By situating the film’s protagonist, Travis Bickle, in conversation with other Big Screen Outlaws, we find that the politics of resentment are co-constitutive with the violence of toxic masculinity.
Albert Camus’ The Fall specifies a new kind of self-flagellation. While Christians throughout history have flogged themselves to purify the world through their pain, believing that their sins cause civilization-wide catastrophes, Camus’ protagonist creates a closed circuit of vice and virtue: he confesses to his vices so that he many continue to enact them.
