James Dean's Screen Personas as a Rebel

The Oxford English Dictionary defined a rebel as “a person who resists authority, control, or convention” . These are the characteristics of James Dean’s screen personas in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause and Elia Kazan’s East of Eden. In a time where conformity was a dominant ideology in society, rebellion became a way to display your own individuality. Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden both respectively deal with the vexing problem of the asocial youth who remain stubbornly delinquent against the nuclear family. Each respective film touches upon the puzzling subject of the 1950s, which is juvenile delinquency. The films also provide ammunition for the ideological rebellious behavior for teens to parody. Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden are both concerned with young people “estranged from their communities and struggling to define themselves differently than the norm” . James Dean was an attractive rebel figure because he represented the raw-nerved emotions of being an adolescent while he also asserted a romantic, mythic notion about, which became attractive to audiences young and old. Dean’s upfront sexiness and relentless desire to imbue honor make Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden films that withstand generational changes and remain prevalent within teenage society today.
James Dean as the archetype for the ‘rebel’ character personified a decade of defiance, and his screen portrayal of the iconic rebel sparked a cult following that superseded his life. The continued relevance and renowned status of Dean’s screen persona is prevalent because of its “sympathetic treatment of adolescent anguish” that each director concentrated on. The enigmatic nature of the rebel icon made it easy for the viewing audience to grab hold and manifest their personal principles onto it. Dean was catapulted to a cult figure as he evoked the submerged pain and spoke for a generation of people who had sense of being stifled and smothered by