Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver was critically acclaimed upon its release in 1976. After viewing the film in 1999, recently re-released in a restored color print with a stereophonic version of the Bernard Herrmann score, one realizes that most of this acclaim must have rested on the film's then-shocking graphic violence. Today, its bloody carnage, portrayal of urban New York as hell on earth, and its depiction various denizens of the city as scum, appear commonplace. The hero, or more correctly anti-hero, of the piece is Travis Bickle, an ex-Vietnam marine who is a deeply disturbed loner whose failed attempts to connect with humanity in such a hell act as the final push over the precipice of sanity. If we are looking at the film semiotically, it is not difficult to find many symbols of American culture. the overriding and primary symbol draws directly from Christian mythology. To Travis New York is hell on earth, and people to him inhabit it as one of two types: scum or pure. In this world of phony politicians, whores, pimps, drug users and infidels, Travis views himself as a redeemer of lost souls. The two females he interacts with are viewed by him as needing rescued. He first tries to save Betsy, a campaign worker whom he views as an angel of purity in the midst of the scum that makes up the majority of the city’s population. He views her as needing saved from the co-workers who disrespect her to the paternal politician for whom she works, a politician that views Travis as suspect and dangerous. The other soul he chooses to redeem belongs to a 12-year-old prostitute, a drug-using runaway who does not necessarily aspire to be saved. After Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, he contemplated a modern society that would in the absence of such a myth descend into nihilism. He theorized that lacking the creation of new festivals and myths would leave society with void of meaninglessness. It is this phenomenon...