Institutional Repository UIN Sunan Kalijaga YogyakartaAMBIVALENSI IDENTITAS TOKOH FIKTIF TRAVIS BICKLE DALAM FILM TAXI DRIVER 1976NIM.: 22105040020Muhammad Aji Nurul YaqinauthorIdentity in modern society is never fixed or singular it is continuously negotiated between public performance and private experience. This thesis examines the ambivalent identity of Travis Bickle, the fictional protagonist of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), using Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory particularly the concepts of front stage, back stage, and impression management supplemented by George Herbert Mead's dialectic of "I" and "Me." While prior applications of dramaturgical theory have consistently focused on real human subjects (social media users, religious communities, political figures), no study has operationalized this framework to analyze identity ambivalence in a fictional cinematic character. This research addresses that gap. Using a qualitative-interpretive film textual analysis combining narrative and mise-en-scène approaches, this study examines the complete filmic text of Taxi Driver, including dialogue, voice-over monologue, and visual composition. Data were collected through close viewing and scene breakdown, then analyzed through reduction, categorization, interpretation, and conclusion drawing. The findings show that Travis's identity ambivalence manifests as a persistent structural rupture between his front stage performance as a compliant taxi driver, a failed romantic suitor to Betsy, and a self-appointed "moral observer" and his back stage reality, expressed through diary voice-overs, obsessive violent preparation, and a deteriorating apartment. This ambivalence is driven by three interlocking mechanisms: persistent cognitive dissonance between self-perception and social feedback, uncontrolled leakage of back stage impulses into front stage settings, and a self-reinforcing spiral of isolation. These mechanisms escalate Travis through three phases passive alienation, private mission construction, and the eventual explosion of back stage impulses into public violence culminating in the film's central sociological paradox: an act born from psychological distortion is publicly reconstructed as heroism. This study concludes that Goffman's dramaturgical framework, though developed for real-world interaction, extends productively to fictional cinematic identity, and that film's technical apparatus (voice-over, close-up, mise-en-scène) offers privileged access to back stage regions rarely observable in lived social interaction.301 Sosiologi2026-07-27UIN SUNAN KALIJAGA YOGYAKARTA;FAKULTAS USHULUDIN DAN PEMIKIRAN ISLAMThesis

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