Violence Without A Target: Repression in the 1950s

Nicholas Ray is a filmmaker who delves further than most into the tormenting conflict that pervaded through the teen spirit of the 50s. However, in doing so, he expressed an angst and anxiety that was not restricted by youth or sex, but which gave voice to an indiscernible cry. His characters seem unable to restrain the “interior demon of violence” (Bitsch et al 1985, 105), but perhaps the problem is not that they cannot restrain themselves, but that there exists no healthy way for them to truly let go. Characters and individuals are torn between this innate potential for violence and the need to repress it in order to function in society (Andrew 2004, 13). Perhaps restraint is the cause, not the solution, of the delinquent anxiety embodied in Rebel Without a Cause.  I will argue that the 1950s gave birth to a variety of examples where due to the lack of a healthy mode of expression, violence and anxiety became restrained, directionless, causing stress and eventual explosions in both the individual and society.
We will trace the manifestations of this directionless violence in two ways. First, we will look at the society and culture of the 1950s, documenting the effects that new modes of economic organisation and the breakdown of traditional patriarchal hierarchies have had in a negative sense in the 50s. Secondly, we will explore Ray’s obsession with and expression of this interior violence through Rebel Without a Cause, finally questioning the auteur’s beliefs: does salvation exist in a world created by the poet of violence?

Inferno - Societal Hell in 1950s

The 1950s was an era striving to contain the entropic energies brought in the aftermath of the Second World War. As the nuclear family was ruptured from the loss or departure of male soldiers, the roles of all individuals in the post-war United States were altered irrevocably, resulting in a breakdown of the machinery which allows for healthy expressions of conflict and violence, the results of which we can see through a variety of examples in both the social and economic spheres.
One of the largest factors for this lack of modes of healthy expressions of anxiety came in the breakdown of the patriarchal hierarchy which had dominated society prior to World War II. The fall of the patriarchal hierarchy, while definitively a positive moment for equality in the history of the United States, gave rise to a social-familial structure which suffered anxiety over the adaptation to new roles. Rohmer notes that the weakness of the father or patriarchal figurehead within the narrative of Rebel Without a Cause not only explains the delinquent behaviour of the son, it demands it (Bitsch et al 1985, 113). In Grease (Kleiser 1978), a school dance set in the end of the 1950s is characterised by the ineptitude of its institutional heads, reflecting once more the absence of figures of strong patriarchal authority.

Extending this idea, we can argue that the absence or ineptitude of any leader leads to delinquency or anxiety for those ostensibly under his/her leadership, or (I would argue in a more general sense) to the inability to direct such delinquency in a healthy and socially acceptable direction.
A fundamental contributor to this breakdown of the patriarchal hierarchy was the rise of women in the workforce (insert photo here), as we can see through the variety of proto-feminist images documenting and encouraging female participant in the workforce. With the disappearance of the role of patriarchal breadwinner, nuclear families lost, in many senses, the orientation to which they had become accustomed over millenia, becoming a “haven of repression, resentment and misunderstanding” (Andrew 2004, 18).

A repressive society also added to this bottling of anxiety, which having lost its figurehead additionally finds it impossible to exorcise. The educational videos, such as “What to Do on a Date” produced for teens at the time reflect the societal pressure to “conform and knuckle under; with the emphasis [society] places on the importance of respectability, success and material comfort” (Andrew 2004, 14). Additionally, it is noticeable that the films feature a faceless narrator, typically with a serious male voice, as if patriarchal values can be expressed, but their figures are ultimately ineffective and invisible.
The new Fordist work mentality presents a non-gendered, ageless example of these symptoms of a leaderless economy. Henry Ford redefined modes of economic production by implementing a “factory line” mentality, positing each individual worker as a cog in a larger machine (Haslem 2008). Additionally, with the growth of huge conglomerates such as the Ford empire, the link between worker and owner became stretched beyond recognition. This results in a feeling of alienation and isolation of the worker from both the product of their labour, resulting in anxiety and feelings of worthlessness, as well as their leader, resulting in the absence of a feasible or healthy target for the expression of anxiety.

Purgatorio - The Poet of Nightfall

The “first home-grown film-poet of American disillusionment,” Nicholas Ray was a filmmaker who depicted with stark accuracy the effects of “rampant individualism trapped within a culture devoted to conformism and materialism” (Andrew 2004, 9). In Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Ray explores the role of the non-conformist teenager Jim, and simultaneously documents the crisis of masculine identity and the resulting tension and instability of society which is “virtually sine qua non of Ray’s work” (Andrew 2004, 13). Andrew further notes that characters are torn between this innate potential for violence and the need to repress it in order to function in society.

