Moral Dualism In Taxi Driver

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Moreover, Scorsese adopted a disjunctive editing style in contrast to the classical continuity editing, exploited jump shots and fragmented scenes to generate a mix of engagement and disorientation between the audience and Travis’ split personality. In terms of visual literacy, Scorsese is known for his fluent shift between subjective and objective shots to reinforce the effect. (Rodríguez 2011, p. 181) The frequent use of first-person perspective voiceover and insertion of self-conscious viewpoint shots (Berliner 2010, p. 158) violate the norms of classical Hollywood objective story telling. Instead of relying on motions and conversations to portray the character state of mind, Taxi Driver employed stylized tableau and infiltrated music to …show more content…

Due to the new ratings system, filmmakers were enabled to seek inspiration beyond the restriction of the Production Code. Breaking away from the limited and implicit elaboration of two-sided characters such as the outlaw heroes against official heroes (Ray 1985, p. 59), the reconciliatory combination of moral ambiguity and complexity into one thus became the salient characteristic that divided experimentation and avant-garde films from the typical melodramatic investigation between the good and evil. (King 2002, p. 32) A common phenomenon in Hollywood Renaissance is the use of marginalized individuals as the main character. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver is a disturbed individual devoured by loneliness and moral mysophobia; McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) is a criminal not understood by the society, battling authority in a mental institution; in Harold and Maude …show more content…

With regards to realism, Scorsese himself strives to present authenticity in his films. Although expressionism is the main thread running through Taxi Driver, the vulgar language, the crude image of New York City street scene, the struggle of ordinary people and the subversive political attitudes were all realistically conveyed in the film. Scorsese supposes that his achievement consists of honesty, as he once stated himself, “I just think I tried to depict certain types of places and certain types of people as honestly as possible.” (Emery as cited in Galenson & Kotin 2010, p.

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