Dean’s Rebel heralded rise of teen culture
By: Gillian Carr
September 29, 2008
Wordcount: 1,098
In 1955, Rebel Without A Cause’s James Dean slouched across the silver screen in his red jacket, smirking out of the side of his mouth and defining forever the iconic Hollywood ‘bad boy’. To coincide with the film’s 50th anniversary, Warner Brothers has ordered a flashy new DVD re-release, with plenty of extras to tempt those who already own a copy. And while it may sell well among an older generation who remembers mourning a young actor who died before his time, I can’t help but think there’s a shrewd calculation behind the studio’s decision, a sort of experiment to see if they can still cash in on the popularity of fifty year old movie with another audience.
After all, one of the most sought-after markets today is teenagers, which a recent marketing study has revealed have an average of 94 dollars of disposable income a week to spend. This generation is constantly hungry for new (or old, but new to them) material, and what better way to draw them in, but to showcase the film that brought about their popularity in American entertainment culture?
When it was first released in 1955, Rebel was raw, a story stolen from dramatic headlines found in newspapers and whispered with unease in homes across America. A new epidemic was sweeping across the nation – juvenile delinquency and gang violence was on the rise in the unlikeliest of places – middle class suburbia. Nicolas Ray’s film was a window into the psyche of the American teenager, and in an era where paranoia ruled (think McCarthyism and the Red Tide) and the image of a perfect nuclear family was everything, Rebel and other films like it such as The Wild One and The Blackboard Jungle, were a shock, opening up the theatre to an audience who could see their own struggles and anxieties reflected back at them on the screen. “It is a violent, brutal and disturbing picture of modern teen-agers,” wrote Bosley Crowther, the New York Times film critic in his original review.
Nowadays, with a surface glance, one can look at the film and see it as a cultural monument to its time. “Yeah, I bet you’re a real yo-yo,” The language is antiquated, the mannerisms of the main characters (James Dean’s attempts to squeeze out tears are laughable) and the melodramatic underpinnings of its script are some of the things that stand out as not having aged well. Its plot is hardly shocking to anyone today who has grown up watching Hollywood movies.
But shock value aside, what relevance and appeal could this film have to today’s youth? Despite living in a post-9/11 world which some draw similarities to the doomsday era of the 1950s, there doesn’t seem to be the same anxieties of living in end times, playing out in adolescent rebellion. Maybe because today’s teens have seen it all before, being played out on screen? While the problem of gangs is still an issue, its stage and impact on society has largely moved on from the result of rebellion and boredom in suburbia, to being a result of economic and social class tensions today.
But the deeper issues of the film, of the characters feeling like they don’t fit in, that no one is listening, or even cares, (Plato) that everything they knew is changing around them and they don’t know how to act anymore (Judy) , that no one has any answers (Jim)– these are questions that teenagers are still perennially struggling with and constantly asking themselves. I dare anyone to say that they haven’t asked these very questions during their own adolescent years. These are universal struggles.
And that’s why the ideas and characters presented first in Rebel still resonate today and attract audiences today. Rebel was one of the first of its kind to show teenagers that they’re not the only ones who struggle with these questions and problems. And because it’s so familiar, filmmakers have returned to the same subject material over and over again, as have the film-goers. Teen issue movies/television shows have a timeless quality to them, even if some of the material may eventually seem dated. They’re constantly being produced.
Fifty years later and James Dean’s role as the misunderstood boy with a heart of gold has been imitated countless times in various movies, television shows and stage plays. Indeed, it’s become a plum role for many a young, upcoming actor to launch their career on – one only has to look at the resumes of John Travolta, Johnny Depp, Christian Slater, and more recently, Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You, to see that a similar role can win them fans and guarantee their status as a high school locker pin-up.
And Dean’s role wasn’t the only one that has become an archetype of teen movies. Natalie Wood’s character of Judy, the spoilt, rich girl who sees in the bad boy a way to rebel from her place in society, has long been a staple of teen flicks. And Sal Mineo’s tortured Plato can find modern day counterpoints in such characters as Sean Patrick Leonard’s Neil in Dead Poets Society.
To take a recent example, the hit teen television show The O.C. owes the very premise of its existence to Rebel. Stoic, misunderstood outsider Ryan, played by Benjamin MacKenzie arrives in town, catching the attention of rich, wild party girl Marissa (Mischa Barton) and capturing the friendship of awkward, lonely Seth (Adam Brody). Sound familiar? There’s even an homage in the second episode of the show, where Ryan, Marissa and Seth run away and hide out in an abandoned house, similar to Rebel’s famous scene.
The O.C. is not a carbon copy but rather an updated version of the story told in Rebel. Some things have to change, after all, and in particular, the tension between the teenagers and the adults to whom they look to for guidance seems largely resolved in The O.C. But the fundamental story remains the same.
Despite appearances otherwise, Rebel Without a Cause’s legacy doesn’t depend on the cult appeal of James Dean, nor on the nostalgic value of the past era it recreates. No, its appeal is one that is subconscious for the most part but that is part of every filmgoer’s own history. What it did was draw attention to the inherent drama in a teenager’s life, magnifying the microscope on this familiar sub-culture and we have remained fixated and fascinated, unable to look away ever since. That’s a powerful draw for audiences of all ages, and especially for today’s youth.