Martin Scorsese, Hollywood Independent: Taxi Driver (1976) as a Bicentennial Film in the Age of Intertextuality by Frank P. Tomasulo, Ph.D. Abstract : This essay examines Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) as a Bicentennial opus, filled with all the sociocultural contradictions of that era: racial strife, economic "stagflation," rampant crime and violence, gender tensions, post-Vietnam War angst, political cynicism, and the Ford-Carter presidential election of the same year. In addition to these socio-thematic questions, the film's aesthetic derives from a variety of intertextual sources: classic film noir (albeit in color), John Cassavetes's cinéma-vérité "realism"; Michael Powell's Technicolor expressionism; the modernist European art cinema of Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Jean-Luc Godard; and, of course, John Ford's The Searchers. Key Words : Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese, film, Bicentennial, Vietnam War, intertextuality, aesthetics, Hollywood, independent cinema. In its bicentennial year, 1976, the United States was wracked by mistrust of the government and other social institutions. The Watergate scandal and the American evacuation of Vietnam were still fresh in everyone's mind. Forced to deal with these traumatic historical events, combined with a lethargic economy (8.5 percent unemployment, energy shortages, OPEC price hikes of 5 to 10 percent, high inflation (8.7 percent and rising), and the decline of the U.S. dollar on international currency exchanges, the American national psyche (what Siegfried Kracauer called “the national character pattern”; p. 6) suffered from a climate of disillusionment and despair. In the phrase made famous by California governor Jerry Brown the previous year, Americans had to adjust to “lowered expectations.” President Gerald Ford's WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons (Fig. 1) -- did nothing to bolster consumer or investor confidence and were widely perceived to be a public relations gimmick to paper over structural difficulties in the financial system. The federal government's “misery index,” a combination of the unemployment rate and the rate of inflation, peaked at 17 percent. Other intractable problems were apparent: stagflation, political paranoia, collective anxiety, widespread alienation, economic privation, inner-city decay, overt racism, and rampant violence. In short, there was a widespread perception that the foundations of the American Dream had been shattered by years of decline and frustration. Despite these negative economic and social indicators in the material world, the nation went ahead with a major feel-good diversion, the bicentennial celebration that featured the greatest maritime spectacle in American history: “Operation Sail,” a parade of sixteen “Tall Ships,” fifty-three warships, and more than two hundred smaller sailing vessels in New York harbor. Seven million people lined the shore, along with