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Originally Posted by pepper_green
random ZZ Top and Thin Lizzy songs. another day of working and sweating and beer drinking. what else is there to do with life? not work? how do you receive money? I like working hard for peanuts.
you get to a certain point in life when you hear that guy from Taxi Driver giving advice to Travis and yr like.....that makes a ton of sense! he's right and yr crazy and bored. wasn't Travis a virgin in that movie anyway? fat and goth.
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As usual, I'm not sure how to take this, or whether or not to credit it as a serious question.... But I'm fucking fascinated by Taxi Driver, even though I haven't seen it in about 10 years.
I don't think I recall anything about Travis being a virgin. He was an ex-marine, so he probably got a little lay from Iris's East Asian counterparts, but he may well have been an "emotional virgin"; someone who has engaged in the physical act of sex without ever being exposed to the intimacy and safety of sex based on love.
This might explain his odd fixation and disgust with pornography, his association of sex with violence and his inability to understand social norms for courting behavior.
I think a lot of the story is rooted in events that happen outside the narrative of the story we see. The ending, for example... Which, incidentally, reminds me of the ending to The Graduate, described below:
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Quote from Wikipedia:
However, in the final shot, Benjamin's smile gradually fades to an enigmatic, neutral expression as he gazes forward down the bus, not looking at Elaine. Elaine first looks lovingly across at Ben but notices his demeanor and turns away with a similar expression as the bus drives away, taking the two lovers towards a future of uncertainty.
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In both films there seems to be an honest hope for redemption acting as the driving force for the main character (Travis and Benjamin, respectively), and both films climax in an against-all-odds realization of the main character's fantasy. For Travis, it's his desire to be "a person", and "to be known", which he achieves by resorting to unscrupulous violence under the pretense of protecting a young girl. He's really just forcing his will on her, and forcing himself on the world that he loathes so much. Then he becomes a "hero", which seems a terribly unlikely outcome, but once that definitely suites his distinct psychopathy.
Benjamin's fantasy is realized when he crashed the wedding, in a big "movie-moment" that just doesn't add up with the rest of the film. It's a "happy ending" until his expression changes and he realizes that he has "rebelled" himself into a cage, and the thought that he has no idea who he is with, who he is or where he's going dawns on him, returning him to the state he's in at the beginning of the film.
Travis has a similar moment of blank staring, revealing that something is not right in this heroic ending, and suggesting that Travis is only a hero because of the time and place where his violent urges were realized. At the end you wonder if he's instead a monster... Or if he died I. The shoot-out and was arrested, and is drooling on himself in a padded cell... Or if the entire shoot out was part of a fantasy, and he's still sitting in a porno theatre.
Otherwise the films have nothing in common, but locations of both stories (NYC, Pasadena) are oppressive and horrifying in their own way. And both stories focus on an individual who feels perpetually out of sync with the world around them. Taxi Driver always felt like a commentary on war and the desensitization to (and reliance on) violence that it can instill in people. The Graduate feels like a commentary on upper-class standards of perfection which revolve around seemingly perfect relationships that are anything but, and also the academic pressures of "growing up" on cue.
Ugh what the fuck.