeed he's Italian, he might have been an incompetent
thief because the mafia punished clods in such manner.

Bickle later shoots one of the pimp's hands off and perhaps this
identifies that man(who's other hand is 'crucified' with a knife)with
'the thief', a key figure as fellow crucifee in the New Testament. If
we consider Bickle's hairstyle at the end, it does look kinda like the
design atop Roman helmet, suggesting perhaps that Bickle is both the
human sacrifice(God's Lonely Man, if not God's Only Son) and the
Christ killer, with the pimps being his fellow crucifees in his
crusade to wash away man's sins. Bickle even drags one of the pimps
into Iris's room like the man's a crucifix.
Brooks' failure to light the match also has sexual connotations.
Later, Bickle, wounded and disabled after the gunfight, is left with
only one operating hand and tries to shoot himself in that highly
restricted position, failing like Brooks with the match.

Brooks further says the mafia punishes a stoolpigeon by killing him
and placing a dead canary on their chest whereupon Betsy asks why not
use a dead pigeon. Brooks theorizes because you have to catch a pigeon
whereas a canary can easily be bought in a pet store. Brook's nimble
mind makes him enjoyable company despite his dorkiness, but perhaps
his remark about the canary also foreshadows what happens with Bickle.
That he can't catch the pigeon(Palantine with all his secret agents)
so he settles for something easier and more accessible like a
canary(Sport).

At a hamburger joint, Boyle and his cab buddies shoot the bull. Boyle
is the classic bullshitter. He talks so much shit it doesn't matter
that he's being truthful or lying. It's a frivolous but perhaps
healthy way to melt into the city. What can a cabbie do anyway except
adapt the best he can?
Doughboy is another pathetic cabbie that knows how to maintain some
sense of equilibrium. His nickname is doughboy because he'll do
anything to make a buck. So, he spends a big part of his spare time
pitching ridiculous things to earn an extra buck here and there. But,
like Boyle with this endless b.s. it keeps doughboy distracted from
the existential malaise that affects Bickle so deeply.
Doughboy tries to interest Bickle in a tile that was allegedly removed
from Errol Flynn's bathroom. It's unlikely that Bickle even knows who
Errol Flynn was.
Perhaps, the Flynn reference points to his role as Robin Hood, to the
extent that Bickle becomes something of a folk hero himself. Or, is it
a suggestion that nothing is sacred anymore, that civilization is
crumbling when anyone can go into a movie star's bathroom and remove
pieces from the wall, that indeed everything's up for sale? Or, is it
suggesting that Flynn is another pimp whose secrets have been exposed,
that he's just another false god?

Bickle stares intensely into his glass of alka-seltzer which fizzes
like sperm mixed with yeast. This image connects with Betsy spilling
a cup of crumpled papers(dried cum? lack of virility among modern man
so Palantine as the much demanded sexual symbol?) on Brooks and the
discussion about Palantine as mouthwash. It's a society on drugs,
illegal or legal. When Bickle meets Betsy he says he's not a pusher
and he's not, of course, but in a way he's an abuser of drugs like
most Americans. Whether it's alkaseltzer, aspirin, or prescription
pills, modern people depend on medication, on chemical alteration, to
attain a sense of balance. We may recall that Elvis never thought
himself a junkie because he didn't use narcotics.

Bickle applies to help the Palantine campaign but when asked about his
views on Palantine's proposals, Bickle says he's not interested in the
details. It's the girl he wants. But, in a way, his attempt to win
Betsy is a profoundly political act if we understand that the union of
man and woman is the most important social unit in society. Bickle's
politics is deeply personal in that he wants to create his private
utopia and have such be the basis for human happiness and stability.
Bickle's 'campaign' against Palatine(as well his initial support)
grows out of his obsession with Betsy. The personal twists into
political.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=

Few notes about some other scenes in the movie:

Palantine gives him the fare and tells him to keep the change. Later,
this is paralleled when Sport tosses him a crumpled $20 bill and tells
him not to worry.

----------

Bickle becomes interested in a Magnum 44. This could be an allusion to
Dirty Harry which turned the weapon into a the fantasy weapon of
vicarious fascism. But, it also ties in with what the jealous husband
says about doing to his cheating wife and her 'nigger' lover. The
magnum 44 becomes the white man's compensatory weapon against the big
black penis of the 'nigger'. And, remember, in the original
screenplay, Sport and all the pimps that Bickle kills are black. Even
if Bickle is not an ideological 'racist', there is an undercurrent of
racial anxities eating away at his soul.

-----

Bickle's fixation on Iris and his sermon about how much family matters
and all that is as self-serving as selfless. It's as though people
need to fill their lives with big issues because black/white issues
are easier to handle than existential uncertainty. Take how people
espouse issues around abortion, to fill their lives with a sense of
moral urgency or righteousness. Or, how the issue of racism is used to
bolster one's sense of progressive superiority. It simplifies a
complex world. When Palantine says the solutions to social problems
won't be easy in his taxi cab, he's right of course. There is no
simple solution to complex problems. Yet, oftentimes invoking
complexity conceals either cowardice or cynicism. One heroic thing is
about Bickle is he doesn't spout but acts, a rare thing indeed.

Bickle's generosity toward Iris is also a power trip. That he feels
he's in a position to lecture Iris and give her money makes him feel
morally superior to all the Palatines and Betsys of the world who
profess social justice but don't deal with people like Iris firsthand.

