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BY DEBORAH (BunchOfFrogs@aol.com)
In a decade filled with enough turmoil and controversy to last until the next millennium, the era from 1950 until 1959 arguably saw more social change than any other period in history. These were the times where the McCarthy Era began as Josef Stalin' life was ending; when both segregation and the four-minute mile were broken in the same year. Right in the middle of the decade, amidst the founding of McDonald's and the opening of Disneyland, came a film that forever changed the face of how Hollywood viewed teenagers (Rosenberg, 5). The film starred three impossibly beautiful movie stars: Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood, and, most notably, James Dean. Rebel Without A Cause united teenagers in that it solidified how isolated they felt. Rebel gave teenagers everywhere a poster-child for their rebellion. The premise of Rebel Without A Cause is quite simple. Jim Stark, played by James Dean, is misunderstood by his parents, the same as his neighbor Judy, Natalie Wood. Both Jim and Judy feel the sting of being rejected by a father figure. The duo befriends Plato, Sal Mineo, who is also lacking a father. The three form a rather dysfunctional pseudo-family with Jim and Judy as caring parents and Plato as their child. Until provoked by authority, the three carry-on rather nicely. The film culminates when Plato is shot by police who believe that the gun he is carrying is loaded (Katz, 492; Schneider, 320; Rebel Without A Cause-1955, 2). When first released on October 24, 1955, Rebel Without A Cause, in a rather ironic twist, was grossly misunderstood by critics. This seemed to drive home the point of the movie and widen the rift between teenagers and their adult counterparts. Bosley Crowther, who reviewed the movie for The New York Times, accused the cast of "imitating Marlon Brando in varying degrees." These harsh words fell on the deaf ears of teenagers, who related to the characters of Judy, Plato, and Jim. Out of the afore mentioned characters, Jim Stark seemed to hold the most obvious of symbolism. His last name, according to dictionary.com, has three meanings: bare or blunt; complete or utter; and harsh or grim. True to form, the character reflects his name. Jim is extremely blunt in a scene at the very beginning of the film when he is taken into police custody for being an intoxicated minor. His father, played by Jim Backus, issues hypocritical statements about the fact that Jim had "a little drink" and is defending him, and then proceeds to tell his son that drinking is wrong. Jim breaks into the now famous "You're tearing me apart" scene where he lashes out at his father's lack of direction. Being that he is somewhat challenging the authority of his parents, Jim is admonished for lashing out and highlighting his parents' feeble attempt to act as jurisdiction. Jim's bluntness and direct attack towards his parents is reinforcing his namesake. Another interesting point to make about the last name of Stark is the color that is associated with Jim throughout the movie. White is often thought to be a stark color, which is exactly the point that Nicholas Ray (Nicholas Ray, 2) drives home. Particularly in the beginning of the film, Jim is surrounded by white, also thought to be the color of innocense. Even while in the custody of the police, Dean's character seems to stand out because of the almost ethereal glow of his white shirt. His surroundings are very often shaded with deep browns and blacks, but somehow the character of Jim always seems to stand out because he is brighter than the other authority figures. The fact that Ray used white to symbolize Jim adds another layer to Rebel's puzzle. As stated before, white very often symbolizes innocense. If Jim is the rebel that the adults criticize him of being, and he is innocent, the rebellion in question is more or less non-existent. With this theory, the adults look like the confused teenagers and the roles are thus reversed. Ray also uses role reversal to emphasize Jim's confusion. Also during the beginning of the film, when Jim is being talked to by an officer, Jim laments that his father is submissive to his rather domineering mother. Society has conditioned its members to believe that the male sex should be dominant to the female sex. The fact that Jim's father takes on a rather feminine quality adds to his confusion. Another blatantly clear use of role reversal is when Jim hears a crash coming from the upstairs. Upon arriving on the scene, Jim views his father picking up the pieces of what appears to be dinner that he is to bring up to his mother. What makes this scene so interesting is that the father is wearing a yellow, ruffled apron. Not only is Jim's father figure cooking and cleaning, behavior that is typically thought to be feminine, but he is, in a very loose sense of the word, cross-dressed.
