Rebel without a cause (1955)… melodrama masculinity with James Dean himself

 

My rating: 8

IMDB rating: 7.8

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048545/?ref_=nv_sr_2

Dearest reader,

Watching a classic movie like this is always a treat! Of course, the biggest treat in this movie is James Dean. He has this amazing on-screen charisma that just captures your attention and make you want to be part of his ‘gang’.

But like Fight Club this movie, to me, makes some interesting comments on masculinity. By the 1950’s the first and second wave of feminism have already passed and men began to be challenged by women who were not only now educated, but who also now had rights.

The line between sensitivity and masculinity became blurred and men had to carve out a new identity and place in society for themselves. I would therefore argue that the emasculation of the father, by the overbearing mother, is the biggest cause for the son’s rebellion.

The more Jim is faced with the emasculation of his father the more he needs to establish his own masculinity. His dread of the word ‘chicken’ shows this as the means of discrediting the accusation lies in activities that emphasise Jim’s masculinity.

But Jim also has a sensitive side. He merges this sensitive side with his quest for emphasised masculinity. With his love for Judy and his friendship with Plato, he shows that he can merge the two sides within himself, he ultimately creates the modern man or the metro man.

James Dean truly is the ultimate man!

Want to read more on Rebel without a Cause? Try these…

Revisiting Rebel Without a Cause.

Roger Ebert: Rebel without a cause

Slantmagazine: Rebel without a Cause

Far From Heaven (2002)… Haynes’ explicit exposition of Sirkian ignorances

My rating: 8

IMDB rating: 7.4

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0297884/?ref_=ttmd_md_nm

Dearest reader,

For me, the best way to analyse and understand this film is by reading it as an answer to Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows. Because of this use of different mediums, there is a difference in the topics that are being used as well.

This does not mean that this film is an incoherent mumble-jumble, it just has a very specific structuring thread, especially with regards to:

• the politics of visibility,
• legibility and
• legitimation.

These alternative images challenge the heteronormative or cisnormative assumption that there is a straightforward relationship between sex and gender and, gender and desire.

All of these elements therefore really place some emphasis on Queer Cinema. A part of this rewriting by Haynes of Sirk’s classical masterpiece involves the asking of questions that one would rather not. If these issues make you a bit squirmish today, just imagine what the 1950’s suburban set would have thought.

-It is interesting to note that censorship was only lifted in the 1960’s and thereafter Hollywood started adapting the rating system.-

Unravelling the 1950’s melodrama, as Haynes so cleverly does, raises a few issues: the first of which is that the ‘scandalous’ nature of a gay-relationship is compared to that of a cross-racial relationship. It is up to the viewer to decide which is more ‘scandalous’ than the other. There is this physical distance on both a physical and emotional level. In this film these elements are hyper-satirised.

Want to read more on Far from Heaven? Try these…

RE: Far from Heaven

NYT: Far from Heaven

Talk Talk: Far from Heaven

All that Heaven Allows (1955)… re-viewing ignorances in the Sirkian melodrama

My rating: 9

IMDB rating: 7.6

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047811/?ref_=ttmd_md_nm

Dearest reader,

“Put so much bombast into your filmmaking that inattentive viewers won’t pay attention to the underlying message, but clever viewers will hear what you want to say… nobody did this better than Douglas Sirk” Matthew Dessem

This is the third time that I watched this film and I promise you not the last. After I watched it the first time in film class, I showed it to my mother- and oh boy did she enjoy it! So, to me, this film is extra special.

Douglas Sirk is certainly one of the most famously brilliant directors that Hollywood has ever seen. He was born a Germany, but fled to America in 1937. Although he produced several films (43 in total) across several genres, he is most famous for his melodramas that formed part of the Classic Hollywood Cinema movement. Sirk, who influenced both Hitchcock and Tarantino, was critical of social conventions and he himself was heavily influenced by Brecht. He is also famous for his use of symbolism, colour, lighting and props.

Although this film is staged, it is very historically specific. The following issues also feature in this film specifically:

• Class difference, presented as a critique of American society. This division between society is definitely not physical, but psychological. It is certainly more a state of mind, than it is about the equal access to wealth. Ron is not poor, but because of several reasons that exist solely in the mind of society, he is from a lower class.
• There is some feminist critique here as well as it is Cary that has to change to fit to Ron. It is also Ron and Ned that makes the decisions and not Cary. Cary is also constantly policed, by her children and her peers, this leads to a type of desexualisation. Cary’s agency is never considered and choices are constantly being made for her by Ron and Ned. In Freudian terms, one can easily see these headaches of Cary as a certain conversion hysteria and the return of the repressed. The ending of the film leaves her completely desexualised as she becomes Ron’s carer and not his lover, in other words it is an a-sexual relationship.

There are so many aspects of this film that can be discussed, but today and tomorrow I will specifically focus on this film and Haynes’ reaction on it, Far From Heaven, that explores these ignorances (such as these listed above) even further.

One of the best examples of Sirk’s brilliance, is the use of mirrors in this film, so what out for those specific moments of artistic brilliance!

To read more on All that Heaven Allows, try these:

#95: All that Heaven Allows

All that Heaven Allows

EL: All that Heaven Allows