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Middle-Class Youth Rebellion and Male Identity in 'Giant' (1956) and 'The Left Handed Gun' (1958)

(A chapter from my postgraduate dissertation 'Lonesome Shadows and Majestic Visions: Middle-Class Alienation in the Post-War Western')

(Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show, 1956)



In 1952 John Clellon Holmes had This is the Beat Generation published in the New York Times, an essay that attempted to explain what the Beat Generation was to the American public. To Holmes, the Beats were essentially searchers, yearning for something meaningful, honest and incorrupt in experience that was outside the confines of an increasingly collectivised corporate America. As Holmes writes of them, “Brought up during the collective bad circumstances of a dreary depression, weaned during the collective uprooting of a global war, they distrust collectivity”[1]. According to Beat historian Lisa Phillips, “The Beats saw an enormous gap between America’s promise and reality. Their response was to re-envision America according to their own rules and interests, celebrating life at the margins”[2]. This life at the margins encompassed drug-use, jazz, sexual liberation, and experimental art. They identified with outsiders or marginalised groups, most emphatically represented by their adoration of jazz and the African American culture surrounding it. They were also supportive of black liberation, as Beat photographer Robert Frank’s haunting images of segregation in The Americans (1958) reflected. Moreover, the Beats were in opposition to McCarthyism, the nuclear arms race, migration to the suburbs, and mass consumerism[3]. As Phillips argues, “Sociologically, the Beats were the first large, self-conscious, and widely publicized group of middle-class dropouts” [4]. Unlike the self-alienation of Mills’ white-collar worker, the Beats were white middle-class kids who alienated themselves from society whose pressures, they felt, alienated them. However, the publicity that the Beats received during the era constructed an inaccurate picture of them. The media establishment commodified their image, subjected them to ridicule, and blamed them for juvenile delinquency[5].

On June 5th, 1956, Elvis Presley featured on The Milton Berle Show in what became one of the defining moments in rock ‘n’ roll history, and a symbolic moment in the cultural formation of the American teenager[6]. Beamed into millions of suburban homes around the country, Elvis performed his hit song ‘Hound Dog’. In this performance, Elvis used his body expressively and, when the tempo slowed down, he began to erotically thrust his hips back and forth against his microphone. Through this expression of untamed sexuality on a suburbanised medium, Elvis’ movements eroticised his body and the microphone. This overtly sexual, androgynous performance inspired fascination and adoration among his fans, and scorn among critics in the press and horrified parents. In Jack Gould’s television review for The New York Times, he claimed that “For the ear he is an unutterable bore, not so nearly as talented as Frank Sinatra”, and that his appeal only lay in erotic fascination and thus reflected the increasing degradation of popular culture[7]. This perfectly summarises the polarisation of rock ‘n’ roll music in the 1950s. Many young people found a voice in the rebel, whilst the prevailing consensus of adults much preferred the clean, traditional masculinity of Sinatra, or the wholesome innocence of Doris Day. The cultural reaction of rock ‘n’ roll music helped create, for the first time in modern American society, youth culture of opposition.

By Elvis’ 1956 television appearance, rock ‘n’ roll was already in full swing. Although the genre had its roots in urban, African American communities where musicians developed rhythm and blues, it found its wider audience with the release of Blackboard Jungle (1955). A low-budget social drama about juvenile delinquency, the film famously used Bill Haley & his Comets’ song ‘Rock Around the Clock’ to great effect, helping launch both rock n roll and the ‘teenpic’. As film scholar Peter Lev notes, “Juvenile delinquency was headline news in American newspapers in the mid-1950s and was covered extensively by prestigious magazines”[8]. The rise of juvenile delinquency in 1950s America led to a moral panic that was spread by the mass media. With the emphatic use of rock ‘n’ roll music in Blackboard Jungle, the genre became inextricably associated with juvenile delinquency and youth violence. Moreover, as reflected in the persona of Elvis and other controversial figures such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, rock ‘n’ roll was also associated with sexual deviancy, disturbing middle-class parents[9]. As Medovoi points out, “Whatever rock ‘n’ rolls origins, suburban youth’s adoption of the music effectively drew it into the liberal consensus” [10]. Of course, the adoption of this music by many young, white middle-class people was in part down to the technological conditions and consumerist ethic of suburbia. Performances of rock ‘n’ roll acts was a regular fixture on television on the 1950s, and electric moments such as Elvis’ on Milton Berle would reach a mass, suburban audience. Furthermore, suburban teens had a considerable amount of disposable income and free time to spend on commodities such as records and concerts[11]. Although suburbia was antithetical to the wildness and freedom associated with rock ‘n’ roll, teenagers were also intrinsically a part of this ideological structure. As Medovoi argues, “rock n roll allowed youth culture to constitute a Fordist counterimaginary, a way of seeing oneself as simultaneously within, yet implicitly critical of, postwar suburbia”[12]. This “suburban counterimaginary” allowed white, middle-class youths to rebel not from the isolation of the outside, but from the comfort of within.

