'Rebel' Without a Father

by Victor Lu

The concept of family is one that changes constantly. Rebel Without a Cause is made with the intent on looking under the surface of the familial image and values of the mid-1950's and the simmering tension among middle class kids where, as Buzz remarks, "Ya gotta do something." There is plenty going on in this film, as Jim (James Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood), and Plato (Sal Mineo) are concerned about the role of their fathers, a concern that encompasses a lot of what the film is trying to say.

Judy's father exerts a dual edge of neglect. In the police station, she runs through to Officer Fremick how her father called her a tramp and smeared her makeup; in a later scene at the dinner table, she tries to kiss her father, but he turns away and says she's too old for that stuff. The interesting thing about these instances is that Judy's father is criticizing Judy on two different views. In the first scene he yells at her for being too grown up, with makeup and suggestive behavior. Judy, trying to act more as a child to appease her father, is then scolded and ignored for being too childish while her father plays around with her younger brother. Her father is stern and dominant; the mother is ineffective and silent. This is a severe criticism of a patriarchally repressed household. The father shuts Judy down both as a woman and as a girl by smearing her lipstick, trying to change the subject, avoiding her kisses, and using violence—a slap—to put her in her place, leaving her to feel unaccepted and hopeless.

Judy chronically runs away from home. This is to get away from his sphere of dominance. Officer Fremick, by allowing the mother to pick Judy up instead of the father, shatters Judy's hope of upending her situation by having her father come out of his domain of the house. The officer seems to serve the status quo, and Judy feels betrayed, fueling her distrust and justified paranoia about her father. Interestingly Officer Fremick treats Jim much differently, probably because Jim's articulation and style is less paranoid than Judy's. The result is that she runs away all the time, and hangs around the bullies, the wild crowd that is not good for her.

Plato does not have a father and is desperate for one. It is apparent by his reaction to the officer asking about his father that that part of his life means a lot. Jim steps into Plato's life through the mirror in Plato's locker, where going on Jim's kind gesture of lending Plato his jacket, Plato feels an instant attraction. Plato's mental instability from his decidedly unconventional family life makes him clingy and unrealistic. His tragedy is not being mature enough to handle his situation; he reacts to his harsh reality by playing up Jim as his father that leads to disappointment and paranoia at the end. Plato wants Jim to sleep over, and to take him hunting and fishing, and confesses his admiration for Jim to Judy. When Jim and Judy leave him for a bit in the abandoned mansion, he acts like a little child whose parents have left him. In Plato's mind this breaches the parent/child trust; for a minute Jim becomes just another part of the system of neglect that Plato has faced. Jim is reluctant to be the father and take responsibility, but he must in order to save Plato's life. Jim negotiates, and in this instance, he becomes a man, he does something good and non-destructive. Plato's tragedy is that he built up a lot of hype around the affection that Jim gives; Plato is paranoid in that sense, and when he is left alone, that paranoia and emotional immaturity bursts into violence and death.

Throughout the film Jim is the heroic misfit, alternately belligerent and sensitive. He is more vocal and confrontational than Judy or Plato, as evident when he talks with Fremick and with his parents. It is why he progresses, because he does not repress himself; he is honest. Jim desires for his dad to take more control in the family and guide Jim to manhood. He attempts to get his father to be a father by saying, "I don't want to drag you into this but I can't help it." Jim knows he is a rough teen, that he has never done anything right. He is not really rebelling or trying to be bad when he fights with his parents; he criticizes them because he desires a stronger father. His father is complacent, always trying too hard to be Jim's pal, recalling his earlier days, playing along with Jim, buying him things—a jab at materialism, or the accumulation of goods used to distract from real parental neglect. When Jim before and after the chicken race tries to incite his father to stand up for himself and for Jim against the judgmental mother, Jim's mother only sees it as hatred and reckless words. Jim wants his father to stop him from taking another wrong turn. However, nothing Jim does ever seems to get his father to act because the mother keeps moving them from place to place, running away from problems, just like Judy, or Plato. Jim's father is interesting in that he is idealistic about the excess of adolescence but has no ideals when it comes to being a father. Both of Jim's parents use the argument that in ten years his mistakes won't matter that much. That may be true, but Jim knows that juvenile mistakes may not matter to him ten years from now, but the fact that ten more years of weak parenting, of those mistakes, is irresponsible and will matter. As Jim says, everyone is involved; when the parents try to run, distrust begins to brew. When the parents don't really listen, or in Plato's case, aren't even there, misunderstanding arises. Jim says, "You want me to tell the truth, didn't you say that?" Jim's dad backs down. When Jim's mother states that they are moving again, Jim's dad starts to object, but buckles under pressure. This failure of the parent to truly support the child who wants to be helped can only cause distrust and anger.

The paranoia associated with these adolescents is striking against the backdrop of middle class suburbia and is based on the same have and have not, parent/child, authority conflict that many other paranoia is based on, such as political paranoia. Unlike political paranoia though, in this story, nobody wants to purposely hurt anyone else; it is just that the teens, considering their parents' actions or non-actions, feel like their lives are being destroyed. Setting this against the present day at that time during the Eisenhower era where the clean image of suburbia was promoted as the conventional, normal and acceptable way of life, creates a dynamic that it may not just be the parents that aren't listening, but society's honesty as a whole, the cultural system as a whole. It suggests an undercurrent of denial, a sweep-it-under-the-rug attitude by having the Stark family move from place to place, starting over all the time and lying to themselves. By doing this Jim's supposed anti-social behavior becomes habit, and the film says that it is not his fault. The film supports the notion of needing a family to be stable in life, using Plato as a tragic example. It is not totally subversive in that respect. However, Jim's steadiness as a rebel with a cause allows him to be an anti-hero that beats the system in his own way without running away or shooting anyone or being a bully and gets what he wants and needs, which is a real father.