Jim Stark's 'Rebel Without A Cause'

The Cold War gets its name from the fact that there was no real warfare, meaning no actual bombings or killings took place during the time of war. Yet, the Cold War was not peaceful in any extent -- the rising Red Scare and the threat of nuclear weapons forced Americans to conform to societal norms in order to avoid being labeled as a Communist, and this resulted in the loss of individuality. For teenagers, the Cold War struck them with a break in the traditional androcentric family structure and an increased power of moms, which left some teens perplexed with the idea of a true American family. “Rebel Without A Cause” captures the zeitgeist of the Cold War era as the story follows the protagonist Jim Stark and his family and friends who navigate

Buzz challenges Jim in a chickie run to prove his power and masculinity. When Jim asks Buzz why he is initiating the chickie run, Buzz gives no logical explanation -- he just says that he has to do “something.” Unfortunately, Buzz fails to jump out of his car in time and falls down the cliff and dies. Buzz’s irrational method of proving his superiority eventually led to his own demise, but he is not to be blamed for his death. Rather, it is the American society which imposed certain images of a powerful masculine figure and pressured young males to conform to such unrealistic images that is responsible for Jim’s death. In fact, Buzz initiated numerous fights with Jim to reassure himself of his superiority which he believed derived from the fact that he conformed to what the society expected of him. In other words, starting fights with Jim was the only “something” that Jim could do to latch onto his fading individuality. Adolescence is when teens perceive and apply media portrayals of how they should look and behave. For Buzz, the stereotypical image of strong man and the pressure to conform to that image during the Cold War provoked internal struggle and was expressed through the numerous fights he had with Jim. In a way, Buzz was not really fighting Jim, but he was fighting someone he perceived as a non-conformer and tried to win to convince himself that conformity is right. With the complex character

For example, when Jim is sitting on the shoe shine chair at the juvenile division of the police station, he is first at the peak of the triangle with his mother and father at the other vertices of the triangle. However, Jim is soon overpowered by his mother and she acquires the superiority in the triangle. Meanwhile, his dad stays at the bottom level of the triangle below the level of both Jim and his mother. Jim’s father does not severely scold Jim for his misconduct; it is only his mother and his grandmother who are reprimanding him at the station. In 20th century America, it would be expected for the father to step up and rectify his kid’s behavior, but in the case of Jim’s family, the mother adopts the role of the father. Not only that, standing behind the mother is Jim’s grandmother which shows a lineage of powerful women who do not conform to the typical American family structure. Philip Wylie discusses this increase in power of moms in the domestic sphere and how it “plagued” American households and created a phenomenon of “momism” in “The Generation of Vipers.” The rising power of females went against the Cold War ideal of conformity and raised voices of concern from people like Philip Wylie since the majority of Americans believed that males should have dominance in the