Although the postwar baby boom generation had not yet reached its teenage years by the mid-1950s, middle-class adults had become fixated on maladjusted adolescents. (Two contemporary films--The Wild One [1953] and Blackboard Jungle [1955]--also attracted wide attention.) As the media spotlighted juvenile delinquency, director Nicholas Ray unveiled Rebel Without a Cause to explain what was troubling well-to-do youth in this decade of prosperity. His answers revealed the era’s propensity to see social problems as “psychological”--part of the so-called “age of anxiety.” Instead of demanding social change, individuals needed to adjust to “reality.”

Underlying these concerns was the realization that the middle-class family was experiencing fundamental changes. During World War II, the nation’s marriage and birth rates began to climb. Nine months after the war ended, an unprecedented baby boom started, lasting until about 1957. Popular advice and media messages encouraged women to become wives, mothers, and homemakers, leaving men to be the family breadwinners.

By 1950, however, women were returning to the work force in rising numbers. Within another decade, nearly 40 percent of adult women were working. Most new women workers had school-age children. Middle-class women saw their paychecks as necessary to purchase household goods and appliances. (A higher proportion of poorer women, such as Plato’s African American housekeeper, had always worked.) For middle-class women, economic independence coincided with a rising divorce rate. Political leaders like President Harry Truman and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover blamed the rise of juvenile crime on working mothers who were neglecting domestic responsibilities.

Yet middle-class women who remained homemakers in the 1950s often expressed unhappiness at the insignificance of their lives. Some returned to school. Others turned to alcohol or newly available tranquilizing pills. Still others visited mental health professionals. Widespread dissatisfaction among middle-class homemakers eventually provided the data for Betty Friedan’s best selling book of 1963, The Feminine Mystique, which critiqued the myth of “the happy housewife.” [See AJ]

While more middle-class women were experiencing new social roles, changes in the economy were altering the nature of men’s work. As technology increased the productivity of the manufacturing sector, more jobs opened in the service or management parts of the economy. Instead of working with their hands, more men were working with their brains. According to the U.S. Census, 1955 was the first year in which there were more jobs in the service sector than in manufacturing.

This shift in job opportunities literally lightened the workforce from “blue collar” jobs to “white collar” skills. The change affected traditional definitions of masculinity. Men, accustomed to achieve their male identity, by strength, vigor, and productivity, now questioned managerial and service roles, such as sales, that rewarded cleverness, humor, and sensitivity. Coincidentally, the emergence of homosexual groups and lifestyles, hinted at in Rebel’s Plato character, reflected the erosion of traditional male images.

Numerous popular books (David Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd (1950); William Whyte’s The Organization Man (1957) and movies like The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) lamented the loss of male independence in the corporate world and the rise of social conformity. Advertisers responded to these concerns by introducing successful icons of old-fashioned male virility, such as the “Marlboro Man.” These questions of male identity are central to the family crisis in Rebel Without a Cause.

During the 1950s, changes in the family also shifted their locale from cities to suburbs. In traditional Hollywood movies (e.g., Knock on Any Door [1949]), juvenile delinquents were urban creatures, the result of impoverished living conditions. “We will find them,” remarked Senator Estes Kefauver, who headed a subcommittee on juvenile delinquency, in 1953, “in the slums, where the kids don’t have a place to play.”

Rebel Without a Cause suggests that troubled adolescents exist in affluent families as well. As postwar policies promoted residential development of the suburbs, critics complained about the homogenization of dwellings and the middle-class people who inhabited them. Instead of encouraging personal independence, affluent lifestyles seemed to demand conformity.

Social conformity also reflected a culture of consumption, in which middle-class consumers responded to advertising appeals to purchase similar homes, cars, and clothing. These are the clues that tell us that Jim and his friends are from affluent families; we never learn what their white collar fathers do for a living. Jim Stark’s changing attire in the movie also indicates a transition from a youth’s windbreaker to an adult’s business “uniform” of jacket and tie. Unlike his parents, Jim rejects social isolation; he insists that he is involved. Yet he remains loyal to the values and style of his peer group.

Underlying the criticism of conformity was a deeper political message. The climate of the Cold War and the anti-communist crusade at home encouraged political consensus. College students of the 1950s were dubbed “the Silent Generation.” Director Nicholas Ray used the color red to symbolize youthful passion and vitality as well as their non-conformity. Yet these kids, as the title of the movie states, could not be considered as subversive or dangerous as law enforcement officials contended. In Ray’s eyes, they were rebellious adolescents, not wild-eyed radicals or “reds.”

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