Rebel Without a CauseJust as a ship needs to be steered in the right direction, so to do children as they grow up, or they are doomed to disaster. Rebel Without a Cause is a drama about disaffected teenagers, including the taciturn Jim Stark (James Dean). Three of them--including Jim--are arrested one night in their upper-middle class neighborhood for varying infractions. There is also Judy (Natalie Wood), who stayed out past curfew and confesses to Inspector Ray Fremick (Edward Platt) that her father called her a "dirty tramp" on account of her choice of lipstick. And there is the quiet John "Plato" Crawford (Sal Mineo), who disturbingly shot a litter of puppies, and whose parents are never around. The lives of all three will be forever altered the next evening, as the crippling weight of their teenage angst bears down upon them.
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Rebel Without a Cause was released in 1955, a month after lead actor James Dean's fatal car accident. This, perhaps, has infused this movie with a certain fatalistic mystique--at the time of release and today. Even if, superficially, Rebel Without a Cause appears to be a story of teens dealing with the pains that come with becoming adults, this gives the film a certain edge. That "edge" is in the way that we can view the movie in different ways at different stages of our lives, as how we view our own lives as death draws nearer. I first saw Rebel Without a Cause when I was much younger--not that much older than Jim. I suppose I felt that Jim and Plato were sympathetic because they were picked on by bullies like "Buzz" Gunderson (Corey Allen), a greaser with a penchant for switchblades and Judy's boyfriend. Jim, who it is implied has run afoul with the law and schools before, does his utmost to diffuse conflicts, or at least tries not to incite them. Yet Buzz is unrelenting--as bullies are, as anyone who has been bullied can tell you--and Jim is left with no alternative but to stand up for himself. Even after a knife fight at the planetarium following a high school field trip, Jim shows up for a "chickie run" challenge, put to him by Buzz. This involves Jim and Buzz driving stolen cars off of a cliff, and the first to bail out is the "chicken". (Yes, it's very stupid.) All of this comes after Buzz accuses Jim of being a "chicken", which is a trigger word for him, and causes him to fall prey to his pride. Jim believes that he must participate in the fight and race out of a sense of "honor", but just where has Jim come to conclude that it's a matter of honor at all? In short, by trying to piece together and make sense of his world on his own, because his parents and grandmother fail to help him with this, even when he asks. This is what binds Jim together with Plato and later Judy; all of them feel ignored by their parents, the people who they know--deep down--are responsible for helping them to understand their world. Instead, their parents ply them with gifts, hoping to buy them away...to keep them from bothering them. Why did they even have kids? Perhaps because it was just the way it was done, and even they don't understand things any better themselves. This is most evident in Jim's dad, Frank (Jim Backus), an ineffectual, henpecked father who looks for any way out of making a declarative statement. (Clearly, he's a businessman.) This may be fine in the board room where superficiality reigns, but it's frustrating for a son looking for guidance. Ultimately, Rebel Without a Cause suggests that it is the parents who have failed to raise their children right with decent values, which in turn leads to the film's tragic conclusion.
Watching Rebel Without a Cause today, what stands out especially to me is just how painfully the parents of Jim, Judy, and Plato treat their children, as it must be with the rest of the students of Dawson High (even Buzz). They're not outright abusive, for the most part, but they look on their children like they were some kind of dangerous weapon or an albatross around their collective necks. Frank never has anything of value to offer when conversing with Jim, even though Jim clearly loves his father and wants him to stand up for himself...to set a firm example of just what it means to be "a man". One of the most iconic images in Rebel Without a Cause is when Jim returns home to find his father wearing a frilly apron over his business suit. For Jim, who has interpreted masculinity in the absence of his father, this is an affront that crushes his soul. Judy's father (William Hopper) seems to view her burgeoning adulthood as an invitation for her to become wanton, and is almost outright repulsed by her efforts to be affectionate with him. It's pretty strongly suggested that because his daughter has become an attractive woman--for whom sexuality is becoming a reality--he falls back on the old "Madonna-whore complex". He truly sees her as a "tramp" instead of the perfect little girl he always thought he could shelter from the world, and he's conflicted on how to treat her. When she returns home late after the chickie run, he's appears almost afraid to confront her, hiding away in his bedroom. And that's the root of the problem; the parents of Rebel Without a Cause are so wound up in their own desire for a calm and controlled life that they view their children's adolescence as a threat to that way of life. How sad. So where do these teens learn what "honor" means--or even better, simple "right" and "wrong"? Short answer: nowhere. This makes them prime targets for every bad influence that comes their way, including underage smoking, drinking, and--to Judy's father's credit--even sex, perhaps; and without anyone there to tell them otherwise, they believe this way of life is all that they have. It's how gangs indoctrinate kids into committing themselves wholly to the gang--everything else is secondary. Buzz and his gang are nothing less than a tribe of black leather jacket wearing thugs who pick on Jim and Plato solely because they can. And in a weird way, it's how Buzz tests someone to see if they're "worthy" to be his "friend". It isn't until Buzz's death that Judy finally snaps out of her reverie. She realizes that no one else in the gang was ever "sincere". What does she mean by that? I think what she means is that each of them--Judy included--was more concerned with putting on an act to blend into the pack. This is how humans in ages past would survive, joined into closed communities for defense against strangers and the outside world. The fact is that Judy and the others--even Buzz--are scared, just as Jim is scared. In a weird way, this makes them more like the adults in the film than they care to realize. Frank doesn't deny sage advise to Jim or grow a spine because he wants to spite his son; he's afraid...maybe of his wife, Carol (Ann Doran), in part. But in reality, Frank's afraid of the consequences of life itself. When Jim informs his parents that he intends to go to the police to confess his involvement in Buzz's death, they do all that they can to dissuade him. Obviously, this isn't right, but they fear what may come, either to their status in the community, or in all fairness, to Jim himself. Most of all, they are simply afraid. Perhaps this is the tragic message of Rebel Without a Cause: that fear is all that this generation has been able to gift their offspring. The mind reels to think of what that means for the generation that follows them.
