Travis Bickle As An Anti-Hero In The Taxi Driver

Whether they are wearing capes or rags, fighting crime or injustice, movie heroes are some of our most influential cultural icons. However, heroes are not just wholesome, good willing and lovable rogues but also prickly anti-heroes. Travis Bickle is solitary, disenfranchised and even homicidal. His power has been stripped away from him and he’s taking a violently socially unacceptable route to get it back with rage and murder. But those are very real urges. Urges that are mostly supressed by functional members of our modern society but identifying with an anti-hero provides us with an acceptable outlet to express these dark desires and live out these unacceptable lives. They are a blow off valve for the darker more repressed parts of our psyche and they allow us to live out a very human evil without actually being a very human evil which is exactly why they’re important.
Society often reflects itself upon its population. No matter if a citizen may hate the worst parts of that society or not. The essence or darker parts of society linger on people and on the streets and in
The characters are all flawed. What I enjoy about it a lot is it challenges how consciously you critique perspective and what you think you’re being led to. When I first watched the film years ago, I felt uncomfortable at the racism Bickle harbours. But this does not mean the film is a racist film. It is a film about a racist. This key distinction becomes clear when we acknowledge that it is a first person character study. Bickle is our point of view and we perceive the events of the film through him. When he talks to himself, we share his head space. We have to understand that just because he sees things as black and white, what he determines is good from evil, he is the driver but we are only a passenger. He betrays us, but society rewards him for his violence. That is the