From Underground Man
to Internet Man:

Apocalyptic, Cleansing Violence

In 1976, Peter Jukes wanted to be Travis Bickle. A decade later, he realised the Taxi Driver anti-hero was a psychopath. Now he suspects Bickle’s dangerous saviour complex underpins the architecture of our tech platforms

It’s disturbing to recall that, when I first saw Taxi Driver nearly half a century ago, I was both appalled and terrified by the dark world of Martin Scorsese’s (anti-)hero Travis Bickle – and I also wanted to be him.

For a 16-year-old, coming out of the nicotine-stained provincial cinema in the mid-1970s with his best friend Markie, the lonely and disturbed world of the New York taxi driver, played by Robert De Niro, and its culmination in a ‘mass shooting’ wasn’t so much a warning to us as a role model.

We wanted to emulate Bickle’s Mohawk haircut, recreate his aggression at his own reflection in the mirror – “you looking at me, you looking at ME?” – in much the same way we practised drop-kicks after a Bruce Lee Kung Fu movie.