Rebel at the End of the World: and Essay

I have no date for this, it was written sometime in the first three months of 2011 for a Radio Television and Film class at a state school.

The assignment was “Rebel Without a Cause” and I got an A- for my work. I have included my references for your approval. 

Rebel at the End of the World

“Rebel Without a Cause” was an act of Hollywood addressing the breakdown of family in the light of the cold war. The failure of family is the most overt theme. The three main characters all have grossly dysfunctional families and all three suffer some abandonment. However, the theme of the world ending in nuclear fire is a looming cloud over the heads of the characters and their families. If one were not familiar with the time in witch “Rebel Without a Cause” was set and written the references to the cold war might be missed. None the less, the end of the world was something people truly thought they might see living in the time of the film.

           

The three characters of Jim, Judy, and Plato start the movie as troubled youths all hauled into a police station for varying reasons. Plato’s reason is the most heinous because it involves the destruction of something innocent, puppies, and is the foreshadowing of his own end.  The idea that Plato kills these puppies because they never knew their father and would be abandoned by their mother(Wood) is a tempting one. However, the actions of the world around Plato are more of note here than his own actions. The crime Plato has committed is cruelty to animals, and if nothing else he should have been held by police because of his mental instability.

           

An underage boy with a firearm who has just killed puppies is certainly a danger to himself and others.  Yet, it is unclear if the police have taken any action whatsoever other than just calling his home and having his made come get him. As we learn later in the film Plato still has access to the firearm, and this access proves to be his death. This would imply that all charges were dropped. Plato’s mother and father are absent from this movie and he, needing that parent figure, called out for help by committing a crime. His call was denied by the authorities, and instead of taking interest in his case he was sent home to deal with his problems on his own.

           

It is implied that this happens often to Plato when Jim offers him his Jacket. Plato refuses the act of kindness by refusing to speak to Jim. This act of mistrust comes up again later in the story when Plato is cornered by Buzz’s thugs in the old mansion. Plato screams “why did you leave me?” and “You’re not my father” rejecting Jim seeing this as another act of betrayal.  The strength of Plato’s response is one excepted by the audience because of his previous neurotic actions. Plato is a nervous character living on a knife’s edge of emotion.

           

This knife’s edge would have resonated in the audience of the time. One of the most important events preceding the film was the death of Josef Stalin and the ceasefire of the Korean War. It was a ceasefire not a victory, a momentary end to aggression that could start up again at any moment. Korea was a situation as volatile as the mind of Plato through the course of the movie. Moreover, Plato is a Greek name and the Greek Civil War was the first major conflict in the overall Cold War (Hermes 6-9). It is tempting to say that without the United States Greece would have fallen to the communists just as without intervention Plato is doomed, but this is reading too far into the reference. It is enough to say that Americans should have looked at Plato and his gun and been reminded of a war that ended only five years earlier. The Greek Civil War was a major victory for NATO and the United States but it was dissention among the communists that led to our victory. Again it is a long shot to say that there is a paralleled between the in family disagreements of the communists and the family problems of the character but the connection would resonate with the audience of the day.

           

Another tempting idea is that the presence of the red dress and jacket are symbolic for the red of communism. This idea is almost completely ridiculous given that the red jacket worn by Jim was an afterthought. Red, however, is an important symbol in the movie. In the first scene Judy is wearing a red dress and has red lipstick. She talks about her father rubbing her lipstick off. This is her moment of greatest distress and it is dominated by red. Red for Judy has the double meaning of gaining her father’s attention and drawing his anger (Wood). In her final words in this scene “My mother, you said it would be my father!” This indicates that her acting out is a bid for his attention. It is a commonly held idea that to the deprived any attention is good attention.

           

Judy’s father’s response is anything but encouraging. When we see her at home there is no mention of the event. Moreover, her father’s violent reaction to her affection tells us of his own mixed emotions. In this time period there would be nothing wrong with a daughter kissing her father. It is he that feels there is something dirty about this and his lashing out, his striking his own daughter, is an act of guilt. This man is attracted to his own little girl and rather than admit that something is wrong he turns his affections to anger.

           

Red in this scene is muted and pushed into the fore and background. Its strongest place is on Judy’s brother’s clothes, and it resides there because likewise residing there is Judy’s father’s affection. The embrace Judy’s father gives her brother is coveted by Judy. In the same moment we see his coldness towards her and his warmth toward his son. Judy looks cold in pale blue and her brother warm in bright red. If red is the symbol of Judy’s desire than her brother has what she wants.

           

Red in the film is desire and the desire driving the characters is the “search for the father” (Eisenschitz 254) then the act of Jim putting the red jacket on is the act of him accepting the role as object of desire. Jim is first rejected by Judy and the jacket is lost but red is never missing from his character. His pants at the planetarium are maroon and his tie a dark red. Red is often seen in the background of the chickie run scene implying that desire is in the air, and the red slash, signaling the death of Buzz, is desire permeating the air.

