New York as Hell: "And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 13:42.
The idea of urban centers as sources of evil is not new, it has been mentioned before by Emile Durkheim and Sigmund Frued. In the Bible we have Babylon, the tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorah. In film, harking back to the early days of German Expressionism with Robert Wiene's Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) the town carnival was seen as a place where ordinary rules of society do not apply. All the lines in the circus in the film are warped and twisted. Imagine just about any Tim Burton movie set and you get the idea. The rules of geometry and physics don't apply because we are within a world within a world with it's own warped sensibilities. The city is seen as magnifying human vices, greed and man's exploitation of his fellow man. Capitalistic selfishness has bred a culture of suspicion and distrust amongst neighbours. The filth of society is drawn to urban centers, it's reflected in the low life scum that Travis Bickle sees in his journey through the New Your underworld and red-light district. Pimps, prostitutes, politicians, speechwriters, drug dealers and gun sellers also magnify the beacon of vice already inherent in the city's underbelly. The idea of the usual hero in the classic mythological sense is dissolved through disconnection.
"I don't want to be the product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me."---Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) in The Departed (2006).
In his 1903 essay, The Metropolis and Mental Life, German philospher Georg Simmel gave his analysis of city life on the mind of the individual and his views on the matter were bleak. He said that the deepest problems of society came from the conflict between individual independence and the soverign powers of external society.
In other words, the tug and pull beetween the inner and outer world, the conflict and separation between mental life and social life. It's disconnect is the reason apparently that lonely high school kids shot their classmates at Columbine, because what was in their heads and what was outside of it did not fit together.
In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle faces a similar dilemma. In his mind, he is merely seeking a connection with another human being, perhaps one of the strongest needs there is, the need to not die alone in the world. That is the source of the film's power and relatability. Perhaps the reason people get married is not just to produce offspring, perpetuate the species or maintain inheritence or property rights, but to have someone bear witness to the unfolding of our lives, to give it meaning.
I believe that's also why we have art and film, so that we can witness the lives of others, not because we are voyuers, but because it reminds us of our own lives, loneliness and joy. Empathy and the ability to share stories and dreams is perhaps one of the most human traits there is.
It hurts me to see Travis Bickle seek out virgins and whores, both to no sucess. I do not agree with his methods, but I don't have to, by watching his actions unfold, I am not judging him, but merely bearing neutral witness. Another reason I find films to be a most powerful and humbling medium is because it gives us the point of view of God. God being the director. That framework was more relevant in the 70s when directors such as Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppolla, Michael Cimino, George Lucas, Arthur Penn and Steven Spielberg first wrested control from the studio system to create Easy Rider, Raging Bull and inspire countless generations of filmakers and moviegoers with their audacity and sheer will.
In the pre-industrial age, man was not in conflict with his environment because he needed it to survive. With the invention of electricity, the steam engine, the assembly line and capitalism, urban centers attracted country mice like moths to a flame, but unlike the rural dependence and respect for the land that came with an agriculturally based economy, an industrial center was not necessarily nurturing to it's inhabitants and Mother Nature might have been. Your neighbour could be a pickpocket or a rapist. Economic hardships, lack of education, systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and descrimination turned the previously benefitial tribal concept of unity and turned the urban mentality into one of us versus the other, or the outsider.
In the Bible, Jesus was the radical other. In the the Garden of Eden, mankind lived unified and sustained by nature before he was cast out and turned into his own God by raping the very environment that birthed him. Travis Bickle is a product of his environment. His ideal world of human connection that exists in his head only makes sense to him, and everyone he tries to touch does not trust him and dismisses him as crazy.
His notion of what is ideal is subjected to doubt. The world makes him crazy, or rather, his lack of it. The moral of the story is that no man is an island and if we neglect our brother, he has no recourse but to turn to self and social destruction. It is a parable and Scorsese, being a former altar boy who studied to be a priest before becoming a filmaker has many religious references in his work.
The camera is sometimes placed where a priest might face a congregation. That shot is seen in the previously mentioned scene where Travis is rejected by the virgin Cybil Sheppard. He also tests his mortal flesh against the fires of Hell as a test when he burns his fist in his kitchen. Harvey Keitel does the exact same thing in Scorsese's previous film, the masterpiece that is Mean Streets (1973). He also uses what is known in filmaking terms as the God's eye-view. Simply put, it's where the camera is elavated directly above the subject and looking straight down. Scorsese gives us God's point of view and puts us, the audience in seat of power and tells us to do what we will with that point of perception. We are omnipotent, we see all, we are free to judge, condemn or forgive with Grace.
The troubling conclusion that Travis comes up with in the end that reduces him to an agent of vengeance and death is the sad realization that his ideal of human connection, love and friendship does not exist in this world, all that is left to do then is to destroy it and himself. The challenge of persuing an impossible goal may be a problem of religion itself. We may have been created in His image, and are encouraged to love one another and forgive our sins, but the sins commited in the film are instantly punished by acts of random violence as redemptive justice. It is the God of the Old Testatament that Travis speaks with in such moments. The God that requested the son of Abraham to be sacrificed as a test of faith. The God that requested the firstborn man child of Egypt.