On top of these elements comes another excuse for Ray to use symbolism in the form of colors. With Jim's father wearing a yellow apron, he literally has a yellow belly. Calling someone a yellow-belly is another way of calling them a coward. This use of color is meant to have the audience recall a previous conversation between the officer in the precinct and Jim in which the following dialogue occurs:
It is revealed in a previous conversation, once again between Jim and the officer, that Jim has been in trouble with the law before because he "messed a kid up" because he was called chicken. The fear of being thought of something less than masculine is very obvious. The fact that Jim realizes his father is a coward makes him rebel against the fact that he is like his father in the first place. Ray uses the resentment of the parent of the same sex in a very subtle way. It is shown to the viewing audience that Jim's maternal grandmother is still alive and living with the family. The grandmother seems to be kindhearted and takes Jim's side in nearly all conversations she is present for. This, very obviously, agitates the Jim's mother, who is prone to rolling her eyes in a very teenage way. The grandmother proceeds to needle the mother with condescending comments such as, "You know who he takes after." The implication is that Jim is causing just as much trouble as his mother did when she was his age. The only example being set by his mother is to resent the parent of the same gender, something Jim seems to execute with ease. This leads to a very interesting and Freudian concept: The Oedipus Complex. The Oedipus Complex, in the simplest of terms, is the resentment of a child towards the parent of the same sex and the formation of an unhealthy attachment to the parent of the opposite gender. In this case, Dean's portrayal of Jim coincides with many traits of the Oedipus Complex. Examples of this would be when Jim and Judy form the pseudo-family with Plato. Judy is representative of Jim's grandmother, a female who loves him, and someone Jim is outstandingly protective toward. With Judy in place as a stand-in for Jim maternal figure, the focus then turns toward the male in Jim's life. This is where Plato comes into play. Plato, also a victim of being abandoned by his mother and rejected by his father, is desperately searching for a stable type of family. Plato is immediately attracted to Jim, who, in turn, revels in the fact that he is garnering some sort of male attention in a nearly homo-erotic sense of the phrase. What makes this so remarkable is that America was very conservative in 1955. Subjects such as homosexuality were considered taboo. Nicholas Ray pursued this such taboo in a discreet way by leaving Plato's sexuality undefined. It is obscenely evident that Plato is smitten with Jim as soon as Plato sees him. Plato does not seem to be phased at all by Judy, who would be the seemingly obvious choice for Plato's affection (Finstad, 154-60). Perhaps it is because of Plato's lack of a father figure that he reaches out to Jim, but there is an undeniable attraction on Plato's behalf. There are several instances in Rebel Without A Cause that it seems as if a romantic connection between Plato and Jim is possible. One of the noteworthy occurrences is after the presentation in the planetarium finishes. The lecturer has just finished his speech about the insignificance of man and the projection screen shows the world ending with a blast, which frightens Plato. Plato's childlike response to hide under Jim's chair, or at least as close as he can get to Jim, is more or less regarding Jim as someone who is safe and paternal. When Jim gently tells Plato that the world has ended and they lived through it, Plato rises in a very sexual way that would be socially acceptable if he was a female. The two young men exchange looks and there is an awkward pause, similar to that of a couple after a date. Perhaps what is the most interesting of Plato's undefined sexuality and how it plays into Rebel Without A Cause is what is not seen in the movie. There is a scene that did not make the final cut of the film because it was considered too homo-erotic. Warner Brothers panicked upon seeing the contents of the scene and insisted that it be deleted at once. The deleted scene, from which only a screen capture remains as proof of existence, contains Plato in the background laying on his back on a bed with his head resting on his hands. In the foreground, and a low shot that makes him seem larger than life, Dean is seen playing a recorder. The scene is easily alluding to a sexual encounter between the characters of Plato and Jim. However, both characters are still minors, and in the eyes of the viewing public, still children. This adds more momentum to just why Warner Brothers panicked and deemed the scene unsuitable for release to the public (Alexander, 253). Another concept that is shown and not talked about is Jim's instinct to be a father figure to Plato. It is seen throughout the film that Jim's parenting instinct is strong and tender, something that the character lacks in his own