TYPOLOGICAL INTERTEXTUALITY:
Character Studies, a subgenre of Drama, between the films Joker (2019) and Taxi driver (1976)
Fletcher Howell
Intertextuality is the act of one creative work reflecting or mindfully referencing the content of another property. This can be seen in a variety of ways, such as franchise films continuing the lore of a previous entry. Films like ‘The Fast and Furious, Hobbs and Shaw’, and ‘Ghostbusters Afterlife’ are recent examples of films that use intertextuality as a marketing strategy to revive franchises and build spinoff series. It comes in two main varieties, referential, and typological. Referential borrows dialogue, characters, items or locations within the diegesis of a text to boost audience enjoyment through familiarity, recognition, or more often in the case of Disney films, nostalgia. Typological is more involved with the structural or thematic elements of a text and is how genres and cliches are built. One of these genres that have seen a modern return to its roots in the character study, also called loner cinema, a sub-genre of drama films that seek to explore complex and twisted characters in thrilling, often dystopian interpretations of our society. A recent character study film that smashed box office records for comic book movies was ‘Joker’, a somewhat controversial Todd Phillips film that unapologetically reinterpreted Martin Scorsese’s 1976 hit film, ‘Taxi Driver’ in a way that would appeal to modern audiences. In this essay, I will lay out the narrative and thematic similarities and differences between these two properties, and explain the how and why behind this pseudo-remake.
The first glaring comparison to be made between these two character studies is, of course, the characters the films aim to study. Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro), the mentally ill taxi driver from New York City in the ’70s, suffering from a form of PTSD, and his modern counterpart Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix.) A mentally ill, traumatized clown for hire from Gotham. Which is a dystopian reimagining of Manhattan. As archetypes, they fit the theme set up by Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic loner film, Le Samourai. Which set a precedent for the loner archetype. Mark Nicholls at the University of Melbourne wrote a thesis about male melancholia, which set out to explore and define the characters of loner cinema. In his words, “melancholia is a cultural condition further validating the already privileged male in patriarchy by converting notions of femininity, loss and impairment to a state of empowerment.” This is the lens through which we can analyse the pitiful characters Fleck and Bickle, and criticise their fictional actions.
Both characters have a complex relationship with their environments, displaying as much disdain for their living conditions as they revel in their filthy behaviour. Travis Bickle is a deranged insomniac, scarred from his experience in the Vietnam war, living alone in a city with a growing crime rate, and his disgust with New York is apparent, during his many night outings in his taxi, Bickle muses to himself about the ‘scum’ that inhabit the streets, he berates prostitutes, frowning upon pimps and sex workers. Yet, also frequents pornographic theatres. In a way that Martin Scorsese describes as “repulsed by it, yet surrounds himself with it so that he can torture himself with it, and then eventually act out against it.” Similarly, Arthur Fleck builds his violent tendencies of growing hatred for Gotham, the apartment he and his mother inhabit, and dwells on his loneliness much like Travis. During his boyish tantrums, he points out mounting issues in waste and states that people don’t care and respect one another as they should. Both characters are depicted as blaming their environment as a catalyst for their psychotic break. However, Taxi Driver uses this as a way to comment on Bickle’s lack of self-awareness, whereas Joker uses it as more of a comment on classist divides, between poor and wealthy communities. Both cities also feature a notable celebrity with political influence who the character fixates on. For Travis Bickle, it’s senator Charles Palantine, who he claims to support. For Arthur Fleck, it’s talk show host and idol Murray Franklin, played by Robert DeNiro in a winking role. In both cases, the character's mental snap, and physical manifestation of their change comes as a consequence of their plan to meet this person.
However, the ending of the films are a little less clear and indicate a poststructural philosophy. Both characters resort to a violent outburst as a release to their stress, for Fleck, it’s taking personal revenge against Murray Franklin for insulting him on live television, in a vain and shallow act that protects only his self-interest, like other killers Arthur Fleck’s suicidal desires reach their peak and he acts out, seeking to end his life in the most dramatic way possible. Bickle on the other hand kills 3 people whilst attempting to protect a 12-year-old prostitute, carrying out his vigilante justice to satisfy some self-image issue which surprisingly works. After the bloody shootout, Bickle is heralded by the public as a white knight saviour. Commenting on the ‘heroes’ we often see in society; soldiers, police, border protection agents, that they’re flawed and often monstrous too. The difference is, as a recognizable comic book villain, Joker sets out to convince the audience that the murderous clown isn’t all we think. Joaquin Phoenix allows humanity to bleed through the violence and humanize the villain in an almost positive way. His violence is self-actualization that portrays him more as a hero overcoming his oppressors, which is what has made him so appealing to neoliberals and alt-right trolls alike. By the end of the film, he stands above his peers, revelling in the support of other fringe extremists. Martin Scorsese mentions in his directors' commentary that the final scene in the Taxi is meant to show that Bickle hasn't recovered or changed, “he certainly isn’t cured by the end of the picture, that much is for sure, he’s a time bomb ticking away again.” His look in the mirror is red, bloody, he looks sinister, flipping it away aggressively to avoid confronting himself. It is in the analysis of virtues and ethos that both films are poststructural. Bernard Harcourt, a lecturer at Columbia University puts it this way, “(post-structuralism) is the stage where we began to focus on the ambiguity in meaning as the central location at the edge of the critical reason that helps identify ethical choice.” As they force the audience to question their values and determine ‘good’ or ‘bad’ within situations that fall out of our commonplace societal systems.
