To Control or Not to Control: Travis Bickle’s Burden in Taxi Driver

        The 1976 film Taxi Driver by director Martin Scorsese centers around the mentally deteriorating Travis Bickle and his attempt to control the city and the people around him. Travis’ conflict with control is the result of struggling between self-direction and controlling personal fate and a predetermined life that cannot be escaped. This issue with control is vital to the film, because where most people would see Travis as a war-torn, antihero, I see Travis as the product of overbearing forces of control and desire to design his own fate. It is his lack of control and discovery of this deficiency that drives Travis to the downhill spiral of violence and break from reality. Relating Travis to other characters within the film such as the Wizard and Iris, who provide Travis with insight on their own ideas of destiny and control over it, I will better construct the proposed idea of Travis’ burden as the tension between control of one’s fate and predetermined destiny/fate.

            The film follows Travis’ as he moves towards controlled destiny while he attempts to improve his life with getting a job as a taxi driver, finding a girl, and “cleaning up” the city, but when things don’t go as planned, Travis slips into a dark realization that things are out of his hands. Travis wishes to supplement his loneliness and lack of direction by redirecting his life for what he believes is a positive, but after Betsy rejects his advances and Iris ignores his efforts to rescue her, Travis flips the switch and buckles up for a ride of negativity. The scene that captures the change of direction in both Travis and the film itself starts at [1:32:15-1:33:56]. In the shooting script of Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader titles this section “God’s Lonely Man,” which directly reflects Travis’ self-identification as the victim of predestinated fate.

            The scene opens with the sound of shots and immediately the audience is introduced to Travis at the firing range. The scene then moves into Travis’ apartment where we find Travis writing a note and attaching money to the message within the note. A close-up indicates that the letter is to Iris and the money is supposed to be enough for her trip. The letter is dismal and desperate with the message:

            “Dear Iris,

            This money should be enough for your trip. By the time you read this I will be dead.

            Travis.”

A voiceover then chimes in as Travis claims “My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see now. There never has been any choice for me.” Following Travis burning flowers in his apartment and writing his last entry, the camera moves outside to Palantine’s campaign event. By showing the crowd of people and Palantine’s arrival, the film foreshadows direction Travis is about to take. It is clear that Travis believes that since he cannot control his own fate, he has only one choice: kill presidential candidate Charles Palantine and then himself. Following the scene, Travis is seen placing the envelope with Iris’ letter and money in the mailbox as he walks through his visibly deteriorating apartment building. I believe the apartment building, Travis’ home, correlates to Travis’ own deterioration and breakdown.

            Travis’ need to control his life and the people and things associated with him ultimately becomes the trigger for the dissolution of his character and mental state. It is through the lack of control of his fate that Travis’ violent nature and motives surfaces, as does the films own violent subtext becomes evident. I believe that without the understanding of Travis’ realization, as irrational as it may be, the film’s final moments would not hold the weight that they do and Travis will appear as the antihero, “vigilante” that many viewers have come to identify him as, rather than the result of slipping control.

The Crazy Daisy: Sexuality and Pull My Daisy

Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's 1959 short film Pull My Daisy captures the Beat Generation through its spontaneous shots, improvised narration, and the inclusion of various artists, writers, and performers. In a particularly conservative time in American history, Pull My Daisy speaks to the many issues that were opposed or swept under the rug during the 50s-60s, especially questions of sexuality.

One explicit example of Pull My Daisy's comment on sexuality can be found in the opening title sequence. Prior to the film's opening, there is a title card for the production company. That title card reads: "A G-String Enterprise. Copyright 1959. By G-String Enterprises." G-String, huh? A skillful way to introduce the sexually driven force behind the film's narrative by naming the production company (the way the film is made) after the type of underwear often associated with sex appeal and scandalous performances, such as burlesque and exotic dancing. 

Following the title card, there are shots that pan across the various areas that introduce the loft in which the film takes place, but it is the lyrics of the song that plays during the sequence that introduces the film's position on sexuality strongly.

The jazz tune that was produced for the film has lyrics that were written by Jack Kerouac,who also narrates the film. The lyrics heard are: 
                              "Pull my daisy
                               Tip my cup
                               All my doors are open
                               Cut my thoughts for coconuts
                               All my eggs are broken
                               Hop my heart on
                               Harp my height
                               Seraphs hold me steady
                               Hip my angel
                               Hype my light
                               Lay it on the needy."

