'Taxi Driver' Revisited: Racism, Revenge, and the 'Working Class Hero'

Taxi Driver
directed by Martin Scorsese
starring Robert DeNiro, Cybill Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Albert Brooks

Since The Deuce was getting ready to premiere on HBO, about the triple X theaters and prostitution in dirty, old '70s New York, I took another gander at Taxi Driver. I remember seeing it in the theater when it first came out, when I was still a teen. I viewed it through a teenager's lens. It was then a film about a deeply disturbed, misguided individual bent on making his mark in the big city and in some way rising above the lot that was dealt to him. That's how I interpreted the movie then.

I've seen Taxi Driver several times since. It's not my favorite Scorsese film; there is something deeply disturbing, subversive, and depraved about it in addition to its surface violence and depiction of New York's underworld. And I'm embarrassed to say that only recently has the film's profound and pathological racism gotten under my skin. It could be the fact of my age, or the current political and social climate where a certain stratum of white people have found it perfectly acceptable to air and act upon their racist views.

How could I ignore the racism in previous viewings? Well, as a woman of color who loves storytelling on screen, I've had to shift my thinking. After all, until very recently, most films produced by Hollywood have either racist or misogynist imagery, messages, and world views. Like black people who code switch, changing up their verbal expression depending on whether they are speaking to blacks or to whites, I had to switch up my mind -- and repress my outrage -- in order to accept the realities portrayed in most films. Yes, it can make you dizzy and a little bit schizophrenic, but that's the way things are in a world where white skin and white values are treated as the unquestionable default setting. I learned to take things at face value, to look at the art and dissect it later. Watching Taxi Driver this week, at this age (almost 60), and in this climate of racial unrest, gave me a new perspective on the film.

Travis Bickle appears to be just your average, middle American, working-class guy -- today, probably your classic Trump voter. He's served his country by fighting in Vietnam. He comes to New York with dreams of making something of himself but the reality appalls him: the film's imagery seems to show that he views the city as a cesspool, overrun with crime and filth but most of all, overrun with black people. He wants to make America great again, and in his mind, the way to do it is to strike back against those responsible.

It's no accident that his story unfurls against the background of a political campaign, with Palantine representing the liberal, laissez-faire, college-educated, progressive class. Bickle says he's not into politics, but his impossible pursuit of Cybill Shepherd's upper-crust campaign worker is rooted in the struggle between the working class and the privileged class. He's attracted to Betsy not so much in a romantic way, because his character is oddly inexperienced and asexual, but because of the white values she represents, and everything to which he feels he is entitled. He pursues her because of an irrepressible desire to win and then to humiliate her, knock her down several pegs, and bring her down to his level. That's really why he takes her to a Triple X film, to rub her face in filth.

Yet, the audience is supposed to view Travis as an upstanding young man. He works hard. He's served his country. He writes long (misleading)letters to the folks back home, and even sends them money. He takes neither drugs nor drink. And his motives in saving a 12-year-old prostitute from the streets are entirely motivated by his sense of kindness and justice.

Travis' unspoken bigotry against blacks builds through the film's imagery and reaction shots over several scenes. But it becomes palpable in the scene where he drives a vengeful husband, played by Scorsese himself, to a street corner to sit and watch a woman's silhouette in a second-floor window. "That's my wife up there," says the passenger. "You know who lives there? You know who lives there? A n----r lives there." Travis says nothing as the raving passenger declares that he's going to shoot both the wife and her lover and describes how he plans to maim her. Travis' silence in the face of this rant shows unspoken agreement, tacit approval of this plan, for certainly a white woman deserves retribution not only for adultery but a truly violent end for consorting with a black man.

The mood carries over to the very next scene, where Travis stops at a late-night cafeteria where fellow taxi drivers hang out. As he gets his coffee, a group of drivers gossip, with the Wizard telling a story about a gay couple who come to blows in his cab. Wizard says he doesn't care what two men do in the privacy of their own homes, a statement that lowers him in Travis' eyes. The only African American driver sits somewhat apart from the group, wearing darker clothes and dark glasses over his dark face. "Travis, you got that money you owe me?" His question carries with it a sense of a threat. Coming so soon after the previous scene, the audience can't help but unconsciously associate the black taxi driver with the unseen black lover who may or may not catch a bullet for daring to touch a white man's wife. Travis immediately pays up without a word.

Already in turmoil about his inarticulate feelings of rage and frustration, Travis then seeks advice from The Wizard, the taxi drivers' acknowledged leader, played by Peter Boyle, but it's an exercise in futility; the Wizard lost his authority with Travis the minute he admitted that he had a level of acceptance for gays. Wizard's rambling, "we're all fucked anyway" advice to take it easy or just get laid is toothless and somewhat immoral as far as Travis is concerned. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard," says Travis to the Wizard's no-help help. No, the Wizard and other "gutless" whites were part of the problem, not the solution, thinks Travis. His attitude is underscored at the start of the scene by a black man who passes by and stares Travis down. The camera follows to a couple of black prostitutes being harassed by young black boys on the corner. Black people are the source of all societal ills, is what the film seems to say.

It is right after this that Travis makes up his mind to do something about it, and gains an introduction to the traveling gun salesman Easy Andy, who also makes disparaging comments about blacks ("I could sell this to a jungle bunny in Harlem for 500 bucks, but I only sell high-quality goods to the right people," he says). The camera lingers lovingly across a broad arsenal of weapons, most of which Travis purchases. The scene is a reminder to me of middle America's "pry it out of my cold dead hands" love of gun ownership, of all of those voters who refuse to pass legislation banning or limiting guns; at its core, this idea that average Americans (whites) should not be deprived of access to weapons stems from -- I believe -- a profound fear and hatred of people of color and the deep-seated belief that the only way to keep them in their place is through the use of violent force masquerading as self-defense.

The film doesn't completely follow through with its racist convictions in the casting of Harvey Keitel as the pimp Sport, who manages Iris. But Keitel's portrayal indicates an ethnic flair (Puerto Rican, wigger?). I read that in the original Paul Schrader script, all of the victims of Travis' final-reel killing spree were African-American, but that was changed so as not to completely offend audiences of color. The race of Sport was probably changed for the same reason.

In the end, psychotic, bigoted, trigger-happy Travis gets away with his threat to Palantine as well as the serial murder of several lowlifes because he was saving a young white girl, the streetwalker Iris (who never asked him to save her). He is in fact celebrated for his actions. Iris' parents send him glowing letters of thanks, he receives public accolades, and even Betsy, whom he picks up in his taxi later, expresses admiration.

Travis Bickle is a hero to many, which is why his "You talking to me?" monologue continues to be so celebrated. While it is a bravura piece of acting, it's also the "don't fuck with me" challenge of a man who is ready to face down all threats, emboldened by the gun concealed up his sleeve. Revenge is one of America's favorite narratives, on and off the screen. Bickle gets his. He walks among us and he's probably just getting started.