As Petigny observes, in the fifties “young people sought to incorporate the lingo of American blacks into their own vernacular” [13]. As, Petigny argues, it reflected a liberal consensus in 1950s America that sought to loosen cultural and social separations. But, as Medovoi states, it was also a part of the suburban counterimaginary, where youth sought to project themselves out of the restrictive white suburbs and onto the urban centre. As well as race, this was also reflected in suburban youth’s identification with the working-class fashion. Denim was symbolic of the physical toil of the working-class, conjuring up dust-bowl imagery[14]. This was part of a post-war trend of anti-elitism, with the act of wearing blue jeans symbolic of the greater desire for more of a democratic, egalitarian society[15]. Furthermore, it was also the choice of clothing for teen icons such as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. Ultimately, the influence of culture from both the working class and marginalised ethnic groups signified a widespread desire for alternative notions of identity among middle-class youths. However, whereas the Beats radically opposed consumerism, the suburban rock ‘n’ rollers embraced it. However, through their consumption, they both tried to forge an identity that would separate them from their parents and the oppression they represented. On the back of the success of Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and the phenomenon of rock ‘n’ roll, Hollywood began to realise the importance of the youth market in a competitive, television dominated market[16]. The success of Rebel Without a Cause in the youth market, with its enigmatic portrayal of suburban youth alienation and its connection to rock ‘n’ roll culture, led to Hollywood’s commodification of the rebel figure. However it also the film that established Dean as an icon of white, male, teenage angst. In the minds of the suburban youth, rebel icons such as Elvis and Dean offered a way of crafting an identity that was in opposition to their suburban parents, yet with a consumerist sensibility. However, Dean spoke to much more than this to the suburban audience. Unlike Elvis, whose working-class, Southern origins detached him from suburbia, Dean’s performance in Rebel gave him the symbolic position of the outsider from within. In his portrayal of Jim Stark, an alienated middle-class youth fighting against the domestic ideology of suburbia, he was both mythic and relatable. As many critics have pointed out, his performance and character bore many resemblances to Holden Caulfield, an affluent yet psychologically vulnerable kid that offered young readers an identity of opposition to post-war conformity.. Moreover, both Holden and Dean represented a different kind of male protagonist, and thus masculinity. For Dean, this was strongly influenced by his tutelage under the Method school of acting, which imbued cinematic performance with psychological complexity and emotional vulnerability. Dean, then, represented a relatable, and oppositional masculinity. However, Dean also became a myth in himself after his tragic death at the age of twenty-four.

(James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor in 'Giant')


Dean’s final film, Giant, was released a year after his death and subsequently drew a considerable youth audience of devoted Dean fans. Warner Brothers capitalised on his death by making Dean, and thus his appeal to youth audiences, central to the publicity material. Based on Edna Ferber’s novel of the same name, Giant is an epic western that follows the lives of a wealthy Texan family, the Benedicts, during the interwar years. Jett Rink (Dean), a local, impoverished loner who is despised by Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson), discovers a massive oil reserve on the land next to the Benedicts, transforming Jett from a poor cowhand to a millionaire. The film is also concerned with the historic racism of white Texans against Mexicans, with Bick’s wife Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor) playing an important part in liberalising the family. However, the film is also an allegory of the contemporary issue of racial segregation against African Americans, engaging in a critique of frontier mythology that comments upon the West’s legacy of racial persecution and genocide. Moreover, the film is particularly concerned with identity anxiety surrounding race, class, masculinity, and nationhood. As I shall discuss, these interact not only with contemporary issues of race, but also with anxieties surrounding white male identity in post-war America. This is represented in Jett, with Dean’s myth interlocking with frontier mythology and the stylistic conventions of the western, as well as speaking to middle-class alienation.

