Rebel without a cause gay
When someone dies new, our sense of balance about how the world should work, what is fair or just, gets knocked off its axis. We mourn not just the loss of the person, but all the opportunities and things that person will never have, or perform , that dies with them. Death steals from the new the time that’s necessary to construct a legacy – whatever that may be. What makes James Dean’s story so unique and enduring, is that his legacy was conceived through death, forged in three performances brimming with intensity, and an underlying melancholy that, in hindsight, seemed to convey the passions of a man who knew he wasn’t distant for this earth. His signature role, the one that Dean is most identified with, is Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause.
Nicholas Ray and James Dean achieved critical success with their first films They Live by Night and East of Eden respectively, with Ray influencing filmmakers with his couple on the lamb-genre-touchstone (Truffaut called Ray “the poet of nightfall”), and Dean defining the teenager caught between his longing for acceptance, and the confusion of how to enter the senior world. It’s only fitting that these two
Rebel Without A Cause's Groundbreaking Lgbtq+ Subtext Explained
Rebel Without A Cause is remembered as the production that made James Dean an icon, but it also boasted some groundbreaking themes for its time – here’s the classic film’s gay subtext explained. Thankfully, LGBTQ teen characters don’t own to look too far for onscreen representation these days. From Oscar-winning films like Call Me By Your Name or Moonlight to critically acclaimed TV shows like Love, Victor and Euphoria, there’s an abundance of productions that film young LGBTQ characters discovering and accepting their sexuality.
Obviously, this wasn’t always the case. Representation of LGBTQ characters – teenage or otherwise – in mainstream movie and TV is a relatively new phenomenon and up until the late 1960s movies were subject to a strict place of guidelines called the Motion Picture Production Code. Also established as the Hays Code, the guidelines were established in 1934 and sought to limit “morally questionable” content in film. In that less tolerant era, this meant depictions of homosexuality in film was a no-no.
Related: Why David Duchovny's Trans Twin Peaks Character Denise Was So Groundbreaking
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Rebel Without a Cause is a clip of incredible beauty, tension and menace. I was riveted, even though, as a queer person and a miss, I felt under attack throughout this movie. People will come to distinct conclusions about the “cause” of Jim’s rebellion, but for the queer viewer, a palpable terror of homosexuality seems to underlie his existence, which is on the edge of total breakdown.
Jim is a youthful man whose sexuality appears, at the beginning, undecided, still under formation. He is deeply lost about what it means to be a man. He is terrified of, and enraged by, something that he just can’t articulate. He is highly attractive to (and ambiguously attracted by) other young men, negotiating sexually charged relationships with a violent gang commander called Buzz and a sensitive loner called Plato.
The possibility that the unnameable “cause” of Jim’s chaotic behaviour is a fear of queerness is also raised by his disgust at his father’s emasculation in the family place. We see his father wearing an apron and existence dominated by his mother and grandmother. Jim begs his father to overcome his mother to bring her into line. In a misogynistic culture, the
Rebel Without A Cause question
So in Rebel Without A Cause was Sal Mineo's character, Plato, gay? Or was he just really messed up by his parents? From what I could tell he was almost always left in the care of the maid or others while his parents went where ever they wanted. It seemed to me that they had long ago rejected him, like they never wanted him to begin with. I could see that as neglect (granted a privileged neglect), a type of infant abuse, something that advantage Plato into being unstable.
From my own encounter I know that some parents, fathers primarily, perform have problems relating to, and bonding with, their child if they perceive him to be same-sex attracted. Luckily my father and mother had suspected my homosexuality and had appear to accept it before I came out to them. Not everyone is so lucky.
I can see both happening to Plato, the tragic figure of the movie. Having parents who were rejecting him because they didn't want him then feeling that their son was gay just made their leaving him behind that much easier.
Then along comes Jim (James Dean). A guy who he could relate to and who could relate to him. Poor Plato, a young boy just looking for acce