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Summary
Assesses the layered meanings and persistent global legacy of an American film classic.
Five decades after the production and initial release of Rebel Without a Cause, this book examines both the complicated historical moment in which the film was made as well as its continuing and pervasive influence on film today. The contributors track how the film continues to speak to diverse audiences as a touchstone for imagined anxieties over adolescence and coming-of-age, traditional values of family and community, threats from abroad, and the provocations of mass or consumer society. Although the specific sources and motivations for rebellion have shifted, what has persisted is the film’s singular power to represent rebellion in what could otherwise be seen as the everyday, and to move viewers to ponder its causes.
"Having avidly read most of what has been published in English on James Dean over the past thirty years, I was delighted to encounter perspectives that succeed in offering such fresh, original, and creative analyses of the most celebrated film of this actor’s short career—analyses that open up new ways to read the film and the historical contexts of its production, distribution, and reception. This is a remarkable book from beginning to end, and each author substantially contributes to a greater appreciation of the film’s richness.” — Michael DeAngelis, author of Gay Fandom and Crossover Stardom: James Dean, Mel Gibson, and Keanu Reeves
"This is an absolutely unique book and a real contribution to cinema studies. The contributors offer the reader not only a comprehensive history of the film, with all of the key players given their proper place in film history, but also present the reader with unmistakable evidence of the lingering impact of the film on contemporary cinema discourse.” — Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Straight: Constructions of Heterosexuality in the Cinema
Contributors include Daniel Biltereyst, Mick Broderick, Jon Lewis, Elena Loizidou, James C. McKelly, Jon Mitchell, Murray Pomerance, Nicholas Ray, Timothy Shary, J. David Slocum, Claudia Springer, Susan White, and George M. Wilson.
J. David Slocum is Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University and is the editor of Violence and American Cinema.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Rebel Without a Cause, Fifty Years Later J. David Slocum
1. Story into Script Nicholas Ray
2. Stark Performance Murray Pomerance
3. "You want a good crack in the mouth?": Rebel Without a Cause, Violence, and the Cinema of Nicholas Ray Susan White
4. Growing Up Male in Jim's Mom's World Jon Lewis
5. Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause George M. Wilson
6. Jim Stark's "Barbaric Yawp": Rebel Without a Cause and the Cold War Crisis in Masculinity Jon Mitchell
7. "Armageddon Without a Cause": Playing "Chicken" in the Atomic Age Mick Broderick
8. Youth, Moral Panics, and the End of Cinema: On the Reception of Rebel Without a Cause in Europe Daniel Biltereyst
9. Rebellion and Citizenship: Hannah Arendt, Jim Stark, and American Public Life in the 1950s Elena Loizidou
10. Youth Cinema and the Culture of Rebellion: Heathers and the Rebel Archetype James C. McKelly
11. The Stark Screen Teen: Echoes of James Dean in Recent Young Rebel Roles Timothy Shary
12. In the Shadow of Rebel Without a Cause: The Postcolonial Rebel Claudia Springer
Cast and Production Credits
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
SUNY Series, Horizons of Cinema