In Jett’s first scene, the viewer inhabit Jett’s gaze as he watches Bick returns to Texas with Leslie enter the family Benedict family home. The spectator’s awareness of the huge amount of negative space surrounding shots of the house and the figures upon the screen exaggerates this sense of alienation, combining with his gaze to emotively express the yearnings of a loner. Furthermore, Jett’s dusty cowboy attire evokes the iconography of the lone, rugged individual of the frontier. As with Shane Stevens stylises the cowboy in mythic glory. This is reflected in a long shot, with the camera positioned behind Jett, as he looks at the house, silhouetting this iconic figure. But, what is most striking in these scenes, and with many of Jett’s scenes, is the way Dean moves. His body tends to oscillate between a smooth, nonchalant glide and sudden, strange bodily contortions which are free and unidentical to the last. This enigmatic movement, his inimitable oddness, seem to be of such well-thought out expressivity that he demands the spectator’s attention, his small figure appearing to dominate the space on the screen. As he goes to shake hands with Leslie, he pulls his hand away quickly out of shyness, and then suddenly jumps off the porch backwards looking as if he is bound to fall, but manages to land gracefully. Although he exudes mystery with his peculiar bodily movements and the way he wears his Stetson covering his eyes, in this moment he tenderly reveals a sense of vulnerability that is both awkward and endearing, yet also a tragic expression of loneliness. Moreover, it is this almost child-like reaction and his unexpected jump off the porch that imbue him with a sense of youthful rebellion that imbues him with individuality. Here then, Dean recalls Elvis in the sense that, through moments of alien bodily expression, they establish themselves as idiosyncratic, defiant figures of wild youth.

Jett also reflects many admirable qualities according to the post-war liberal consensus, as well as embodying a sense of otherness to suburban audiences in terms of race and class. Firstly, Jett is identified on the same socio-economic level as the marginalised Mexicans, and is also treated with a similar, degrading contempt by Bick. According to J.E Smyth, the scene in which Jett is covered in oil is emblematic of his racial hybridity, as it further “connects him to both African-American and Mexican-American (also known as "greasers") minorities in Texas” (18). In addition to this cross-racial identification, his rugged attire and blue denim jeans locates him as a member of the working-class. Jett also declares his opposition to the hierarchical structure of Texan society because he is outside of it, unable to penetrate it despite his whiteness. When he says of Bick after an argument, “Ain’t nobody King ‘round here”, Jett also taps into the liberal, anti-elitism values of post-war society that are partly the result of the increased democratisation of American society that took place during the war. Furthermore, Jett seems to identify with the plight of Mexicans too, as he communicates to Leslie and the spectator how the Mexicans were conned by the white Texans. With rebellious cynicism, Jett remarks “Who gets hold ‘a’ this much land unless they took it off somebody else?”. In many ways, this is also reflective of American frontier history, from the genocide of Native Americans to the issue of Texan sovereignty. In these moments, he acts as a gateway to a discussion of both racial and class oppression in America, permeating the film with a liberal revisionist sensibility. However, perhaps Jett’s most appealing characteristic is his embodiment of the Protestant ethic. Jett is both poor and poorly educated, with his illiterateness signified in his inability to say “generosity” properly. But when Leslie visits is house, his own plot of land, she discovers self-help books about learning English. This, alongside the fact that he owns his own land which is reflective of his own sense of individuality (“Little Reata”), symbolises the self-persevering and independent frontier individual that embodies the Protestant ethic.

