Thursday, September 01, 2005

David Brooks as Travis Bickle

David Brooks, NYTimes: "Floods wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities. When you look back over the meteorological turbulence in this nation's history, it's striking how often political turbulence followed."

Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver : All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

2 comments:

Patrick said...

To be fair, Travis is talking about washing away those on the lower rungs of the society's ladder while David is talking about those on the top rungs.

Unknown said...

Certainly. Both Travis and David are using rain as metaphor in the Christian mean, for washing away people (rather than sins as in the strictly Christian sense). They do disagree who the scum of the earth actually are.