the wrath of Scorsese’s lone lobe, who today would be a Trumpist “incel”

After its release, in February 1976, the nocturnal odyssey of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a lonely and marginalized man who travels every night in a taxi through the New York urban jungle, is an unpleasant experience of the present.

taxi driver, Directed by Martin Scorsese three years older and written by Paul Schrader, the film shows a city that doesn’t exist and a trauma, the Vietnam War, that you seem to have overcome.

However, the quiet anger of this taxi driver of today echoes the frustration, misogyny and demise of the hyper-connected society, but every time more alienated and lonely.

Filmed a year later in Spain, the film delves into the psyche of a young ex-combatant from Vietnam who, faced with insomnia, decides to become a taxi driver and spends his time traveling. in New York save, dirty and hairy from the media of the 70s.

A very distinctive decade due to the post-Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, which created an atmosphere of defiance and crisis in the streets. Likewise, Schrader wrote the guide at a very complicated personal time when he was divorced and living poorly in his old homes.

Hex a sense of noise and humiliation through the character of Bickle, as the cab functions as a metaphor for sunshine.

“Taxi driver It’s a portrait generation that you don’t believe in anything and who contemplates life with an explosive combination of anxiety and indifference”, reflected the columnist Rafael Narbona in this periodical. An act that unsettlingly dialogues with the deranged nihilism of the 21st century.

“All the animals are up at night. Every day these streets are cleaned,” comes the inner voice of Bickle, who in his paranoid delusions is erected into a kind of the coming angel.

Bickle, who never listens to any customer, drives a taxi from prostitutes to trained executives, and you always have to be careful when the blood and sexual fluids of asients are passing by.

The more you clean your car, the more you will believe in the good outside. Usual porn movies era, to blame the moral corruption in the urban environment that occurs every night.

Movie Subraya man’s internal racism through his fantasy of “cleansing” the city, the racial tensions that Scorsese’s camera captures through encounters with the Black Panthers—a historic 1960s armed group that managed to resurrect ICE detainees in Minnesota—and in neighborhoods like Harlem, which the protagonist identifies as focusing on the degradation of contemporary society.

Without much purpose, Bickle becomes obsessed with a young girl on his street, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign volunteer for senator and presidential candidate Charles Palantine.

He is idealistic, even trying to get involved in a political campaign to win her over, but when he takes her to see a porno under his middle name, he finds himself horrified.

Before the negative, he decides to cover it daily in his work, but it was brought home as a detonator of his hatred: “Now I will tell you how much it seems to mecold and distant. And a lot of people from there are like that, women,” says Bickle.

The turn of romance and misogyny is one of the mistakes the main character gets Taxi driver AND the forerunner of the universe incel (involuntary celibacy): men who turn rechazo into a structured and violent rencor hacia las women.

In the current cultural climate, Travis Bickle could be considered a incel that it runs dark corners of the internet instead of the busy streets of Midtown.

Writer Jia Tolentino, in an essay Anger of incels (2018) published online The New Yorkerexplains how this community is usually online – why so much was said at the end of the series Adolescence- it has been associated with terrorism and various crimes, such as the comedies of Elliot Rodger in California and Alek Minassian in Toronto.

Before his asesinatos, Rodger tried to declare “war on women” desex them and this message continues to circulate in social forums and circles.

It is not adventurous to bind this archetype — very present in it as well Joker (2019) – on the ecosystem that Donald Trump legitimizes: hombres agraviados por los progresses feministas who fantasizes, ademási, with a violent purity similar to the one you bring up about the anti-immigration policy, ICE.

As happened in the villain movie starring Joaquin Phoenix, these initially seemingly harmless characters can turn into a larger radicalized group that aims to terrorize society.

En Taxi driverthis male fantasy takes a very specific form. Following Betsy Bickle’s journey, she decides to get fit and fight with an arsenal of weapons.

Interestingly, the famous scene in which De Niro practices with his pistols in front of the table — “Are you talking to me?” — was born out of the actor’s improvisation, which was later inspired by a phrase he said to Bruce Springsteen in concert.

This sequence is condensing lone lobe essence who performs a great act in front of an imaginary audience. As his delusions take shape and he plans to convince a presidential candidate who supports Betsy, the protagonist tries to redeem his darkest desires by freeing Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old prostitute exploited by his prostitute (Harvey Keitel).

Try in any way to restore the purity that prostitution cost her, even if she wanted to please mananza.

The ambiguous ending of Scorsese’s film contains two equally troubling readings. In the most realistic way, society makes a hero of an apparently unstable man just because he directed violence against the “bad guys”, and Travis, finally validated, seems to find a place in the world.

Even though it’s a last look in the rearview mirror, masterfully shot, it reflects that the hatred remains intact, just better disguised.

In the second reading we see only the fever dream and final delirium of the greatness of a man who has never been questioned or respected except in his own head.