: Study Questions: Week Five

Why Can't You Be Good?

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

West Side Story (1961)

The Dream's Problem Children

Juvenile delinquents (the young at odds with their culture and its rules) has a long history in the Hollywood vision of America. They appear in different roles and are treated from different perspectives from the law-breaking children in the gangster films of the 1930s ( The Public Enemy, 1931; Angels With Dirty Faces, 1938; and Crime School, 1938) to the counter-culture rebels in films of the 1960s and 1970s (Easy Rider, 1969; Alice's Restaurant, 1969; and The Strawberry Statement,1970. During the decades after World War II, they often appear as "social problems" whose presence is at odds with the social harmony and domestic tranquility that was an essential aspect of the American Dream. Juvenile delinquents became especially important when they appear in middle-class families as in Rebel Without a Cause, invade peaceful communities as in The Wild One (1954), or threaten youth-centered institutions as in The Blackboard Jungle (1955). This week's films both reveal the ways in which juvenile delinquency was linked to the American Dream and the diverse ways in which the "problem" can be found in Hollywood films.

1. This section of the course takes up films which deal with juvenile delinquents, the young rebels who defined themselves outside of or in opposition to the values of the American Dream. In what ways do Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story offer two very different causes of juvenile delinquency? Consider the social background of the central characters (class, race, setting).

2. What is the significance of the film's title: Rebel Without a Cause? Is it to be taken literally or ironically? Why might the three central characters seem to have no cause? Does the film suggest that there actually is a cause? What is it?

3. To what degree are fathers seen as the cause of troubled children in Rebel? What are their individual failings? What is the source of the conflict between Judy and her father? Contrast to the problems which Jim Stark and Plato have with their respective fathers.

4. Why do the three central characters meet in the juvenile division of the local police department? What is suggested about institutional authority in this sequence? Is this authority hostile to the troubled central characters? Or is it an alternative to incompetent and irresponsible parents?

5. How does the omnipresent image of Jim's Grandmother signify a criticism of maternal influence? Consider the mothers (or absence of mothers) in the film. From the way Rebel reveals their failings, can you deduce how a good mother ought to behave?

6. Does the popularity of psychotherapy and social work during the 1950s seem to be justified in the film, or are these "helping professions" being revealed as inadequate? Consider the behavior of the police department's kind-hearted social worker. What is the possible significance of his being absent when he is most needed?

7. Does the film seem to endorse the American Dream (at least the family aspect)? Does it suggest that the Dream is in need of professional help? Does treating juvenile delinquency as a psychological problem that can be "treated" help disguise some real problems which might be an intrinsic part of the Dream?

8. If the gang pursuing Jim represents a threat to the Dream, what sort of social, classes, races, values do they symbolize? In what ways are they similar to the central characters in West Side Story?

9. What is the symbolic significance of the class trip to the planetarium? How is the lecture on the earth's final cataclysm related to the film's action and the psychic state of the characters? In what way might the appearance of the overly intellectual astronomer in the film's final shot tend to undercut the somewhat optimistic ending?

10. How does the sequence in the deserted mansion both support and call into question the desire for a happy, emotionally fulfilling nuclear family? How is it parallel thematically to the duet "Somewhere" sung by Maria and Tony in West Side Story?

11. While playing at family life, Jim and Judy jokingly disparage children. Jim, in the voice of Mr. Magoo, says, "drown them like puppies." What is the significance of this allusion? How does it comment on Jim's family and on adults in general? How does this aside make the same statement as the poster's of the fat-faced political candidate and the angry neighbor who tells the Jets to go home in West Side Story?

12. In what ways do Doc (the store owner) in West Side Story and the well-meaning police social worker in Rebel exemplify the inability of adults to guide a younger generation?

13. In what ways might Rebel be described as the account of a rite of passage which leads Jim and Judy into adulthood? Might the same be said of Maria and the rival gangs at the conclusion of West Side Story? Why? Why not?

14. How are we to interpret the apparent reconciliation between Jim and his parents? Will it succeed, or is he reconciled only by leaving them?

15. If the "social problems" in Rebel are primarily psychological, in what ways does West Side Story present them as primarily sociological?

16. How do "Gee, Officer Krupke" and "America," two of West Side Story's best known songs, satirize both the American Dream and the 1950s' desire to see juvenile delinquency as a "social problem"?

17. How does the opening establishing shot of the New York skyline from the air and the credits which appear as graffiti on the walls of decrepit buildings point up the contrast between the promise of the American Dream and the disillusioning reality faced by the city's poor?

18. In what ways does West Side Story suggest that race is a major impediment to making the American Dream a reality?

19. West Side Story is based loosely on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. How does the use of Shakespeare to tell the story of inter-racial gang warfare in New York encourage audiences to see these marginal groups more sympathetically? To give them greater stature?

20. What, in your opinion, is the reason for treating middle-class delinquency as a psychological problem and lower-class delinquency as a social problem? What does it say about the core values at the heart of both films?