Scorsese has mentioned many times that he believes Taxi Driver is a feminist film, taking macho culture to its most extreme, a dejected self-interested and egotistical loner with gun and sex obsessions. Revealing the toxic thought process of men who bounce back and forth thinking of women as simultaneous goddesses and whores. Bickle is stricken with desire for Cybill Shepherd's character, within the film his obsession turns creepy as he stalks her place of work, follows her around town, and generally just glorifies his image of her. Yet when he finally manages to charm her into a date, he takes her to a pornographic theatre. When she leaves in shock, Bickle shows up at her work and berates her animatedly. Solidifying both his lack of self-awareness in what regular people do for fun and also assuming that his date would also participate in this action. In his mind women exist as both beautiful, unattainable oddities that need to be protected and preserved, but should also conform to his sexual desires. Joker shares this too by having Fleck go through the motions of stalking his date, but then instead of engaging real charm and winning her over, he imagines a scenario where he successfully seduces her. For part of the movie he and this woman, (played by Zazie Beetz) share an idyllic and supportive relationship, which comes to a head when he enters her apartment after the death of his mother and she reacts with confused fear. It becomes clear that Fleck fabricated her presence in his life. However, what isn’t clear is what he did after this brief confrontation, the scene simply ends and Fleck storms back to his home. Leaving us wondering whether our protagonist killed a single mother and her daughter in cold blood. Cementing the Freudian theory that has been coined the Madonna/Whore dichotomy. Where “heterosexual men’s ability to view the tender and sensual dimensions of women’s sexuality as united, rather than opposing.” in both films and ratifying the way incels identify with both characters who are obsessed with women but unable to interact with them.
In an interview with Empire magazine, Todd Phillips revealed that upon their first meeting, Philips told Deniro “I’d be lying if I said we weren’t influenced by your movies.” There is no subtlety in how similar these films are, ironically enough, DC’s original announcements of Joker claimed that the origin film would be produced by Martin Scorsese. Michael Uslan, who eventually produced Joker, told Vulture Magazine in 2019, “it’s like watching a Martin Scorsese, lower-budget crime drama. It is going to be a very unique experience.” It’s obvious that Joker is close to being a remake of Taxi Driver. However, Todd Phillips' decision to bring the Paul Schrader script into the modern era is hard to completely understand. It was a definite risk-taking a dead genre specific to one auteur and putting it directly into pop culture with its identity as a superhero movie, however, it paid off. Making Joker in the essence of gritty Scorsese films was a way to ignite ingenuity into a genre with a stagnating format.
It’s a classic example of a film striking while the iron is hot, coming off the back of Avengers: Infinity War, superhero films were reaching their peak, and in this weird middle ground between a strong Avengers movie and its highly anticipated sequel audiences seemed to be clamouring for more comic book movie content to engage with. It just so happens that Joker is like no other comic book movie in existence. Shrewd or brutal R16 films aren’t new to audiences, with the success of Logan and Deadpool in years prior, it was the more the reversal of expectation where audiences turned up expecting to watch a villain and a superhero fight and found something that piqued their interests more. The obvious reading of Taxi Driver is that Travis Bickle is a monster, however, Joker is a little more ambiguous. For most of the movie, Arthur Fleck is a sympathetic protagonist, a man fighting the whole world because he doesn’t fit in. At first, we can understand his accidental outbursts, but as the film goes on and his actions get riskier and more brutal the audience is asked to question his morals more. By the end, he’s a villain with heroic undertones. Which is a brilliant contrast to where Travis ends up, a hero with extremely villainous undertones. The difference here is where the controversy comes in, when Joker was premiered at film festivals, initial viewers read the film as apologetic of alt-right ideology, and incel-friendly by humanizing a killer who saw himself as a victim. Whereas when the film hit theatres millions of people loved the film, mostly as it was something unique in the past decade of Marvel dominated blockbusters, it was a well-crafted film released with the purpose of telling an artful story rather than selling tickets and hasn’t inspired mass murder so much as it has inspired other big studios to start making character-focused films like Disney’s Cruella (2021).
In conclusion, it would be almost impossible to admit Joker doesn’t share the typological elements of Taxi Driver, the director has admitted dozens of times in interviews that he was inspired by the tone and format of Scorsese character studies, the characters are similar, as are their environments, their motivations, their opinions of women and to a certain extent, their violent outbursts. Where they differ is what made Joker such an interesting film to watch and analyse, leaving critics to question why Arthur Fleck is ethically ambiguous and somewhat heroic in his defiance of societal values when Scorsese films never question the goodness of their protagonists and allow them to be evil in the eyes of the audience. In the words of Joaquin Phoenix, it’s that “I would bounce back and forth between feeling sympathy for him and then I would be repulsed by him. And I like that. I think that it's challenging. It challenges the audience.” It could be because our culture is more polarized than ever and the film intended to spark discourse and stand up for the marginalized.
Additional resources:Weinreich, M. (1998). The urban inferno. On the æsthetics of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. POV; a Danish Journal of Film Studies, 6, 91–106. http://pov.imv.au.dk/pdf/pov6.pdf#page=91
Collins, A. K. (2019, November 4). Rewatching Taxi Driver in the Age of Joker. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/10/todd-phillips-joker-rewatching-taxi-driver
Verevis, C. (2006). Film Remakes (1st ed., Vol. 1). Edinburgh University press.Severson, K. (2020, August 5). Is ‘Joker’ Dangerous? The Joker Movie Controversy Explained. StudioBinder.https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/joker-movie-controversy/#:%7E:text=Todd%20Phillips’%20Joker%20(2019,movie%20did%20not%20inspire%20violence.
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