Analyzing Evil: Travis Bickle From Taxi Driver

Welcome everyone to the forty-second episode of Analyzing Evil! Our feature villain for this video is Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for watching. If you have any feedback or questions feel free to let me know below!

The song in this video, Tana Slip Into the Abyss, was provided by CO.AG Music. You can find more of their work here:

#RobertDeNiro #TravisBickle #TaxiDriver

[invadervim]

The thought of a bunch of dudes sitting in a dark public space watching porn together is just so weird to me.

[darksepheroth]

I love how Robert De Niro had a role in Joker. The way I see it, that was him giving his blessing to a movie that was heavily influenced by his classic.

[eduardodiaz]

Fun fact: John Hinckley Jr, the dude who shot Reagan, was obsessed with this character, he even said he tried to assassinate the former president to impress Jodie Foster.

[offabeam]

one thing you didnt mention is that travis wouldve blown his head off in front of Iris if he didnt run out of ammo. He really didnt care how she felt in that moment, and wouldve added to her trauma

[henrikhansen]

Travis is not evil - he does not take pleasure in the suffering of others, even those he himself made to suffer.

Deeply troubled and disturbed - but not evil.

[finney]

Travis states that: "Loneliness has followed him his entire life" which tells us that he's been a loner his entire life.

Great insight there.

[JacktheKnife]

I think Travis’ style of dress (cowboy boots, western style shirts, etc.) might indicate he’s from rural America. Look at what everyone else is wearing; polyester shirts, ties and slick shoes. You don’t even see many other ppl in the movie wearing blue jeans except for Travis.

[jaxjams]

i sorta think of this series as “i’m analyzing the concept of evil through characters that do bad things” rather then “i’m analyzing EVIL characters”

[JayDonagh]

When he met Iris it gave him some sort of purpose in his life, he was never a fully immoral villain and we know he did have compassion in him; albeit a little twisted. When he met someone who was extremely young and on an incredibly destructive path, maybe he saw a bit of his younger self in her or at least saw where her trajectory was heading. In his mind, he considered fixating on her safety as a healthy occupation for him, a goal.

[samgott]

No lie, I’ve known more than a few “Travis Bickles” working on the graveyard shift. They’re out there man. That’s the most disturbing part of Taxi Driver. The story is fiction, but that shits as true as it gets.

[JimFinley]

A couple of thoughts about Travis and his relationship with the Marine Corps:
1. A lot of Marines join looking to escape a sense of isolation, wanting to fit in. Another aspect is a desire to overcome anxiety and insecurity. I was typical when I enlisted. I remember a billboard showing three Marines in dress blues, standing shoulder to shoulder, looking cockily down out of the billboard with the caption, "MAYBE You Can Be One of Us." They didn't look as if they were insecure about anything, and they looked like they were each part of tight-knit fellowship. I didn't enlist because of that billboard. I was going to do it anyway for more pragmatic reasons. That billboard surely struck a couple of chords with me, though.
I remember boot camp being hard, but not as hard as I had expected, and on graduation day, I realized that I'd been anticipating feeling like the person I wanted to be - sure of myself, no longer anxious and insecure, no longer lonely. Instead, I was still just me. Didn't feel any different, and I was bitterly disappointed. Later on I did feel that sense of being part of something bigger than myself, a sense of belonging to a tribe, and of a lot of faith in my own strength and resilience.
2. When he was doing pullups in his apartment, he was wearing a Marine Corps T-shirt, but he had it on inside out so that the Marine Corps emblem and script were reversed. Might have been coincidence, but it could also have been an oblique reference to his situation being the photographic negative of the personhood he had hoped to find in the Corps.

I have to disagree with your faith in the police and the correctional system, though. I worked in corrections after I retired from the Marine Corps and had a fair amount of interaction with both the corrections side and the law enforcement side of that system. I hate to say it, but your trust in the police to intervene effectively to rescue Iris is giving them too much credit - it might happen, but you wouldn't be able to count on it, and her interaction with the police might be almost as traumatic as with Matthew. There's a pretty good chance she would even have been arrested along with the men. And if the villans did go to prison, pimping a teenage girl would not be seen by most other inmates as pedophilia, so it would not have made them pariahs or targets.
I agree that Travis killing the men in front of Iris further traumatized her, but I think that the best thing to do would have been to pick her up from the street and rescue her that way, without having to shoot anyone but without having to rely on the system to be as open-minded and compassionate toward her as he was. That system would have almost certainly have disappointed him.

[marinoscarpa]

a real doomer, very weird the fact that a character from a 70's movie would be so relatable by the outsiders of the last generations... what a movie

[thetoothbrushfromnisemonog]

Easily one of the greatest films ever made! Travis has to be one of the most complex and fascinating characters ever written, and the entire film has such a perfect tone and atmosphere, everything about it is so masterful done.

[imjack]

"If you hold a high moral view of yourself in society, it would be in your best interest to congregate with like-minded people and not attempt to find in others, the values you assume they'll hold based on your own superficial assumptions." Damn.

[vaporweeb]

Hey may be a lonely social outcast, but man the way he talked to Betsy into going out with him was hella smooth.
Much better than what I could have ever done.

[humanothumqn]

This whole video reminds me of when kids in school are told to tell a teacher about bullying but then the staff doesn't actually do anything to intervene

[XiyuYang]

I’m not sure I would categorize Travis as an evil character, he was troubled and disturbed, but evil?

[JustTooDamnHonest]

Travis Bickle was indeed a walking/living contradiction. But instead of doing something like killing a politician. He saves a girl from child prostitution and kills 3 men. So my viewpoint on that is this. Travis saved that girl from a fate worse then death and if she was more damaged but is still alive it is a lot better then her previous work.

Some times being the hero doesn't earn you the respect and admiration of people and there are many heroes who have died doing the right thing rather then doing nothing and that has earned them various types of reactions.

Because sometimes doing the right thing is a lot harder then doing nothing at all. I'm not freeing Travis Bickle from this because before he did his deed he wanted to commit political assassination and there was so many things that could've helped him even back then but he chose his path and the end result is what we got.

Here are my suggestion for your next video Vile Eye.
-El Sueno from Wildlands
-Griffith from Berserk

[herr]

I disagree about the Iris stuff.Wizard gave him the good advice to "Go get laid." Hormones mess with young men and getting laid helps abate their affect. He was attracted to her, but ONCE she told him her real age he realizes he can not sleep with her. She is not the young adult he thought she was, but rather an underage girl and a victim. Biology takes a back seat and Travis' morality takes over. He is not an animal. He will not give in to his base desires like Sport's customers.

[randomguy]

“Half the population is full of Travis Bickles now”- Martin Scorsese