---------

Bickle wants to help Iris, but the notion of freedom isn't clearcut in
the film. Iris is free from the petite-bourgeois confinement of home,
but a slave of 'freedom' manipulated by predators.
Bickle's projects his spiritual troubles onto Iris. Saving Iris is
saving himself It's sort of a parental impulse, say of a father, who
having failed in life, wants his child to achieve his(often dictated
by the parent)dreams; it's both selfless and selfish, noble and
hypocritical. It's like a Casablanca moment where Rick, too cynical
and compromised to escape himself, remains under Nazi jurisdiction
while his love flies away. Bick is no Rick but a romantic nontheless.

Bickle can't fit in the real normal society so creates one of his own,
perhaps a myth, of small town values, a childhood with genuine
innocence. In a way, Bickle's moral nostalgia anticipated the rise of
Reaganism which gave assurances of small town values as crucial and
relevant in an America that was increasingly rootless.

-------------

Sport plays a record on the turntable and slowly dances with Iris when
she expresses doubts about what she's doing(obviously, affected by
Bickle's tirade). Sport says half-earnestly that if she likes what's
doing she's doing she can't be his man. In other words, she has to
belong to other men to belong to him. If we may be permit ourselves a
little cynicism we may say this is the dynamic of politics. All those
working for Palantine lose their individuality to belong to the bigger
issue, to the big man.
In a way, Scorsese worked this saint/whore dynamic to a greater
extreme in Last Temptation where Jesus saves Mary Magdalene. Saint and
whore have one thing in common in that they must belong to everyone,
be selfless; in that sense, though they belong to everyone, they are
loneliest creatures in the world since they have nothing that's truly
their own which is why it's poignant when Jesus and Mary bed down
together as man and wife. Failure of communism was due to its
expectation that man could be saint and have no private life and
belong to the wider community, but that's got nothing to do with Taxi
Driver.

-------------

In an odd and sick way, Sport and Iris complement one another like two
pieces in a puzzle; the picture that results is ugly but the pieces
fit. And, they are both mentally more balanced than the square
Bickle. And, they don't ask for much. Sport is happy to let the money
roll in, and Iris, young and impressionable, thinks of herself as a
saavy, modern woman. They are both libra, after all, maintaining some
sick, venal, but genuine balance in their lives, when compared to
Bickle, the square, who's clearly a severe nutcase teetering over the
edge.

Iris says she gets along with Sport well because they are both libra
and surmises that Bickle is a Scorpio. A scorpion's weapon looks like
a phallic instrument; Bickle's guns and knives are extensions of his
sexual frustration.

-----------

In Bickle's last drive before the shootout he stops for no one.
Finally, his cab has become a war chariot, a tank, a missile aimed at
a target. What he has sought from the very beginning has finally borne
fruit.

------------

When Bickle is shot in the neck, the blood makes him look like a penis
that's just been circumcized. Circumcision is the ritual where blood
flows down the penis. Getting shot in the neck also makes Bickle
stiff, unable to move his neck. He becomes erect, an attacking penis.
Bickle as the walking erect penis missile machine enters the vaginal
hall. It's a moment comparable to Ethan's entering into Scar's vaginal
typee.
Stiffness also suggests crucifixion.

Like there are various positions in sex, Bickle has various weapons to
add more fun to his bloodlust.

--------------------

After the shootout, Bickle was meant to die in the original screenplay
by Schrader. And, the overhead tracking shot with the camera pulling
back from Bickle and then from the room, down the hallway and then
ascending over the street conveys the impression of soul taking leave
of the body upon death. Bickle, who had been trapped within a tightly
wound subjective interior, is finally liberated, can see things in
perspective, has found sleep, peace.

---------------------

In the porn theater, the manager's name the cashier called out was
Troy. Possibly an allusion to Trojan condom. And, Bickle does become
an attacking penis. Also, Bickle's mohawk looks like a horse's mane.
So Bickle becomes like the Trojan horse. He had once faked entry into
Iris's room as a client but now the real Bickle is charging out. Like
the Greeks inside the Trojan horse, Bickle is attacking all over a
woman.

---------------------

To what extent Bickle's meditativeness is genuinely philosophical(or
even spiritual)and to what extent it's the result of his inability to
blend into normal society is hard to determine. Can't he fit in
because he's different or is he different because he can't fit in? Is
he inherently thoughtful or is he pushed toward some semblance of
introspection because he's always so alone?

---------------------

Bickle's conversation with Palantine in the cab starts out cordially
but Bickle soon says exactly what's on his mind. Bickle has the same
problem with Betsy. He can't play social ping-pong like Palantine,
Brooks, even Sport. He always makes the fatal mistake giving himself
away.
Bickle resists the pigeonholing effects of social forces, whether they
be class, race, or whatever. He will not surrender his sense of self
to categories dictated by society. Yet, this impulse is a reaction to
his failure to fit into respectable society. To what extent is this
failure intentional and unintentional? He's clearly different and
judging by his conversations with Betsy not someone to bend to other's
ideas. Even with Palantine he speaks his mind.
But, he's also rejected. With Betsy he pleads that he will do whatever
she wants to do in order to be respectable. Still, Bickle's resistance
to the humdrum is heroic.

-------------

Would you rather be oppressed by Big Brother or Big Business?

-----------------

King of Comedy is a remake of sorts, another film where an oddball's
obsession turns to criminal activity which however becomes
romanticized by a self-deluded society that wants to package neurosis
as heroism.

------------------------

Bickle's lack of humor sets him apart from Ethan. Ethan's humor makes
him tolerable, even popular. Bickle makes the joke organizized the
basis for his personal philosophy.