Recommended for: Fans of a classic drama about the eternal existential conflict between parents and kids, and the perils of growing up without guidance. Much of Rebel Without a Cause has been absorbed in to pop culture, to the extent that it can appear cliché by today's standards. But try to view the film through fresh eyes, and at different points in life, to see how insightful it truly is into the human condition...how materialism can never replace depth of feeling and parental love.
Watching Rebel Without a Cause today, what stands out especially to me is just how painfully the parents of Jim, Judy, and Plato treat their children, as it must be with the rest of the students of Dawson High (even Buzz). They're not outright abusive, for the most part, but they look on their children like they were some kind of dangerous weapon or an albatross around their collective necks. Frank never has anything of value to offer when conversing with Jim, even though Jim clearly loves his father and wants him to stand up for himself...to set a firm example of just what it means to be "a man". One of the most iconic images in Rebel Without a Cause is when Jim returns home to find his father wearing a frilly apron over his business suit. For Jim, who has interpreted masculinity in the absence of his father, this is an affront that crushes his soul. Judy's father (William Hopper) seems to view her burgeoning adulthood as an invitation for her to become wanton, and is almost outright repulsed by her efforts to be affectionate with him. It's pretty strongly suggested that because his daughter has become an attractive woman--for whom sexuality is becoming a reality--he falls back on the old "Madonna-whore complex". He truly sees her as a "tramp" instead of the perfect little girl he always thought he could shelter from the world, and he's conflicted on how to treat her. When she returns home late after the chickie run, he's appears almost afraid to confront her, hiding away in his bedroom. And that's the root of the problem; the parents of Rebel Without a Cause are so wound up in their own desire for a calm and controlled life that they view their children's adolescence as a threat to that way of life. How sad. So where do these teens learn what "honor" means--or even better, simple "right" and "wrong"? Short answer: nowhere. This makes them prime targets for every bad influence that comes their way, including underage smoking, drinking, and--to Judy's father's credit--even sex, perhaps; and without anyone there to tell them otherwise, they believe this way of life is all that they have. It's how gangs indoctrinate kids into committing themselves wholly to the gang--everything else is secondary. Buzz and his gang are nothing less than a tribe of black leather jacket wearing thugs who pick on Jim and Plato solely because they can. And in a weird way, it's how Buzz tests someone to see if they're "worthy" to be his "friend". It isn't until Buzz's death that Judy finally snaps out of her reverie. She realizes that no one else in the gang was ever "sincere". What does she mean by that? I think what she means is that each of them--Judy included--was more concerned with putting on an act to blend into the pack. This is how humans in ages past would survive, joined into closed communities for defense against strangers and the outside world. The fact is that Judy and the others--even Buzz--are scared, just as Jim is scared. In a weird way, this makes them more like the adults in the film than they care to realize. Frank doesn't deny sage advise to Jim or grow a spine because he wants to spite his son; he's afraid...maybe of his wife, Carol (Ann Doran), in part. But in reality, Frank's afraid of the consequences of life itself. When Jim informs his parents that he intends to go to the police to confess his involvement in Buzz's death, they do all that they can to dissuade him. Obviously, this isn't right, but they fear what may come, either to their status in the community, or in all fairness, to Jim himself. Most of all, they are simply afraid. Perhaps this is the tragic message of Rebel Without a Cause: that fear is all that this generation has been able to gift their offspring. The mind reels to think of what that means for the generation that follows them.
Recommended for: Fans of a classic drama about the eternal existential conflict between parents and kids, and the perils of growing up without guidance. Much of Rebel Without a Cause has been absorbed in to pop culture, to the extent that it can appear cliché by today's standards. But try to view the film through fresh eyes, and at different points in life, to see how insightful it truly is into the human condition...how materialism can never replace depth of feeling and parental love.