I can speak from personal experience on this one: Taxi Driver (1976)
When I first watched it (admittedly I was only 13 or so at the time) I pretty much took it as a story about
spoiler
a socially-warped but well-meaning hero who stood up against the baddies and won, and saved the girl in the process.
Watching it a few years later, the true horror of it became clear to me, and the contemptible piece of shit Travis Bickle is was made obvious. I think I was just too young to get it, but I was also a huge De Niro fan and so, whatever his character was, I was ride or die with him.
Travis Bickle predicted incel mass shooters. People seem to think he was the cool antihero he thought himself to be, I often see his face in people’s profile pics and on cringy self-aggrandising quote memes. He was a disgusting pig of a man and the film is not a celebration of anything he did. On the contrary.
Travis Bickle is an antihero, technically, but antiheroes do good through evil means or for evil reasons. It’s hard to argue that Travis didn’t ultimately do something good. But it’s also clear that he could just as well have done something evil, like shoot up a pizza restaurant because of its supposed basement.
I can speak from personal experience on this one: Taxi Driver (1976)
When I first watched it (admittedly I was only 13 or so at the time) I pretty much took it as a story about
spoiler
a socially-warped but well-meaning hero who stood up against the baddies and won, and saved the girl in the process.
Watching it a few years later, the true horror of it became clear to me, and the contemptible piece of shit Travis Bickle is was made obvious. I think I was just too young to get it, but I was also a huge De Niro fan and so, whatever his character was, I was ride or die with him.
Travis Bickle predicted incel mass shooters. People seem to think he was the cool antihero he thought himself to be, I often see his face in people’s profile pics and on cringy self-aggrandising quote memes. He was a disgusting pig of a man and the film is not a celebration of anything he did. On the contrary.
Travis Bickle is an antihero, technically, but antiheroes do good through evil means or for evil reasons. It’s hard to argue that Travis didn’t ultimately do something good. But it’s also clear that he could just as well have done something evil, like shoot up a pizza restaurant because of its supposed basement.
The only thing I know about the movie is that incels love it, and that alone is why I wont watch it.