To the suburban youth then, Jett embodies both the otherness of both racially marginalised groups as well as the working-class, therefore representing an opposition to suburban existence. Even more, an aspirational myth of individualism in the form of the modern youth rebel also represents an alternative masculinity to white-collar fathers and post-war conformity. However, a conflict arises within this representation, which is rooted in Jett’s contradictory, anxious notions of white masculine identity. According to Smyth, being on the same socio-economic level as the Mexicans, Jett “has to work harder to assert his whiteness and inherent superiority to the Mexican Americans at Reata” (9). In such an analysis then, his racial prejudices are a significant driving force behind his success, a racial hatred that is neither redeemed nor overcome, unlike his counterpart Bick. Instead, he comes to represent all that is wrong with American society as he rises up the ladder of a social system he opposed, ironically embodying the racial and social elitism. The opposition of aspirational, rebellious youth in Jett is then neutralised to bring attention to the perpetual cycle of racism that plagues American society. A more liberally inclined suburban youth spectator then deserts Dean, because of both his “selling out” to the mainstream and his toxic prejudices that do not reflect the liberal consensus in post-war America. Here then, young characters such as Jordan (Dennis Hopper) begin to fill this position of a suburban youth ideal. By marrying Juana (Elsa Cardenas), Jordan becomes a figure of opposition fighting (literally) against the prevailing prejudices of Texan society. Moreover, he is a rebellious force within the family structure as he engages in a generational struggle with his racist father. Whereas Jett ultimately fails in his rebellion and the realisation of a stable, liberal identity, Jordan represents a secure identity that is also rebellious. Through his aspiration to be a doctor, a helper of all levels of society, he embodies the post-war liberal ideal as well as a youthful rebellious force. However, the myth of Dean and the celebration of Jett’s nationalistic rise from rags to riches threatens to overshadow and contradict Steven’s construction of a liberal, open-minded masculinity.

(A movie poster of 'The Left Handed Gun')


Like Giant, The Left Handed Gun interacts with the growing suburban youth culture of the decade, commodifying the rebel figure whilst also creating a protagonist that speaks to post-war youth alienation. This alienation is articulated through Beat-esque characters that propose a threat to social order, with Penn communicating conflicted messages about the role of both society and father figures in the contemporary issue of juvenile delinquency. The film’s links to juvenile delinquency is discerned in a Variety review of the time, “probably America’s most constantly celebrated juvenile delinquent. In this version he’s Billy, the crazy, mixed-up Kid”[17].The juvenile delinquent slant is also referenced to in the film’s original promotional material, with text next to Newman’s bold red figure reading “This is William Bonney, a jouvenile “tough” from the back-alleys of New York…a teenager wanted dead or alive throughout the West”[18]. The poster also reflected Hollywood’s continued exploitation of the youth rebel image, referring to his character as the “strange teen-age desperado” that “All of a sudden, just for the ‘kicks’ Billy would slip down to Mexico…”. Ultimately, this poster captures the iconography and spirit of the rebel, as well as making explicit references to Beat culture. Young men living for the “kicks” is at the core of the Beat identity that Kerouac mythologised in On the Road, a novel which was disseminated into popular American culture a year earlier. Furthermore, this is representative of the common exploitation of Beat culture by Hollywood in the late 1950s. Like the advertising of teenpics such as High School Confidential, Hollywood tried to appeal to a largely suburban youth audience by exploiting juvenile delinquency, rock ‘n’ roll and Beat mythology, often conflating all three as if the same thing.

The Left Handed Gun is based on a teleplay by Gore Vidal, that presents an alternative take on the Billy the Kid tale, proposing that he was left-handed instead of right. As the film’s director Arthur Penn commented, "We believe that, spiritually and psychologically, he WAS left-handed” [19]. As the title boldly reflects, Billy is intrinsically outside of social norms, signifying both his alienation and the hopelessness of his acceptance in society. Although it was both a critical and commercial flop in America, it generated a considerable amount of critical praise among the Cahiers critics in France, and launched Arthur Penn’s directorial career. Moreover, James Dean was the original choice for the part of Billy, but after his death fellow Method actor Paul Newman replaced him[20]. Imbued with the two cultural forces of Dean and the Method school of acting, The Left Handed Gun is a psychological youth western that deconstructs the mythology of masculinity in westerns. In this sense, it bears many parallels with The Gunfighter, and is emblematic of the trend of revisionist westerns in the 1950s and beyond.

