Taxi Driver and Catholic Guilt

In my opinion the 70’s (at least in terms of its art) was an extension of the 60’s. Especially watching the movies of that time, I feel that the 70’s was the 60’s with more depth. Films like Taxi Driver have something that 60’s movies like The Graduate are missing, and that is a form of guilt. You can feel the emptiness in many 60’s pictures; they have the audacious aspect which is appropriate, but really not the artistic personal view. It’s in Taxi Driver; both Martin Scorsese (the director) Paul Schrader (the screenwriter) and Robert De Niro (the actor) all express their view of loneliness in this modern Dosteyeskyian view on life; Dostoevsky updated becomes more gothic than anything else. This view was so appropriate for New York in the 70’s because at that time certain aspects of the city really were a cesspool. The depth that transpires in the movie comes from the fact that even though the filmmakers agree with Travis Bickle’s view, they admit that he goes too far and is indeed mentally sick. That’s a form of complexity. Not to mention the fact that both the director and screenwriter came from very Catholic backgrounds, and yet show all this violence. What they show is ultimately a form of Catholic guilt, where all the times you’ve been introverted in your religion you as a person have missed all the horror stories that have transpired throughout your life. It’s like not admitting that New York was at that time a horrible place. These filmmakers have realized that they have shared in that blasé view of life, and that now they have to express their guilt in their art; there is no better way to depict horror or reality. Scorsese is also a sensualist and expressionist filmmaker, so we as an audience are not just watching this atrocity story as if it were merely a news event, but are actually experiencing what’s happening to this character. That doesn’t mean we want to participate in violence; rather, we realize what’s wrong with Travis while experiencing what he’s feeling. It’s an interior view that rarely is experienced in movies; rather, it’s usually experienced in novels. You can’t get inside Benjamin’s head.

I don’t understand the negativity that many historians have of the 70’s; they certainly do not have the same view of the 60’s. Many history books that I have read show the 70’s as being an empty time where not much happened except for copious amounts of consumerism. Well, didn’t the 60’s have the same qualities? Historians feel that people in the 60’s participated in many forms of political opposition towards the government. If anything, there’s more of that in the 70’s (however subtle). The distrust of government (which is not necessarily a good thing) reached a new peak in the 70’s after Nixon and Watergate. Just look at the movies during that time, like Taxi Driver. The presidential candidate that Travis is obsessed with (this all has to do with the fact that he wanted to badly date a woman that worked for his campaign) is almost assassinated by him. The film contains more depth than is apparent; an audience member feels the quality of the work subconsciously. All of this insane political fervor and distrust of the government that Travis is feeling stemmed from him not falling in love. That’s truly disturbing because it’s almost comic and horrific; that’s the quality that 70’s movies had.