Taxi Driver Critical Analysis

2694 Words11 Pages
Taxi Driver /The Searchers: Still Relatable? One need only peruse his impressive filmography to realize that Martin Scorsese's corpus spans several decades and extends across as many genres. As a veteran filmmaker (and self-proclaimed cinephile) Scorsese must understand that the Western is the oldest Hollywood genre which, like all genres, is defined according to specific motifs, iconography, conventions and themes (Mast, 468). In fact, by deliberately invoking the codes and conventions of the Western to underpin Taxi Driver (1976), he demonstrates his virtuosic mastery of the genre. To be sure, Scorsese's film not only resuscitates this particular kind of narrative, but it goes so far as to mimic one of the most celebrated Westerns of all time, John Ford's The Searchers (1956). The year was 1976 and the American people had just spent the better part of a decade watching the land of the free tear itself into pieces. The American spirit suffered a schism of its mind, body and soul as an entire generation was forced to stand back and watch as this nation’s husbands, brothers, and sons perished, both literally and figuratively, in the chaotic napalmed jungles of Vietnam. The acid laced pipe dreams of the flower child had long since died. No longer was there anything to be groovy about, nothing was hip, even our elected leader showed himself to be nothing but a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So there we were no more Tricky Dick, no more Beatles albums, and no more delusions of a livable Rockwell painting. Normally, when one thinks of the era commonly referred to as the Seventies they think of disco balls and dancing queens, but the sad truth is America had gone from being the beautiful prom queen to a dirty, drug addicted, soulless hooker; a hooker in need of a wakeup call, in need of a hero, and that stretched out street worker of a country found

More about Taxi Driver Critical Analysis

Open Document