The disturbing conclusion I reached at the end of viewing Taxi Driver was that the better angels of our nature may not be able to withstand the evil of the Devils in this world, but I don't think it matters. The very fact that Travis is trying to reach out to another one of God's creation is an act of unbelievable faith, and in his action, his desires make him human. Like Moses or Martin Luther King, he can see the promised land, but he knows he may not get there but he still tries. That is all that matters.
Robert Brown was right. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what else is a Heaven for?
In other words, the tug and pull beetween the inner and outer world, the conflict and separation between mental life and social life. It's disconnect is the reason apparently that lonely high school kids shot their classmates at Columbine, because what was in their heads and what was outside of it did not fit together.
In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle faces a similar dilemma. In his mind, he is merely seeking a connection with another human being, perhaps one of the strongest needs there is, the need to not die alone in the world. That is the source of the film's power and relatability. Perhaps the reason people get married is not just to produce offspring, perpetuate the species or maintain inheritence or property rights, but to have someone bear witness to the unfolding of our lives, to give it meaning.
I believe that's also why we have art and film, so that we can witness the lives of others, not because we are voyuers, but because it reminds us of our own lives, loneliness and joy. Empathy and the ability to share stories and dreams is perhaps one of the most human traits there is.
It hurts me to see Travis Bickle seek out virgins and whores, both to no sucess. I do not agree with his methods, but I don't have to, by watching his actions unfold, I am not judging him, but merely bearing neutral witness. Another reason I find films to be a most powerful and humbling medium is because it gives us the point of view of God. God being the director. That framework was more relevant in the 70s when directors such as Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppolla, Michael Cimino, George Lucas, Arthur Penn and Steven Spielberg first wrested control from the studio system to create Easy Rider, Raging Bull and inspire countless generations of filmakers and moviegoers with their audacity and sheer will.
In the pre-industrial age, man was not in conflict with his environment because he needed it to survive. With the invention of electricity, the steam engine, the assembly line and capitalism, urban centers attracted country mice like moths to a flame, but unlike the rural dependence and respect for the land that came with an agriculturally based economy, an industrial center was not necessarily nurturing to it's inhabitants and Mother Nature might have been. Your neighbour could be a pickpocket or a rapist. Economic hardships, lack of education, systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and descrimination turned the previously benefitial tribal concept of unity and turned the urban mentality into one of us versus the other, or the outsider.
In the Bible, Jesus was the radical other. In the the Garden of Eden, mankind lived unified and sustained by nature before he was cast out and turned into his own God by raping the very environment that birthed him. Travis Bickle is a product of his environment. His ideal world of human connection that exists in his head only makes sense to him, and everyone he tries to touch does not trust him and dismisses him as crazy.
His notion of what is ideal is subjected to doubt. The world makes him crazy, or rather, his lack of it. The moral of the story is that no man is an island and if we neglect our brother, he has no recourse but to turn to self and social destruction. It is a parable and Scorsese, being a former altar boy who studied to be a priest before becoming a filmaker has many religious references in his work.
The camera is sometimes placed where a priest might face a congregation. That shot is seen in the previously mentioned scene where Travis is rejected by the virgin Cybil Sheppard. He also tests his mortal flesh against the fires of Hell as a test when he burns his fist in his kitchen. Harvey Keitel does the exact same thing in Scorsese's previous film, the masterpiece that is Mean Streets (1973). He also uses what is known in filmaking terms as the God's eye-view. Simply put, it's where the camera is elavated directly above the subject and looking straight down. Scorsese gives us God's point of view and puts us, the audience in seat of power and tells us to do what we will with that point of perception. We are omnipotent, we see all, we are free to judge, condemn or forgive with Grace.
The troubling conclusion that Travis comes up with in the end that reduces him to an agent of vengeance and death is the sad realization that his ideal of human connection, love and friendship does not exist in this world, all that is left to do then is to destroy it and himself. The challenge of persuing an impossible goal may be a problem of religion itself. We may have been created in His image, and are encouraged to love one another and forgive our sins, but the sins commited in the film are instantly punished by acts of random violence as redemptive justice. It is the God of the Old Testatament that Travis speaks with in such moments. The God that requested the son of Abraham to be sacrificed as a test of faith. The God that requested the firstborn man child of Egypt.
The disturbing conclusion I reached at the end of viewing Taxi Driver was that the better angels of our nature may not be able to withstand the evil of the Devils in this world, but I don't think it matters. The very fact that Travis is trying to reach out to another one of God's creation is an act of unbelievable faith, and in his action, his desires make him human. Like Moses or Martin Luther King, he can see the promised land, but he knows he may not get there but he still tries. That is all that matters.
Robert Brown was right. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what else is a Heaven for?
