Rebel Without a Cause

This paper was prepared for Introduction to Film History, Module 1 Homework Assignment, taught by Professor Stephanie Sandifer.

Plato is remembered as one of the worlds best known philosophers who along with his writings are widely studied. Plato was a student of the great Greek philosopher Socrates and later went on to be the teacher of Aristotle. Plato’s writings such as “The Republic”, “Apology” and “Symposium” reveal a great amount of insight on what was central to his worldview. He was a true philosopher as he was constantly searching for wisdom and believed questioning every aspect of life would lead him to the knowledge he sought. He was disgusted with the common occurrence of Greeks not thinking for themselves but simply accepting the popular opinion also known as doxa. Plato believed that we ought to search for and meditate on the ideal versions of beauty, justice, wisdom, and other concepts which he referred to as the forms. His hostility towards doxa, theory of the forms, and perspective on reality were the central ideas that shaped Plato’s worldview and led him to be the great philosopher who is still revered today.

Now let us take a look into the background of the story. Plato gives his ideals on a perfect society and everything it should include. He basically implies that justice is rightness, and rightness is whatever he feels it should be. He breaks society down into guardians, wage earners, and auxiliaries. Wage earners are people such as surgeons or shoemakers.

The drawings that appear repeatedly as you research into the many interpretations of Plato’s words create a signified representation based on the signifiers Plato escribed in his writings – the words he used. The existence of such a variety of images, from different times, drawn in different ways, for different reasons, all depicting the same scenario but with different views on the cave Plato describes in his dialogue with Socrates, is testament the existence of the metaphysical world. All the images are different, yet all have a certain caveness, atmosphere of a cave, which makes them undoubtedly the visual depictions of Plato’s theory of

Plato's views on Forms, Ideas, and Knowledge are all expressed beautifully in the allegory of

In Plato's view, that owning objects is detrimental (tending to cause harm) to a person's character. Like in every scenario, there are always people who agree and people who disagree. There are also a handful of "both", people who believe that's true and not true. I am one of those handful of the "both" group. Yes, owning certain objects or utensils can tend to cause harm but, those utensils were created to make life easier for all of us. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, states that the ownership of tangible objects (perceptible by touch) helps to develop moral character. What Aristotle is saying is basically that what you own is who you are. You are what you posses, which is basically the saying "You are what you eat". This is a controversial

The 1950’s were a time of change, the entertainment industry started to target steadily teenagers with their movies and messages. During the 1950’s many teenagers became rebellious and disobedient, and sought out something fresh and modern, opposing what their parents’ enjoyed, the very traditional heros like Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart. With the entrance of James Dean, Marlon Brando and the anti-hero archetype to the big screen, many teenagers could relate with the stories of defiant protagonists and rebellious actions. Moreover in the article titled“What’s the Big Deal? Rebel Without a Cause (1955)-Part 1”, by Eric D.Snieder, it states that “Teens had worries, too — they just didn’t have much in the way of movies, TV, or music to help

Much like it’s cinematic contemporaries Rebel without a Cause is a product of postwar American society. The depiction of Jim Stark’s attempts to deal with the world around him provide a narrative rich with examples of both the relative economic prosperity and generational conflicts that came to characterize this period in American history, and while facts of life such as these are utilized by the filmmakers to a large extent they are not the film’s principal themes. Rather than prioritizing these aspects of American life, the focus of the film is shifted to examining the often overlooked issues of the era and the reactions that they had elicited from those who lived through them. In particular those of traditional gender roles, peer pressure,

Plato is clear that not all men are prepared to decline the comfort provided by ignorance to invite the unknown. He does not “present a doctrine” as much as he “prepares the way for philosophizing” (Bloom XXI). It requires man to adopt an outlook perpetually critical of seemingly objective experiences and knowledge. Doing so, according to the “Allegory” means questioning your peers’ reality and willingly declining the comfort of simplicity and familiarly for the ability to experience reality through thought. It means ditching the safety of the cave’s darkness for the chance to experience the brilliance of the sun—Plato’s message is clear: reality and reason are most real when man is critical of what he’s established to be objective fact. One strong example from the text is when is when the prisoner’s eye witness freedom: “And if he compelled him to look at the light itself what his eyes hurt him but he fully turning away to those things that

Rebel Without A Cause is a very popular film from 1955. It depicts life in the 1950's from the viewpoint of three teenagers who live in Los Angeles, California. They live in a comfortable environment in middle-class America. However, they must deal with their own inabilities to "fit" into society. The teens try to fit in with their peers and find the love they so desperately need from their families and others like their peers. The biases presented in the film's are based on cultural values form the 1950s. Rebel Without A Cause also compares to some of the data presented in the text Nation of Nations. The film also compares to the general view America has of the period of the

There is also a bit of phallic imagery in the film. Plato is first shown at the juvenile division at the police department having issues with his gun, shooting a litter of puppies with it. Towards the end of the film, Plato’s gun is what ultimately

It is interesting to notice that this Platonic form can be seen in various ways in both the human on a micro scale and in Jesus or God on a higher level. The human body, for instance, (as Plato noted) serves as garb for the soul. We can assume certain gestures, paint our faced, mask our mannerisms and looks; we can play around with our externals, but there is a soul that emanates from within, and this soul emerges through appearances such as looks, tears, or speech.

Plato, being a Socratic apprentice, followed and transcribed the experiences Socrates had in his teachings and search of understanding. In Plato’s first work, The Allegory of the Cave, Socrates forms the understanding between appearance vs. reality and the deceptions we are subject to by the use of forms. In the cave, the prisoners’ experiences are limited to what their senses can tell them, the shadows on the walls, and their shackles; these appearances are all that they have to form their ideas. When one of the prisoners begins to question his reality he makes his way out of the cave and into the day light. This prisoners understanding of his reality has now expanded, thus the theory of forms; when he returns to the cave to spread the news, the others do not believe him. They have been deceived by their reality and what

He writes, “when turned towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then [the soul] has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and seems to have no intelligence” (Book VI, p. 25). By establishing opinion as the opposite to the ultimate good, and by definition, the ultimate evil, he criticizes the use of rhetoric and persuasion while praising to his long-winded, circuitous form of writing. By continually asking questions and telling parables, Plato avoids direct advocation of his beliefs and allows his readers to discover the truth for themselves, rather than to be coerced through eloquent language.

And so, Plato is who he is, and he will not be swayed. He is determined to continue with his mission in life, challenging current ideas, with an objective of examining his own thinking, as well as those about him. His signature concept is: “The unexamined