Masculinity, in Rebel Without a Cause, is a tortured and instable thing, with little leadership from figures who ought occupy places of responsibility and control. It is important to note, first, that neither Ray nor this essay in anyway advocates a chauvinist or misogynist society: the only salvation presented, albeit a brief respite, comes in the figure of Natalie Wood, indeed it seems that woman alone is possessed of the ability to save man from himself (Bitsch et al 1985, 105). The benefits of increased autonomy and agency for women are distinct from the issues deriving from the collapse of patriarchy, though they may share similar origins.
The figures of patriarchy and leadership in Rebel Without a Cause are predominantly depicted as bumbling, impotent, or simply out of touch. Jim’s father Frank, when called to the police station to pick up Jim, appears torn between trying to be ‘cool’ by remarking that consuming alcohol does not seem a big deal and trying to assert his authority in the face of a shrewish wife.  “Do you have to slam the door in my face?” he asks. “Don’t I buy you everything you want?” Likewise, Judy craves for love from her father which she is denied, while Plato’s father arrives only as a series of numbers on a check.
In face of this absence of connection, the repressive impulse of a dysfunctional family physically affects Jim. As his family arrives he withdraws into himself, wrapping his arms tight about himself and a small token of childhood, framed by himself while his family is framed as a single, malicious entity. Eventually, unable to literally hold himself back, his bottled anxiety explodes as he shouts, “You’re tearing me apart! You say one thing then he says another and then everybody changes back again!” As he opens up emotionally, he does so physically as well, his arms gesturing wildly and accusatively. And yet, as he realises the absence of an avenue to which he can express himself, he collapses into himself again.
Later in the film, Ray demonstrates his awareness of this building of conflict as he instructs James Dean:

“One evening when Jimmy dropped by to see me, I began to discuss the scene [where Jimmy returns to his parents after the traged] with him; I asked him to go into the yard while I played the part of the father in the living-room. I gave Jimmy two contradictory instructions: first to go upstairs without being heard, and then, at the same time, to feel the irresistible need to talk to somebody. I then turned on the television to a channel where the programmes had finished, and pretended to be asleep. So Jimmy comes in and walks past me to go upstairs and it’s then that the contradictory movement gets the better of him: he falls heavily on to the sofa, with a bottle of milk, and waits for me to wake up; at that very moment I exclaimed, ‘Now your mother comes down the stairs!’ And I knew that I’d found the dynamics of my scene” (Bitsch et al 1985, 122).

The forced expressions of such conflicting forces, such as Jim’s in the opening scene, can be harmless or quite devastating. When the internal violence which Ray believed was inherent in all human beings is expressed normally, such as through the juvenile antics of eleven- and twelve-year-old children, the fallout can be minimal: it is the act of repression which often yields the most atrocious violence (Bitsch et al 1985, 122). In Rebel Without a Cause, Plato’s instability, his uncertainty and his inability to express anxiety leads to his death, as he brandishes the weapon (a minor ‘explosion’ of pent-up anxiety), the society of containment guns him down, repressing (and perhaps relieving) his anxiety once and for all.

Paradiso - Salvation in Expression

While Rivette says “salvation is a private affair” (Bitsch et al 1985, 105), Ray seems to set his critique of society with the hope of salvation, if not through society, then through complementary dualisms. While he notes that “the quest for a fulfilled life is…paradoxically, solitary” (Bitsch et al 1985, 105), in Rebel Without a Cause the closest thing to salvation comes in the form of Judy.
Tension in Rebel Without a Cause is caused predominantly through antagonistic dualisms: Jim versus his family, the instinct to violence versus societal repression, the desire for love versus the need for independence (Andrew 2004, 13). Healthy methods of expression, contrarily, are presented through positive (or protagonistic) dualisms: in his relationship with Judy, “our erstwhile hero becomes the little boy that he could not be with his parents, but simultaneously he discovers his responsibility as a man” (Bitsch et al 1985, 114). Despite the fact that these interludes are but brief respites from the cruelness of the world of repression, Ray seems to imply that where there is a positive or healthy means to express the violence inside, there can be salvation.

The 1950s was a time of immense repression, societal pressure and restraint, and it was exactly these forces which, lacking a proper means to express them, leads to they dysfunction of families and the anxiety of youth seen in Rebel Without a Cause. It may not be difficult to see the links between the 1950s as a decade of repression and control and the 1960s as a decade of expression and revolt. With the crumbling of patriarchy, the dissolution of set gender roles, the place of the individual became tenuous, anxious and rife with conflict, and the repression of society ceased to be able to control the tension it accumulated. In hindsight, the decades past have seen the rise of the teenager as well as further expressions of individual control of society in the arena of social networking websites, but are these sustainable, healthy avenues of expression? Or will we still burst from ourselves, and cry “You’re tearing me apart!”

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