Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955) offers a compelling portrayal of teenage angst, focusing on the life of Jim Stark, played by James Dean. Jim is a troubled teenager who grapples with family conflict and the pressures of fitting into a new community after moving to a different town. Along the way, he befriends two fellow teenage delinquents, Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo), both of whom are also struggling with their own issues of identity, rebellion, and emotional isolation. All three teenagers serve to display the film’s themes of teenage angst and frustration. Premiering on October 27, 1955, Rebel Without a Cause sparked widespread discussions and varied opinions among critics and audiences alike. Among these voices were …show more content…
Something rather striking from Moffit is that he uses his personal opinion and experience to evaluate the plausibility of Rebel With a Cause. He uses the first person to compare his experience of being a teenage boy with the main character’s experience. He articulates that he was also afraid of being considered “chicken” by his peers and that he ran with a “juvenile gang”, “if my mother had not insisted on moving out of that neighborhood. I would have wound up on a morgue slab with my companions” (Moffitt). However, Landry of Variety mentions the pattern of blaming the parents matter-of-factly, almost as a comical anecdote, “the switch-blade stuff and the unhappiness of kids (typically Both reviewers from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety predict success at the box office for the film. Moffitt opens the review by stating, “The exhibitor can expect this story of juvenile delinquency to capture the ‘Blackboard Jungle’ type of audience and be a real money picture.” Similarly, Landry also draws a comparison between Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle, stating, “‘Rebel Without a Cause’ cannot escape comparison with Metro’s recent Blackboard Jungle.” Similarly, both reviewers raise concerns about the film’s appeal to adult
Rebel Without A Cause film Rebel Without A Cause is 1955 is a film that that features young, defiant, restless, and neglected middle-class Americans. Defiance from youths has been anticipated though they did not turn out to be. The idea provides a catchy stereotyped approach at a 1950 conformist on the adolescent male nature of misinformed parents on contemporary issues. The film has played a great role in shaping the society’s take towards the LBGT community. In 50’s Hollywood bring in connection
Paper #2: Youth Culture After watching the film, “Rebel Without a Cause”, there’s two questions that I believe that I can answer thoroughly: “What is the main theme of “Rebel Without a Cause?”, and “Why do you think the film takes place in 24 hours?”. Starting off with the overall/main theme of the film, self-identity. In the film the main character, Jim Stark, was one of the many young boys in this complicated world who was struggling to find who he was. Everyone, including himself, knew that he
Teen Rebels in Search of Love In the movie Rebel Without a Cause, directed by Nicholas Ray, we meet three “typical” teenagers from the 1950’s. These three teenagers are Jim Stark, Judy, and Plato. Jim Stark is constantly the new kid in town, because whenever he gets in trouble his parents just move the family to a new town. Jim is in constant turmoil striving to fit in, which only leads to more trouble. Judy is a teenage girl who needs attention. She longs for her dad to care about her and give
The 1955 film, Rebel Without a Cause, follows the life of a teenager who is dissatisfied with his family situation and society at large, and so he chooses to rebel for no particular reason. The drama is full of desire, delinquency, and a hint of romance; it also explores the complex problems the youth of the 50’s harbored. Desire is a common theme depicted by almost every character and is present throughout the movie. The Stark family’s continuous relocating from town to town is their antidote for
1950s Movie Essay: Rebel Without A Cause Introduction Rebel Without A Cause is a very popular film from 1955. It depicts life in the 1950's from the viewpoint of three teenagers who live in Los Angeles, California. They live in a comfortable environment in middle-class America. However, they must deal with their own inabilities to "fit" into society. The teens try to fit in with their peers and find the love they so desperately need from their families and others like their peers. The biases
This essay is a cross-cultural examination between the movies “Rebel without a cause” by Nicholas Ray and “Clueless” by Amy Heckerling. Although these two films take place in the same American city of Los Angeles (LA), they were set nearly 40 years apart. Thus this essay looks at the LA society through the cross cultural theme of time. This essay focuses on the teenage demographic in LA in 1955 and 1995. This essay looks at the continuities and differences between: • Family • Roles and status
In her essay “The Myth of Coparenting: How it is supposed to be. How it is,” Hope Edelman discusses the issues that she faces when dealing with marriage roles. According to her descriptions, her husband doesn’t play an active role in their domestic life and only focuses on his career. Edelman often gets into arguments with him over his disinterest and lack of contribution to home life. She responds to this lack of interest by buying a swing set along with other items against the husband’s wishes
interesting the role that media plays in a modern americans life. A.O. Scott explains and explores this concept in his essay about the death of adulthood in american culture. While the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause, directed by Nicholas Ray, seems to be an entertaining, albeit eccentric film about the messed up teenager, a closer look through the lens of A.O. Scott’s recent essay in the New York Times, “The Death of Adulthood in American Culture,” reveals a film that is deeply concerned with the
writing on “Civil Disobedience” in his essay Thoreau states, “government is best which governs not at all”(1).This powerful statement means that government is too corrupt to lead people in the right way so they need to take a step back and let society govern itself. Thoreau also explains, how without change society itself will always be the government 's machine (6). His statement iterates that government will always have power over people that do not rebel to make change; due to the fact that laws
In the essay, “War Memoir,” by Marevasei Kachere, there was a civil war in Rhodesia and Kachere’s village had been taken over by the government in order to prevent the housing and training of guerilla rebels. In these camps food becomes something more than just a routine meal. The guards allowed the village residents time to search for food, but will beat them if they have even a slight suspicion that they are giving food to the rebellion. Kachere faces a dilemma and has to choose between staying
and the supremacy of entertainment by the constant uprise of youth culture. From this, it blossomed into a new kind of film for a new breed of teenager: the juvenile delinquency film. In this essay, I will be discussing the role of the juvenile delinquent within the two movies, Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and Vince Everett in Jailhouse Rock (1957) and the impact of relevant industrial,
attempts to show "the reasonableness of religion." No doubt, Ezra Pound represents the most vocal of the anti-Milton faction. In his essay, "Notes on Elizabethan Classicists," Pound accuses Milton of "asinine bigotry," and dislikes the "coarseness of his mentality." Pound admires the Byronic hero--alone and rebellious--who struggles to fight for his lost cause in spite of overwhelming odds. According to Pound, because of his heroic willingness to fight against God and to never give up, Satan is
In the movie Billy Elliot, Billy challenges society’s beliefs based on sex during his time, as he rebels against male stereotypes and follows his passion for dance, without he’s fathers consent. Billy faces many obstacles throughout this movie, including when Billy tries to show his father that he can dance, but his dad takes it sensitively and shuts him off. Throughout the movie, She’s The Man, Viola fights against societies expectations again and fills in for her brother, who ditches school randomly
politician and philosopher Thomas Paine collaborated during the 18th century to give each other feedback on their writings. This letter in particular is a response from Franklin to one of Paine’s essays advocating a providential God. We can find in this letter, that Franklin was not very fond of the essay Paine proposed to him. He conveys advice to Paine by saying that his disbelief in a providential God makes no sense and is not logical. Franklins response contains metaphors, rhetorical strategies
which is a belief that everything in the world is in the best state it can be. The Great Chain of Being is referenced in the works Essay on Man by Alexander Pope and Candide by Voltaire. Although the works of Pope and Voltaire argue for opposing views, both authors reference The Great Chain of Being to either support these views or satirically argue against them. Essay on Man by Alexander Pope is a poem that “sets out to consider humanity in relation to the universe, to itself, to society, and to