The Narcissistic Masculinity of Travis Bickle: American ‘Reality’ in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver Waldemar Pauw Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Stellenbosch University Supervisor: Prof Edwin Hees December 2006 Declaration I, the undersigned, hereby declare that the work contained in this assignment/thesis is my own original work and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it at any university for a degree. Signature:……………………….. Date:……………………………... ii Summary In this thesis, I examine the way in which Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver can be read as a critical investigation of post-World War II American masculinity. Drawing on Susan Faludi’s arguments regarding the post-World War II American ‘masculinity crisis’, I highlight specifically how Taxi Driver addresses American masculinity in the context of ideals of heroism, of the myth of the Wild West, of the Vietnam era, and of the increasingly influential role that the popular media play in shaping conceptions of masculinity. In the process I indicate that Taxi Driver exposes, and critiques, an association in modern American society between masculinity and what analysts have termed the ‘myth of regeneration through violence’. Opsomming In hierdie tesis bestudeer ek hoe Martin Scorsese se 1976 film Taxi Driver gelees kan word as kritiese studie van Amerikaanse konsepsies van ‘manlikheid’ in die tweede helfte van die twintigste eeu. Binne die raamwerk van Susan Faludi se werk ten opsigte van die moderne Amerikaanse ‘manlikheidskrisis’ lig ek uit hoe Taxi Driver Amerikaanse manlikheid ondersoek, met spesifieke verwysing na ideale van heldhaftigheid, na die Amerikaanse mite van die wilde weste, na die Vietnam-era en die invloed van die Vietnam oorlog, en na die toenemend belangrike rol wat die media speel in die konstruksie van opvattings van ‘manlikheid’. In my argument dui ek daarop dat Taxi Driver ‘n assosiasie in moderne Amerikaanse samelewing tussen opvattings van ‘manlikheid’ en die sogenaamde ‘mite van hernuwing deur geweld’ uitwys en kritiseer. iii Contents 1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………….……1 2. The American Masculinity Crisis …………………………………………….…...6 3. A discussion of key formal elements in Taxi Driver ……………………….…..36 4. Taxi Driver’s investigation of American celluloid heroism ……………….……52 5. Two great American frontiers: the Wild West, and Vietnam ………….…...….81 6. Image and Reality in Taxi Driver ……………………………………….………112 7. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………….……….125 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………...126 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION It was almost as if there were no peace unless one could fight well, kill well (if always with honour), love well and love many, be cool, be daring, be dashing, be wild, be wily, be resourceful, be a brave gun. And this myth, that each of us was born to be free, to wander, to have adventure and to grow on the waves of the violent, the perfumed, and the unexpected, had a force which could not be tamed…Indeed a quarter of the nation’s business must have depended upon its existence. Norman Mailer, 1963 What has become of the horseman, the cow-puncher, the last romantic figure upon our soil? For he was romantic. Whatever he did, he did with his might. The bread that he earned was earned hard, the wages that he squandered were squandered hard... Well, he will be among us always, invisible, waiting his chance to live and play as he would like. His wild kind has been among us always, since the beginning, a young man with his temptations, a hero without wings. Owen Wister, preface to The Virginian (1902) Since its release in 1976, Martin Scorsese’s classic film Taxi Driver has attracted a great deal of attention, both academic and popular, both laudatory and critical. Among the vast numbers of overviews and analyses of Taxi Driver, many point out the film’s treatment of the identity of the 1970’s American subject, and some specifically point out that the film examines modern American conceptions of masculinity. In this thesis I propose to indicate in detail the full extent to which Taxi Driver serves as such an examination of modern American masculinity. For, with the benefit of thirty years of hindsight – thirty years which have, moreover, yielded a sizeable body of analyses regarding what has become known as an American ‘masculinity crisis’ – Scorsese’s film can be read as an extensive, multifaceted interrogation of post-World War II American masculinity, an interrogation which, furthermore, corresponds specifically with recent 1 insights pertaining to this ‘masculinity crisis’. In order to analyze Taxi Driver in this way, I will draw on the discourse concerning American conceptions of masculinity generally and on recent discourse