           

In the very end of the film Jim takes off his red jacket and gives it to Plato. This is because desire is transferred onto Plato as the focus of the action. Jim is trying to save Plato at the end. The desire to have saved the poor boy will live on forever in the lives of Jim and Judy.

           

It is indeed symbolic that the death takes place at the planetarium. The planetarium is connected with death and is the place where the plans that lead to the death of Buzz were laid. Both times the planetarium is visited the end of the world is discussed. The first time the earth is regarded to have already been destroyed by the planetarium director and his gross failure to intervene in the fight between Buzz and Jim leads to destruction.  The second time they arrive at the planetarium Plato asks Jim when he thinks the end of the world will happen. Jim tells him “At dawn.” Shortly after Plato is killed by police.

           

The planetarium is the symbol for technology and where as the space race will not kick off until Sputnik in 57 the American people would have been aware of the capture of German scientists to further the US and Soviet missile programs. Technology was the main battle ground of the Cold War and the mansion, so close to it in the world of the film, resembles a post apocalyptic ruin.

           

The mansion is one of the most symbolic sequences in the film. When the three teens arrive they begin to mimic their parent figures. Plato becomes a servant as he is raised by a nanny. Jim and Judy become a married couple who talk about children as if they are an inconvenience much as they must feel treated as one by their parents. They even talk about drowning children “like puppies” reminding us of Plato’s crime at the beginning of the film. As they play their game they are unaware of the danger lurking right outside. This could be the feeling of the public looking the other way in the light of a looming war with The USSR.  In short time the dilapidated building becomes a battle ground. In the ending action of the play Jim must dodge bullets, make peace, and watch that peace be once again shattered by an un-understanding world. 

           

Dean’s character of Jim may be seen as the most straight forward. James Dean lost his mother and had a falling out with his father making him like the Jim character (Sanjuro). Jim is looking for his father to stand up to his mother. “If only he had the guts to knock her cold just once. Then maybe she would be happy.” He feels that his family can’t be happy without a strong father figure and his mother’s verbal jabbing emasculates the man.

           

We can see the emasculated side of Jim’s father when Jim comes home from the chickie run to find his father preparing a meal for his mother wearing a woman’s frilly apron. Jim’s father is now literally wearing his wife’s clothes. Unless Jim’s mother is a working woman, unlikely in the fifties, she should normally do the cooking in the home. Jim’s father is now as much mother as father in this scene. Jim even comments that he thought his father was his mother and why not he is wearing her dress?

Jim becomes the father figure in this family when his own father is wearing that apron. When Jim’s father drop the tray of food he says he needs to clean it up before his wife sees it placing his wife at the center of his concern. Jim tells him to let his mother see the mess asking him to abandon his fear of her. Other instances of this are Jim telling his father he wants a straight answer out of him throughout the film. Jim’s father, unable to act on his own, refuses time and time again failing Jim as he has done time and time over.

One of the most important moments between Jim’s family is the fight over weather Jim should go to the police over the death of Buzz. During this scene Jim grabs his father and shoves him towards his mother. Jim has already proved that he is no cowered in the world of the film by participating in the game of chicken. He has now set the example for his father to follow and is asking his father to be the man that he has proven himself to be. Jim does get his wish in some form at the end when his father runs to the body of Plato thinking it is Jim. This transformation is incomplete and sad, but whatever Jim’s father is Jim has come to grips with this finding the family he wanted in Judy.

The sad world of the film is one that permits no reliance on the family or the state to resolve problems. When any of the characters looked to authority they found only empty promises and gestures.  This ending idea is that resolution will come only when the characters find in themselves what they need and stop looking for it in family and authority.

Bibliography

Eisenschitz, Bernard. Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. London: Faber, 1993.

Hermes, Jr., Walter. Truce Tent and Fighting Front. WASHINGTON, D. C.: United States Army Center of Military History, 2002. 2, 6-9.

Rebel without a Cause, Dir. Nicholas Ray, Warner Brothers, 1955

Sanjuro, Erik A. Reviw of Rebel: The Life and Legend of James Dean. Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 2006. http://gaybookreviews.info/review/3236/696

Wood, Chris. Finding the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Rebel Without a Cause. The Canadian Journal Of Irish Studies, Spring 2000 http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/5/finding.html

I found this on an old floppy disk and it dates back to my last summer as a high school student. My broken brain forgot a lot of things back then and so I came up with this idea to keep things focused. The cat often slept on the board and moved things round, but to be honest I never did get anything done with the board.