The film begins with a long shot of Billy walking alone through a barren landscape of only grass and rock, an extra-diegetic ballad played over the credits echo his desperate loneliness as he struggles to carry not just his things but himself. He falls to the ground, and after getting up William Goyen poignantly sings that Billy is “a stray and alone, he belongs to all lonesomeness, shadowed by lonesomeness”. He is not only physically exhausted, but spiritually too, wandering through the wilderness looking for a place to belong. This alludes to the central theme of searching for home but being constantly denied it, which torments Billy and motivates the narrative. This is represented most significantly in his search for father figures that, since his dad abandoned him as a kid, he has been unconsciously looking for ever since. After meeting John Tunstall (Colin Keith-Johnston), Tunstall becomes symbolically becomes his surrogate father, trying to teach him social values about violence (Billy stabbed a man to death at age eleven). However, after Tunstall is murdered, Billy vows to get revenge. Again, he is denied a father, and thus the suggestion is that he is also denied a chance to integrate into society, as well as a stable masculine identity in which to mould himself around. This sets off a chain of events that lead to him forming a gang of other lost youths, murdering instinctively, and becoming a menace to society. The gang exercise erratic behaviour and an unspoken philosophy that is based on satisfying instinctual drives and impulses. This outlaw hedonism can be harmless and joyous at one moment, and destructive the next. Moreover, Billy’s instinctual behaviour enters the forbidden realm of sexual deviancy in a sensual, enigmatic scene in which he sleeps with his surrogate mother, Celsa (Lita Milan). Almost forcing himself upon her, he wraps a scarf around her neck as he strokes her just above her breasts. As kisses her back and forth, she tries to resist him and the reality of her desire, but acquiesces to it. The wife of another surrogate father he meets, he becomes Oedipus and transgresses both social and sexual boundaries, culminating in a controversial scene that one would not associate with 1950s Hollywood.

The film can be interpreted as a conflicted commentary on the issue of juvenile delinquency in 1950s America. On the one hand, Billy’s behaviour is a result of an absence of stable father figure that exerts both wisdom and authority. Without this, and because he does not have it, he divulges in crime, murder, and sexual deviancy. Therefore, the line of looking through a glass darkly can be interpreted as referring to his inability to look within himself because, essentially, he does not know himself. Being deprived of an acceptable masculine role model, he is unable forge a stable identity and thus remains alienated, both from society and himself. Garrett then is the father figure who inevitably has to exert a superior, morally righteous authority over Billy, neutralising (fatally) the threat to society posed by the juvenile delinquent. However, it is also society that lets Billy down too. At first, the corrupt lawmen and townspeople murder Turnstall, depriving Billy of a home and beginning the chain of events. But, most importantly, it is the myth surrounding Billy that also kills him. His actions are exaggerated and dramatized in the press, leading to a manhunt as well as a reputation that he can never escape, and thus never be rehabilitated. In his final moments, exhausted like he was at the beginning, he actually discovers the ability to look within himself through his myth. It is this epiphany that leads to his eventual, symbolic suicide as he pulls out an imaginary pistol on Garrett, instigating Garrett to kill him. Here then, the film can be interpreted as reflecting the conservative crisis of post-war masculinity. Through the domestic ideology, its site suburbia, men were supposedly alienated from their true masculinity and thus lacked power and authority. According to some social critics, this was a direct cause of juvenile delinquency. The film also conflates this Beat culture with juvenile delinquency, as the gangs central philosophy seems to reflect that of the Beats themselves, a common assumption in the 1950s press. However, Penn also portrays a society that is found wanting, a society that tragically alienates youth.



Citations [1] The Beat Generation' By CLELLON HOLMES.New York Times (1923-Current file); New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]16 Nov 1952: SM10. [2]Lisa Phillips, Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965, (New York: Museum of Modern Art), 28. [3] Idib. [4] Idib, 29. [5] Idib, 24. [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJnVQDA9rHA [7] By JACK GOULD.New York Times (1923-Current file); New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]06 June 1956: 67 [8] Peter Lev, History of American Cinema: 7 Transforming the Screen 1950-1959 (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 245. [9] Petigny, Alan. The Permissive Society, America 1941 – 1965. (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 181. [10] Leerom Medovoi, Rebels: Youth and the Cold War (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005),91. [11] Lev, 244. [12] Medovoi, 94. [13] Petigny, 195. [14] Petigny, Alan. The Permissive Society, America 1941 – 1965. (Cambridge University Press, 2009),, 193. [15] Idib, 194. [16] Peter Lev, History of American Cinema: 7 Transforming the Screen 1950-1959 (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 244. [17] https://variety.com/1957/film/reviews/the-left-handed-gun-1200419012/: [18] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051849/mediaviewer/rm2361272576 [19] https://search.proquest.com/docview/1746566347/26B90FAB1DAD4B28PQ/1?accountid=11862 [20] Idib.

 
 
 

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