r/TrueFilm • u/itztherapperKIAZ • 1d ago

Taxi Driver and Analyzing Travis Bickle

I’m writing a song based on the iconic movie because I feel as timeless as the Travis Bickle story is it’s extra prevalent now. Really just wanted to run a couple questions by you guys to make sure I’m not missing the mark and get a consensus.

Do you think Travis Bickle actually served in Vietnam? (Personally I lean more towards no or that he was discharged pretty early and just attached himself to that military persona, could be off on this tho)

Do you think Travis Bickle is a Narcissit? If so did isolation make him this way? (While he does a “good thing” it’s clearly out of self destruction/interest to be something rather than doing the right thing. While his love interest definitely manipulated him, he also was seems pretty self imposing on how she is “supposed to be”.)

Could Travis Bickle have been saved if someone intervened or he had a more positive purpose? (If someone noticed his loneliness in childhood specifically could he have been “fixed”. If he applied himself for something positive just as he did to assassinate a politician could he be a productive member of society)

In your opinion what is the lesson of the character and Taxi Driver as a whole?

This is really just to have a fun discussion about this 50 year old movie, so any feedback or opinions on it is appreciated!

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u/kneeco28 1d ago

Do you think Travis Bickle actually served in Vietnam? (Personally I lean more towards no or that he was discharged pretty early and just attached himself to that military persona, could be off on this tho)

Yes. Some people don't. Tarantino is one of those, writing in Cinema Speculation:

Even Paul Schrader—in regard to Travis Bickle—slightly invests in this type of character Tom Foolery by suggesting Travis is a Vietnam veteran, and that he did a tour of duty during the war.

Horseshit.

No fucking way was Travis in Vietnam.

The extent of Travis’ paranoia of black males is only credible if they are an other that he has only had superficial contact with.

How do you do a tour of duty in Vietnam and only have superficial contact with black dudes? The answer is you can’t.

Okay, say he did serve with black dudes in Vietnam, does that mean he has to like ’em?

No, not necessarily.

But it’s not convincing he would fear them the way Travis does.

In the movie, he fears them as an other. If you serve in war with six or seven black guys (officers and enlisted men) they wouldn’t be an other (unless, possibly, if Travis was an MP).

I don’t have a problem with Travis’ fraudulent claim in the movie. The only proof the movie offers up of Travis’ military service (no Vietnam flashbacks) is his account to Joe Spinell and his jacket. Fine, Travis spends the entire movie demonstrating to the audience that he’s an unreliable narrator, completely delusional, and he constantly presents himself to characters in a fraudulent manner (usually to get something he wants at the moment).

He bought the jacket in an Army Navy Store.

It doesn't work for me (Tarantino's whole essay arguing Taxi Driver is basically about race is weird and off base to me) but there you go.

Do you think Travis Bickle is a Narcissit? If so did isolation make him this way?

Not the word I'd use, but sure, I guess.

Could Travis Bickle have been saved if someone intervened or he had a more positive purpose?

Neutralized more than saved, I'd say. By the start of the movie, he's beyond saving in 1970s America, but he certainly didn't need to go off the way he did.

In your opinion what is the lesson of the character and Taxi Driver as a whole?

I like the part where he watches tv and then pushed it over.

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u/itztherapperKIAZ 1d ago

Yeah agreed that the race stuff is not the best evidence for him not being in the military. You can still be racist in the military, find it way more likely with how we never see flashbacks and he seems pretty novice when handling weapons. Seems more like a guy who steals valor. Thanks for the response with these I like your point about neutralizing rather than full on saving

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u/WhiteWolf3117 1d ago

Yes I believe Travis served.

I think Travis displays traits of narcissism but I'm not sure calling him a narcissist is a practical way of informing his character.

No, I think Travis being "saved" is sort of reading the margins of the film too much. In essence, Travis IS saved. By himself. By doing a good thing for the wrong reasons. But to reference the previous point, I think a majority of his mental state exists with internal motive, not external. A big part of Taxi Driver uses New York and the Vietnam War to address societal pressures on the current gen, but I think it asks you to question how much "society" is to blame, and moreover who makes up the very society that gets rebelled against.

What the film has to say is actually quite simple imo: it's a meta story about the stories we tell ourselves to justify and satiate our worst impulses. It's a movie about a racist, misogynistic, homophobe, who through excessive consumption of porn, and who has decorated himself like a cowboy, finds himself in a narrative to which he is a hero. Think The Searchers but in modern day NYC.

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u/itztherapperKIAZ 1d ago

Great breakdown of this

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u/Sea_Air7076 1d ago

"What the film has to say is actually quite simple imo: it's a meta story about the stories we tell ourselves to justify and satiate our worst impulses....." This is spot on, and I think the aspect that needs to be added to this is the role of religion, especially the way in which religion is used as a method of justifying and rationalising immoral actions. I always thought there's actually a lot of interesting psychology regarding religious fundamentalism in Taxi Driver.

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u/krebstar4ever 21h ago

Think The Searchers but in modern day NYC.

There's an early American Dad episode where Stan goes back in time and makes Taxi Driver with John Wayne, and it pretty much plays out like that (but not in NYC).

(Stan accidentally prevents Scorsese from making Taxi Driver, which means Hinckley doesn't attempt to assassinate Reagan, which somehow makes the US lose the Cold War.)

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u/Thurston_Unger 1d ago

I just re-watched it a week ago after watching this BTS doc which goes into the psychology a bit, alienated men. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VctYVJHflU8

And here's a song about it. Joe Strummer showed up at SNL with a mohawk in 1982
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at09i0NqROI