Rebel without a Cause

Directed by Nicholas Ray and starring James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) portrays white middle-class American teenagers alienated from—and in a political rebellion against—the materially comfortable but emotionally empty world of their parents. The film contemplates what it means to be a young male in midcentury America, and it made James Dean a lasting icon of restless American manhood.

Both the traditional family and the prevailing model of post–World War II white middle-class fatherhood, which were exalted in such popular 1950s television series as Father Knows Best, function poorly in Rebel Without a Cause, victims of a failed adult manhood and a disorienting reversal of traditional gender and generational roles. “You're tearing me apart!” Dean's character Jim Stark screams resentfully to his befuddled parents. Hungering for a manhood more admirable than that of his inept, apron-wearing, wife-fearing father (played by Jim Backus), Jim Stark even wonders if things would be better if his father “had the guts to knock mom cold once.”Jim moves beyond verbal assaults, attacking his father physically at one point, prompting his mother to plead, “Stop it! You'll kill him, Jim! Do you want to kill your father?” The question stays unanswered.

Despite his anger, Jim is able to express his own vulnerability, as well as tender feelings for others his own age, male and female alike. Natalie Wood's Judy appreciates this unconventional approach to maleness in Jim, “a man who can be gentle and sweet.” She thinks Jim's distinctive way of “being strong” makes him the sort of man “a girl wants.”

Males are drawn to Jim as well. Even Buzz, the tough male accidentally killed in a “chickie run”contest with Jim (in which the two drive stolen cars at full speed toward a cliff, the one who jumps out first being the loser), had admitted,“I like you, you know.” Feeling trapped by the cultural emphasis on male competition, Jim was moved to ask in reply, “Buzz? What are [Page 387]we doing this for?” Much more powerfully attracted to Jim is Plato, played by Sal Mineo. Abandoned by his father, Plato wishes Jim “could have been my dad,” and Jim reciprocates with warm affection. Interestingly, some critics see homoeroticism in Plato's attraction to Jim; but the fact that they care deeply for each other does not necessarily suggest sexual yearning on either's part. Significantly, however, both male objects of Jim's affection, Buzz and Plato, are dead by the end of the movie, suggesting the era's widespread discomfort with any sort of passionate attachment between males.

Before Plato is killed by police gunfire, he retreats to an abandoned mansion with Jim and Judy, briefly establishing an alternative sense of family vastly more fulfilling than anything the three had experienced with their own families. Jim and Judy eventually surrender to the police, however, and, in an ambiguous ending, Jim is reunited with his parents.

Ultimately, Rebel Without a Cause is as at odds with itself as Jim Stark is conflicted. Jim's ambivalent embrace of both rage and tenderness mirrors the film's inconsistent explanations of male adolescent alienation. The film suggests that a new cultural definition of manhood is in order, yet its ending implies that a return to traditional male authority is the better solution. What is clear is the considerable questioning that lay beneath the apparently solid acceptance of prevailing constructions of manhood during the 1950s.

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