Seems relatively mild right? Well through research, I found the complete lyrics for the song, and it is explicitly expressing sexuality. There are various lines throughout the song that suggest pleasure and climaxing, for example: "Bone my shadow, Dove my dream, Start my halo bleeding. Milk my mind and make me cream. Drink me when you`re ready." It is evident that this is referencing sex and the explicit description of sexual intercourse from the woman's perspective.

Jack Kerouac's influence on the film extends further than just writing the lyrics to the catchy song in the beginning. He serves as one of the writers of the poem in which the title of the film gets its name from and his play "The Beat Generation", influence Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie to make the film. Kerouac's major influence comes from his position as the narrator of the film. The narration was improvised in a sound room following the film. The chaotic nature of Kerouac's rambling and seemingly unsynchronized dialogue is fundamental for the cinema of the Beat Generation. However, it is the various overlapping of dialogue with images that sexualize his words. There a multiple shots of mouths. Mouths speaking, drinking, blowing on instruments, smoking, etc. These shots may correlate to the idea of oral fixations which are often linked to infant and childhood sexuality (Freud). Also, these shots are often matched or followed by the close-ups of legs and hands interacting with the legs/lap regions. An example can be seen at [11:15-11:20] and again at [13:19-13:26] where conversation is occurring and sexual tension is very present within the scene. The latter of the two is paired with the narration ""It's a kinda strange and interesting evening", says the Bishop."

The film also hints at homosexuality with the close proximity shots of the men often sitting together or on one another, laying together, and touching one another.Referencing back to oral fixations and its link to sexuality, I find it interesting that there are various close-ups that accompany the men playing instruments that require them to blow into the mouthpiece or onto phallic shaped instruments such as a flute. This is another characteristic of the Beat Generation and I believe correlates with the sexual exploration through the cinema that Frank and Leslie wanted to accomplish.


Pull My Daisy explores sexuality in various ways, although not always explicitly displayed on the screen. The writers and other Beat Generation participants worked to produce a film that is traditional in aesthetics and formal techniques, but unorthodox in content and appeal. The various issues of the 50s-60s that were challenged by the members of the Beat Generation are the foundation for Pull My Daisy, and can be justified by the work involved in making the film.

"If You're Yourself, You Won't Get Hurt"

Cassavetes' 1959 film Shadows documents the lives between various New Yorkers living through different occupations, economic status, race, ambitions, etc. The nature of the film and it's production lends to the emergence of experimental cinema and art films. The idea of art is prevalent throughout the entire film and that will be the main focus of this blog entry too.

In the scene [26:24-28:00], the camera introduces the audience to a party. Here we see Lelia discussing how she never intended to be a writer and that the position was thrusted upon her by David. This introduction to Lelia's objection to the idea of being a writer, especially for a profession, is key for many of the elements that influence and drive Shadows. For example, this film comes out of the Beat Generation which surrounds the rise in writers who were interested in rejecting and dismissing societal standards, new styles, experiementation with drugs, sexuality, and various arts, and the interest in the displays of human condition in the world. The scene further ventures into this world of beat writers and intellectuals as we see a woman discussing existentialism with another out of the frame. Lelia's position in this scene and in the party is complicated, because there is an artistic spirit and drive in her that draws her to be surrounded by the elements of the party, and of the culture, yet she cannot be receptive to the forceful nature of commercialized, institutional, societal pressures from the people around her. Her rejection is an attempt to protect herself from being hurt by the masks people wear, the falsity of relationships and ideals, and the idea of "selling out."

Relating Lelia's attitude and response to David's pressure to be a professional writer to the overall theme of shadows and shadowing, it is evident that Lelia's position in society or in the open, art circuit she is attracted to is affected by her decision to either dismiss the standards of society and struggle to find her place or succumb and follow the rules which risks losing the passion or drive. Living in the shadows of other successful people, her friends, and her brothers, I think Lelia searches for a way to be seen, which ultimately leads to giving her self over to Tony in an effort to find love. Even then, a shadow is cast on her when Tony reacts to the reveal that she is partially black, and she is immediately disgusting to him. Her race becomes an issue and another factor that pushes her in the background of life's show, when everyone else seems to be in the spotlight. Both Lelia and her brothers find themselves dealing with the complexity of late-1950s, Beat Generation, New York where being yourself doesn't provide the protection that Lelia suggests towards the end of the scene.