concerning the American ‘masculinity crisis’ in particular. In this latter regard, I will draw chiefly on the work of feminist journalist Susan Faludi, who examines a crisis in post-World War II American masculinity in her book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modern Man (2000). Perhaps the crucial basic premise of Faludi’s argument is that American society’s conceptions of masculinity (in other words, its expectations of acceptable and commendable male behaviour) have become unrealistic and dysfunctional in today’s social reality. She proceeds to sketch the proportions of the ‘masculinity crisis’ in terms of such notions as the influence of the media on conceptions of masculinity, the effects of the Vietnam War on the psyche of the American male, the phenomenon of ‘celebrity’ or ‘ornamental’ masculinity, and the display value of violence in connoting masculinity. Using Faludi’s argument as a central paradigm, with reference to numerous additional analysts of American masculinity and American popular culture (Anthony Clare and Richard Slotkin, most notably), I will discuss how Taxi Driver can be read as exposing and investigating this American ‘masculinity crisis’. Through the portrayal of its central character, Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver can be understood as interrogating such notions as American society’s conceptions of male heroism, the important role of the Wild West frontier (and of the more recent ‘frontier’ of Vietnam) in American society’s conceptions of masculinity, and the increasing importance of mediated representations of reality (films, for instance) in shaping society’s understanding of reality – and specifically, here, society’s conceptions of masculinity – in post-modern culture. I will indicate in detail how such an interrogation on the part of Taxi Driver coincides rather neatly with Susan Faludi’s views on post-World War II American masculinity. I will analyze Taxi Driver through the lens of masculinity crisis theory, thus, in much the same way that a film like Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992), for example, can be read according to feminist theory. Taxi Driver can be seen to investigate American society’s conceptions of masculinity, and the ensuing problematic implications of such conceptions, in a similar way that many ‘feminist’ films did (and do) the same for society’s conceptions of femininity. However, unlike some other firmly established 2 paradigms (for example, mainstream feminist theories), the paradigm of masculinity crisis theory has not yet quite been canonized in the academic world; moreover, as I have noted, I propose to draw predominantly on a specific strand of masculinity crisis theory that has been expounded in recent years by such writers as Susan Faludi, a strand which may be even less well established. Therefore, a separate chapter will be reserved wholly for the explanation of the specific paradigm of masculinity crisis theory that I will refer to during the course of the thesis. This separate explanation will comprise the second chapter of the thesis, and will draw on arguments, as I have suggested, set forth by various current and recent masculinity crisis theorists. The work of Susan Faludi will inform the central argument most crucially here, though there will be additional reference to numerous other analysts of the American masculinity crisis like John Beynon and Anthony Clare. The discussion will also incorporate views of scholars of popular American culture and American history, including Richard Slotkin and Thomas Engeman. The chapter will examine the nature of the masculinity crisis through discussion of the most evident social symptoms of the crisis, and will include a discussion of notable causes of the crisis that have been identified by masculinity crisis theorists. I will highlight how the crisis has been informed by American ideals of heroic masculinity (specifically, the ‘rugged individual’ heroic type), by the importance in American popular and ideological imagination of the notion of a frontier, by women’s rise in power, and by the way in which the American media, most notably the institution of Hollywood, perpetuates and encourages possibly dysfunctional conceptions of masculinity. Even more importantly, I will emphasize the argument – proposed by Faludi – that violence, or what I will specifically call ‘ornamental violence’, has come to stand as a key signifier for masculinity in America. The largely sociological matter of the masculinity crisis having been treated, the discussion will move, in the third chapter of this thesis, to a formalist analysis of Martin Scorsese’s film, Taxi Driver. In this chapter Taxi Driver will be discussed out of the context of the masculinity crisis, and simply in technical terms (in other words, in terms of narrative, style,