Rebel Without A Cause

MERRY CHRISTMAS DEAR READERS!

TO GET IN THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT...

READ SOMETHING ELSE! 

BECAUSE I'M WRITING ABOUT JAMES DEAN IN REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE!

AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME!

Now, I've realized the format of this blog has gone a little astray. I actually had some structure to my older posts, so I'm going to try something new and go back to the old way of writing these posts.

MR. JAMES DEAN, THE REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE IN POP CULTURE

I think James Dean is the male equivalent of Audrey Hepburn. You might ask, "Why, Lila? Why would you ever say such a strange thing?" Well, I'll tell you. It's because they're freakin' everywhere. Posters, calendars, books about Hollywood celebrities, mugs, t-shirts, you name it. The two of them, although I don't think they ever appeared in a movie together, are major Hollywood icons and are engrained into our good ol' American culture (in my opinion, if you give a damn). I have seen plenty of Audrey Hepburn movies (Breakfast at Tiffany's, Roman Holiday, to name a few), but I had never seen a movie with James Dean.

Now, I have been curious about the movie Rebel Without A Cause specifically ever since I learned to drive and got my license. When my Mom had to add me to the auto insurance for our car, they had to have me come in and watch a short, dumb video that talked about safety and rules of the road, etc, in order to get a cheaper auto insurance (I guess so they know that I know how to drive, even though I have a license). In the video, was a teenager who did lots of bad things that made him a bad driver. It was really terrible and I don't remember much of it except for in this kid's bare bones set that was supposed to be his bedroom, was a life-size, cardboard cut out of James Dean in his red jacket from Rebel Without A Cause (I think it even had the title printed at the bottom). He was just in the background (sometimes even in the foreground, or in line with the actors). Nothing was said about this cut out. It was just there.

Now, what was the production design of this little stupid video trying to say? Was it supposed to help describe the teenager's character as a rebel without a cause (and perhaps suggest that's why he made such bad driving decisions)? Was it supposed to be strange subliminal messaging against the main message of the video (ie, one should rebel against the rules defined in the video)? Or was it some poorly judged reference to the fact James Dean died in a car crash? Well, I had to find out. And the only way this was possible was by watching the movie.

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION

James Dean plays Jim Stark, the new kid in town, someone who's used to spending the night in jail for getting into fights for being called a chicken. He likes a girl, named Judy, but she runs with a pretty rough crowd that forces him into situations that end pretty badly for one of the characters (I won't tell you who). While he wants to be popular and well-liked, he mostly wants a friend. He finds a friend in Plato, a kid who has nobody... no friends, no family.

MY THOUGHTS (IF YOU GIVE A DAMN)

I have to say, I loved the movie. I still have no freakin' clue what James Dean's cardboard cut-out was doing in that driver's ed video I was forced to watch, but it lead me to a pretty fantastic movie. I realize my description above is pretty terrible, but it's really because I don't want to give too much away.  I really think that it was amazing and, dear readers, wherever you are, you should all go watch it because I can't say it enough... it was really good.

Someone has to fact check me on this, but in my limited knowledge, this is the first movie to really tell the story of the teenager. My boyfriend disagreed and said that perhaps there were movies earlier on that had teenagers having a good ol' time, and this is the first movie that took teenagers seriously. This may be true, but it can't be that much earlier since teenage culture and the word "teenager" itself wasn't even invented until after World War II. Here's an article on the word "teenager" that, although I didn't read all of it and it is from a home-schooling website, seemed interesting and relevant to the movie. Enough of that tangent. My point is, this movie took on a whole new culture that had not been explored before (to my knowledge), and it is done well. I was fascinated the entire time. It really hit home how little has changed since the 1950s, because I've met people like James Dean's character and I know people like Plato . I was extremely sympathetic towards their characters. To this day there isn't a good system in place to help people like Jim Stark and Plato. It's a bizarre, as of yet, unexplained side effect of our culture today, here in America. I think this movie was truly ahead of its time. 

Before I finish up this post, I have to add a film student note about the production design of the movie and so forth. The colors in this movie was amazing. And James Dean's red jacket was brilliant and continues to be iconic today. I'm female and I still want a jacket like James Dean's in this movie. Maybe it was James Dean's jacket, or maybe it was the gorgeous James Dean himself, or maybe it was the fact it was shot in Technicolor, or maybe it was the camera angle, but I fell in love with the movie from the very first shot of the opening credits.

I want to make movies like Rebel Without A Cause.

COMING SOON: Will the future be brighter? We'll find out with Blade Runner... next.