family life (Alexander, 157). This Darwinistic approach tests the nature vs. nurture theory and begs the question: Is Jim truly a product of his environment or his temperament? If Jim is indeed a product of his environment, he is rebelling against what he was shown. In a house void of any sort of affection, Jim not only displays a paternal instinct toward another person but toward an inanimate object (Pendergast, 1002-04). The beginning of the film displays Jim on the ground next to a toy monkey. Next to the monkey lay a newspaper and some sort of ribbon. Before Jim curls up next to the toy, he covers it with the newspaper and tucks the ribbon behind its head as if it were a child. This makes the question of nature versus nurture swing in the direction of nature. If Jim lacked all instinct, he would have balked at the thought of becoming the caretaker of the monkey. The idea of the characters still being children runs rampant throughout the film as well. The opening scene, as stated before, depicts Dean treating the wind-up toy monkey as if it were a child. After tucking the toy in, the character of Jim proceeds to tuck his hand between his legs, a childlike behavior. Perhaps why Jim tucked his hand was because of a trauma that was inflicted as a child. The movie, truth be told, was based on a book of the same name by Dr. Robert M. Lindner. The book, not the movie, delves into the psyche of Harold, a character comparable to Jim Stark. Lindner goes into gross detail about Harold encountering his parents having intercourse and later on having nightmares that someone would steal his genitals (Lindner, 208). Perhaps Nicholas Ray, who was also part of the team that wrote the script for the movie, included Jim tucking his hand between his legs as a nod towards the character's past. In one genius sense of direction, Ray was able to bridge the gap between written novel and cinematic classic. However, there is not much else that both the book and the movie that bear the title Rebel Without A Cause have in common. While both feature a character who has had a troubled youth, the book concentrates more on the psychoanalysis of Harold and the relationship between him and his psychiatrist, who is, strangely enough, Dr. Lindner himself. The novel reads much like a diary with the first several chapters being narrated in the first person. Upon the intrusion of Lindner, the book reads more from a psychiatrist's point of view. The notes leading up to Harold's journal-esque portion of the novel give a brief history of the patient: family and otherwise.
One aspect in which both Dean, who portrayed Jim, and Harold have in common is their physicality. Rebel Without A Cause, the novel, describes Harold as the following:
Perhaps Ray's idea to seemingly highlight a specific part of Harold's life through Jim's eyes is to differentiate the two characters. Harold, as the book states, is a person with psychopathic tendencies. One can only speculate that Jim would have ended up in jail, much like Harold, if Ray had been allowed to continue with the film. The movie version of Rebel Without A Cause was a cinematic success in terms of symbolism. Rebel lives with a well-written script and a cast of characters that have been relatable to teenagers for nearly fifty years. The fact that the characters and their surroundings serve as symbols is very much a credit to Ray, who went on to direct thirteen more films. It is through James Dean that the youth of America had a poster-child and an icon for their post-war angst. Dean personified Jim Stark in a way that, fifty years later, is still relatable to today's teenagers. The combination of careful direction by Nicholas Ray and the moment-to-moment reactions by Dean aid the testimony that Rebel Without A Cause is a cinematic classic.
Alexander, Paul. Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean. Plume Publishing, New York, 1997.
Crowther, Bosley. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. October 27, 1955. The New York Times. October 26, 2004.
Dictionary.com/stark. 2004. Dictionary.com. October 31, 2004. Finstad, Suzanne. Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, New York, 2001. Katz, Ephram. The Film Encyclopedia. New York, 1994 Linder, Robert M. Rebel Without A Cause: The Story of a Criminal Psychopath. New York, 1944.
Nicholas Ray. 1990-2004. Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com). November 2, 2004. Pendergast, Sara and Tom. International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers 1 FILMS, fourth edition. Detroit, 2000 Rebel Without A Cause. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Perf. James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Ann Dorian, Corey Allen, and William Hopper. Warner Brothers, 1955.
Rebel Without A Cause- 1955. 1990-2004. Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com). October 31, 2004.
Rosenberg, Jennifer. Timeline of the Twentieth Century- 1950-1959. About Company. October 31, 2004.
Schneider, Steven Jay. 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. New York, 2003. |
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