Zhou Lei
Many people tend to ignore the sociological dimension when comes to analyze this movie: a bunch of weirdoes in their puberty, suffering the unavoidable growing pain is all that you need to think about. But the magic movie has no magic way to grapple with the unchallengeable social and political gravity. United States in 1950s was not in an agony-free Eden state; to take Rebel without a cause at the face value will destine to make you lost in the mist of this dazzling and sizzling typecasting melodrama. The Rebel in the movie do has a cause; even if it is ennui, nihilism, there are some sociological and political reasons shaping them. By delving into the tumultuous 50s, contemplate with all these factors ranging from brazen propaganda and maltreatment of those politically pagan partisans of McCarthyism, to the Eisenhower hidden-hand manipulation of the this free country, to those questions left barely intact by the incumbent presidents at those times -----civil right, social justice, material opulence and spiritual paucity, we can understand the undercurrents behind the “Rebel” without a cause. When a country just scrambled back from the throes of war and achieved unparalleled economical success, it automatically catapulted itself into a new wave of anti-communism and flag-burning, left many people at awe with the writhing and turbulent political fighting and many other who were growing jaded and numb about those problems. For those economically well-to-do kids portrayed in this movie which could seclude themselves from the social ado and worried about their personal problems, they nominally have no cause to rebel. But their problems and anguishes were embedded in the social context. Of course; this movie is about the problems facing the juvenile who are in the state of economically care-free and spiritually ennui. All the three principles in the movie had a get-together in the Griffith planetarium when they were mired in more serious trouble compare to the first scene.
Three things converged in this movie and achieved a dramatic situation when it finally grinding to a halt: father figure searching, self identity, emotional catharsis. The hen-pecked Jim’s father don’t know he could provide no guidance for his kids when he traipsing in apron; the draconian one-dimension cad of Natalie’s father could offer nothing but pain and estrangement for his girl by slapping in the face simply for a kiss on his cheek; the fatherless Plato fumbling for a parental figure who can console him and offer a sanctuary for him.
Chicken run is more like a simulate test for masculinity than a stupid game. Beside this, pooh –poohing in class time, switchblade fighting in the balcony corner, leather jacket and buy-in-bulk way of dressing, cynicism and loony iconoclastic behavior, howling while their bickering parents whining with each other, children-likely playing in the abandoned house , all of these can find their answers in their long process of identifying themselves and attempt to have an involuntarily emotional catharsis.
The problems pestering the Kids here in the movie like solitary, spoiled-up, and lack of communication are still haunting the teens today.
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