Sometime in the summer of 1997

The Board

 On top of an air filter sat the Scrabble board, but there were no wood tiles on this board at all. It was topped with strange unrelated objects that puzzled the normal observer. There were capacitors, which are small cylinders that you see on computer parts and such. The capacitors were plastic coated with numbers running down them. There were no set sizes for the capacitors and they were in three different colors; light blue, black and white/gray. Then there were dollar signs of silver metal, around twenty of them and each was escorted by a nail of dull gray iron-like metal. Then there were two forms of switches, the first was black and gray resembling steam engine locomotives, the second was white with blue ends. They looked like bugs with their little silver feet up in the air.

One half of the board was dominated by the black capacitors, in three groups. The back line was composed of the four gray and black switches and only the larger capacitors, varying immensely in height from half an inch to an inch. The next line was half large and half small capacitors. The front line which had mostly small capacitors and two large, was set in such a way that it looked as if the large capacitors were commanding the small.

           

The next row was like the first row of black, running from corner to corner of the board was a series of nails, pointed end to the black, and gray and blue capacitors. The rest of the board filled out with the white switches, dollar signs, capacitors and nails. It filled nearly every square. The nails looked as if they were facing the black capacitors, they all lay down on the board like the slender body of warships. This was clearly were the line had been drawn and on either side of it, combatants were ready to kill.

         

All this may have looked like it followed a strange order that made no sense, but to the practical eye it was a detailed chart telling every aspect of the summer, charting every day. The black fleet represents the time given to do a thing, the opposition what that thing was; teachers work, or chores to be done, books to be read. To the mind’s eye it was a naval battle that had waged for two weeks of utter rage and still fought onward. To the mind’s eye the board was a blue ocean and to the mind death was in the air. The black fleet was the fleet of time. Its smallest ships were days and its larger capacitors weeks. But its four black/gray battleships were tools that were used like computers. The other fleet mainly represented essays, except for its blue frigates (small capacitors) which represented pages by the hundred.

           

In the mass of ships a story was unfolding like the pages of a map with its details like that of history itself. However, there were suspensions of reality. Some things were too large, like the guns on the battleships. They were 20 inch canons, monsters, four inches wider than those on the battlers of World War II. The armor of all the black fleet was unusually thick and heavy to account for a kill ratio of nearly 3-1 in favor of black. It all made perfect sense to the man that used the board, but others just could not understand and ignored the board as a strange decoration.

         

On the bridge of the Relenomiks, one of the black battle ships, stood Phoenix, the mighty admiral who was in command. His name was not Phoenix, for he had no name at all, but was “The Phoenix.” They called him that, because they had found him in the ashes of his mother’s body just minutes old. From that day he was called Phoenix, Son of Ash, as his father had not been found. Phoenix grew in to a big man, heavy and strong with a badly torn black uniform and a book with iron clasps in his hand. Big pieces of his uniform were missing and the rest was a mass of re-stitched cloth. The black material was surprisingly clean for its condition. The man himself stood tall and proud; looking with his gray eyes at the board in front of him, much like the one that sat on top of the air filter.

         

“Three detachments of seven frigates are at the ready my Admiral, as like the three that stand now on the front and second line,” said a captain in full uniform not as clean as the admirals, but not torn.

         

“We will hold position as we are, Caleb,” said the Phoenix, returning his salute with an arm completely free from uniform and laden with heavy muscles.

         

“But sir. . .” said Caleb

         

“Caleb, I have smelled the salt in the air twice as long as you, felt it on my skin like a foul chemical. I can taste the burning of men and death in every breath as my ships slowly lose their armor and my men are put to death. I need no less to stand on land then you but wish as many of my men to reach it as soon as possible. I will not sacrifice them no matter what.”

The admiral was still as calm as if he had been enjoying morning coffee in a favorite chair. Caleb looked at him with wide white eyes then sniffed the air. It was worse than the admiral had said. Other than the smell of unwashed man that had been accumulating for weeks there was a faint odor of dried leaves. The smell was like cinnamon, almost; it smelt clean. It appeared to be the admiral he looked beaten but strong, he made every effort to remain so. Caleb looked at his uniform, not but a month old  and painted with a mist of black dirt as Phoenix in his 5 year old war stiffened uniform looked as if it was a new suit that had been tattered by clean rocks and rosewood.

         

“Can’t you smell the victory we would have if we could now force our way forward. The battleships would plow through their line and the frigates would finish them off. It would be simple.” Caleb paused looking at the expression on the admiral’s face. It was still unmoved

         

“I smell death” said Phoenix. “but I will move two battleships up in good time.”

         

Caleb frowned. “Yes sir,” he said.

         

I shook my head realizing that I had been staring at the Scrabble board for some time. You see, I try to put my anger on the board and forget about it in real life. It does not always work, but it helps. The board has always been a special way to let go even when I see the odds against me.