while there's nothing wrong with the movie having Travis be a racist himself, and conveying that clearly to us as an audience, the problem comes when the film's overall portrayal of Black men relies on regressive stereotypes of them all being dangerous or at least irrationally angry and hostile, like when it has Charlie angrily look up at Travis when Wizard tries to introduce them to each other, for no discernible reason at all, good or otherwise, which has the counter-productive effect of making Travis's racism seem almost rational in the context of the film
No one complains when English men are portrayed as villains in movies (e.g., the Rupert Giles school of elocution predominates the evil Empire in the original
Star Wars trilogy). If a character is POC, however, there is an Assumption of Direct Representation™.
"Hey, you showed a black person being mean. You're saying all black people are mean. That's racist! Boycott this film! Racism cannot stand!"
The Assumption of Direct Representation™ is why we have so many "Mary Sue" characters who lack arcs. Women are beatified and dehumanized by the pious insistence that women not be shown to ever have traits that could give aid and comfort to the enemy. Thus, if a female character is interested in nursing and lacks aptitude and or interest in a STEM career, the writer may be accused of being misogynist.
This happened to Laurie Forest when she tried to publish a YA novel called
The Black Witch in 2017
. Forest fell in love with the
Harry Potter series and decided to write her own book as a way to deal with homophobia she experienced. The book used words like "pure-blood" and "mixed-blood" in discussing fantasy (i.e., purely fictional) races. A Twitter guardian took offense and started a campaign against the book on the grounds that it was veiled white supremacy, writing
“The Black Witch is the most dangerous, offensive book I have ever read.” To guard against such difficulties, publishers now employ sensitivity readers to ensure that nothing "off-code" might appear in a book or a board game which might enrage a vocal minority. Thus, we're left bizarre sanitized anti-stereotypes realized in implausibly perfect POC and implausibly craven non-POC characters who must now carry the weight of all the "regressive and problematic" stereotypes in the world.
Taxi Driver is an interesting example, because
it shows just how early the re-coding begins. Tarantino is upset that the coding goes too far. You appear to be unhappy that it doesn't go far enough.
NOTE: I've noticed that film and TV of the 70s quite often featured United Colors of Benetton lowlifes (multiracial bands of thugs) as an implicit communication that not all "X" are bad (seems reasonable to me).
And I will say that Quentin's suggestion seems odd. He is aware that the audience will see the world from Bickle's POV and thus he wants to see those stereotypes as a "justification" in Bickle's mind so that we "get" him. Sadly, too many people already get him and identify with him as a hero. Not re-coding at all would appear to make this misreading of the text even worse. You don't want to make things worse when you have a wicked protagonist, as audiences will follow villainous protagonists with amazing regularity (e.g., the Skylar White haters).
By my lights, you're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. If enough people of group X do fall into stereotype Y to warrant a depiction, then it seems cowardly not to show the depiction. More important, if we assume bad traits are as randomly distributed as good traits, then a randomly cast film or TV show should have 30-40% of villains as POC characters and 50% of them women (women hold up half the sky, so they should be half of the "baddie" pile too, no?), if we are to have "representation." And yet, if we were to cast by race and gender by random assignment to populate a stratified sample representing U.S. population demography, you would run the risk of being called a racist and a sexist for showing "vulnerable populations" as having "demeaning" traits. On the other hand, if you lean into stereotypes as Tarantino apparently wants to, then it seems that bad things will be encouraged. Season 8, Episode 3 of Saturday Night Live features a skit starring Eddie Murphy and Ron Howard titled "Focus on Film." Howard plays himself being interviewed about his new film Night Shift (1982). Murphy plays Raheem Abdul Mohammed who is befuddled that Howard made a movie about pimps without any black people.
A confused Raheem states that he is not sure if he should hug Howard or smack him for making a film about pimps without any black people. The joke played well in '82, but today we labor under the Assumption of Literal Representation™ which would have required Howard to do so, on pain of the Inquisition.
I am not saying that the balancing is easy, however, the Assumption of Direct Representation™ is a massive overcorrection that mangles art. We cannot tell human stories under the assumption that every character drawn from a sensitive demographic is, by logical necessity, offered as a representation of that demographic.
Silence of the Lambs isn't transphobic anymore than it is phobic of posh English doctors. One villainous character with trait "X" is a slim warrant.
More important, if we cannot see trans, women, and POC as villains, we cannot see them as people. And if we cannot see them as people, we (paradoxically) cannot empathize with them. Thus, Thanos is a sympathetic villain to many, but Rey is a boring Mary Sue.
The real test for making such inferences (i.e., of hateful representation) needs to be pulled from a dataset of more than one character in one film. In the body of the artist's work, for example, how are people from group "X" represented unfavorably? Consider Stephen King's books. Devout Christians are reliably evil in his books, just as small town sheriffs are reliably good and our location, in the main, is in the state of Maine. I can make a better case of King being a bigot from his oeuvre than you can of Demme being a bigot (or "problematic" which is code for heresy--giving him the benefit of the doubt of not being a full-on heretic) because of a single character in a single film.
WARNING: "Bad Things" spoilers below
Now, of course, some might protest that King is NOT bigoted, that he is just telling it like it is. "A lot of Christians are judgmental and wicked," some might say, and "If the truth hurts, then too bad! Stop living up to the stereotype and we'll stop making you the villain." But this would be a bad move, because FBI crime statistics would offer their own warrant for "representation" on such grounds.
Now, of course, some might protest that King is NOT bigoted, that he is just telling it like it is. "A lot of Christians are judgmental and wicked," some might say, and "If the truth hurts, then too bad! Stop living up to the stereotype and we'll stop making you the villain." But this would be a bad move, because FBI crime statistics would offer their own warrant for "representation" on such grounds.