The Bad Boy, the Troublemaker, the Rebel, the young delinquent with a heart of gold; all undoubtedly some of America’s favorite tropes. Americans have a soft spot for the Bad Boy who is really a Good Guy. Such characters are prevalent throughout America’s entertainment culture and history. From Johnny Depp’s Cry-baby Walker, to Judd Nelson as Bender in The Breakfast Club, and Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, Americans swoon at the first sight of a brooding glare, and go weak in the knees at the disregard of authority. But where did the Bad Boy come from? Who started the trend? The Teenage Rebel as we have come to know him first appears in his true form in the Cold War era of the 1950s with films such as The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando, and Rebel
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Upon close examination of the themes present in the film, one will find that the goals of proclaimed “rebel” and “delinquent” Jim Stark are in fact not rebellious at all. If anything, Jim yearns for his family to subscribe more closely to the Nuclear Family suburban ideal of the 1950s, which, by the end of the film, he receives- thus resolving all of his problems. How then did Jim Stark, and subsequently James Dean himself, become the poster boy and model for the Teenage Rebel? How does the contradiction of Jim Stark, the Conformist Rebel, impact the Bad Boy archetype America has constructed for itself? Multiple scholars have noted how teenage audiences interpreted the character of Jim Stark as a rebel icon, and how this interpretation is ironically contrary to the true conformist and conservative themes of the film. However, they have not satisfactorily examined the part characters like Jim Stark played in the creation of The American Teenage Rebel character itself. What’s more; scholars have seemingly overlooked how these kinds of portrayals of teenagers have fundamentally transformed the way America’s youth views itself. How much are these rebellious characters that America loves so much, and pervade our popular culture so deeply, embedded in the American teenage subconscious? In what ways are we making these fictional characters into …show more content…
As stated before, the conservative message within Rebel is strong- but the question arises: why did filmmakers feel the need to send this message in the first place? Whose minds were they trying to change, and what threat did they perceive themselves to be fending off? It is not a secret that the Cold War era was a time of great paranoia and strict social control in America. The threat of communism became all-consuming, morphing from strictly a political concern to an “umbrella term” that spread across all areas of life, with homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, the feminine, and all other forms of delinquency seen as threats to the American way of life (Mitchell 137). America turned to media as its main tool of control and reform to combat the threat of communism. In his essay “The Teenage Terror in the Schools” Joshua Garrison calls the domestic sitcoms of the 1950s, which depicted idyllic, happy families living in nearly utopian suburbs, an “educative function” with the purpose of “reinforcing and disseminating traditional values at a time when forces of change were becoming quite disruptive” (Garrison 4). In essence, they thought if people saw happy, wholesome, traditional families on television, the masses would follow suit. Many American schools in the 1950s went so far as to employ “classroom scare films” to further the attempt to prevent the “perceived
Upon close examination of the themes present in the film, one will find that the goals of proclaimed “rebel” and “delinquent” Jim Stark are in fact not rebellious at all. If anything, Jim yearns for his family to subscribe more closely to the Nuclear Family suburban ideal of the 1950s, which, by the end of the film, he receives- thus resolving all of his problems. How then did Jim Stark, and subsequently James Dean himself, become the poster boy and model for the Teenage Rebel? How does the contradiction of Jim Stark, the Conformist Rebel, impact the Bad Boy archetype America has constructed for itself? Multiple scholars have noted how teenage audiences interpreted the character of Jim Stark as a rebel icon, and how this interpretation is ironically contrary to the true conformist and conservative themes of the film. However, they have not satisfactorily examined the part characters like Jim Stark played in the creation of The American Teenage Rebel character itself. What’s more; scholars have seemingly overlooked how these kinds of portrayals of teenagers have fundamentally transformed the way America’s youth views itself. How much are these rebellious characters that America loves so much, and pervade our popular culture so deeply, embedded in the American teenage subconscious? In what ways are we making these fictional characters into …show more content…
As stated before, the conservative message within Rebel is strong- but the question arises: why did filmmakers feel the need to send this message in the first place? Whose minds were they trying to change, and what threat did they perceive themselves to be fending off? It is not a secret that the Cold War era was a time of great paranoia and strict social control in America. The threat of communism became all-consuming, morphing from strictly a political concern to an “umbrella term” that spread across all areas of life, with homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, the feminine, and all other forms of delinquency seen as threats to the American way of life (Mitchell 137). America turned to media as its main tool of control and reform to combat the threat of communism. In his essay “The Teenage Terror in the Schools” Joshua Garrison calls the domestic sitcoms of the 1950s, which depicted idyllic, happy families living in nearly utopian suburbs, an “educative function” with the purpose of “reinforcing and disseminating traditional values at a time when forces of change were becoming quite disruptive” (Garrison 4). In essence, they thought if people saw happy, wholesome, traditional families on television, the masses would follow suit. Many American schools in the 1950s went so far as to employ “classroom scare films” to further the attempt to prevent the “perceived