Summary
In the kitchen of the Stark residence, Jim's parents are preparing breakfast as Jim gazes out the window at Judy calling to her little brother. He tell his parents he's nervous but optimistic about his first day at school, and winces when his mother tells him she packed him peanut butter for lunch. He kisses them goodbye, and catches up with Judy, who is walking down the street with books under her arm. Jim tells her he's seen her somewhere before, and Judy at first drolly replies, "Well, stop the world." He and Judy then mutually recognize the connection—the night they both spent at the police station. Jim asks where Judy lives, and she brushes him off again. When Jim asks her the address of Dawson High School and invites her to ride with him, Judy replies, "I go with the kids," and calls him "a real yo-yo."
Suddenly, a group of rowdy teens pulls up in a convertible to pick up Judy. She hops in and kisses the driver, seemingly her boyfriend, who asks about Jim. Judy dismisses Jim as "a new disease," and expresses relief that her boyfriend Buzz was let out of jail after a game of "chicken." Jim pulls up alongside the group in his car and ask directions to school, but Buzz, Judy, and the other members merely point in different directions and mock him.
Later, as Jim is walking across the school's front lawn and up the stairs, Plato pulls up in a scooter that backfires loudly. Students pile into the school before the morning bell, careful to avoid the Dawson High School insignia embossed in the staircase floor. An unaware Jim steps on it and is reprimanded by an upperclassman, who goes easy on Jim and tells him where to report. As Jim turns to climb the stairs, he sees Judy and the gang staring imperiously down at him, blocking his path. Inside Jim wanders the halls, and Plato combs his hair in a mirror on his locker door, which contains a taped-up picture of Alan Ladd. He sees Jim in the mirror, and turns to gaze at him. Jim notices a sign in the hallway advertising a planetarium field trip that day for juniors and seniors.
In the darkened planetarium, Jim sneaks in late and takes a seat next to Plato as a speaker is delivering a lecture on the nature of the universe. A few rows ahead, Judy and the gang joke around, but rebuke Jim for trying to join in, sarcastically calling him a comedian. Plato warns Jim not to "monkey" with that crowd. The lecturer concludes his speech by dramatizing the apocalyptic destruction of the universe, a matter in comparison to which "man alone" seems inconsequential. After the lights come up, Jim finds Plato cowering under his seat. Plato asks Jim, "What does he know about 'man alone'?"
As the students exit, the gang gathers around, talking in a group. The same gang member who called Jim a "comedian" earlier tries persuading Buzz into taunting Jim further. After others chime in and egg him on, Buzz agrees. Plato notices the gang lying in wait for Jim near the exit, and tries warning Jim, pointing out a large abandoned house in the distant landscape where they could go. Before they can leave, however, the gang spots Jim and Plato talking, and rushes downhill to crowd around Jim's car, which Judy seductively poses against, fixing her hair in her compact mirror.
As Jim looks on from above, Buzz produces a switchblade and slashes one of Jim's front tires. Realizing he has no escape, Jim slowly approaches and confronts the gang, telling Buzz he reads too many comic books. The gang derisively makes crowing noises as Jim moves to walk away, inciting his ire. Jim asks Judy why she keeps such "rank" company, and Buzz shoves Jim, who then threatens Buzz with a lead pipe before tossing it over the observatory ledge. Buzz proposes a knife fight, and a gang member tosses a knife toward Jim, but Jim refuses to pick it up and backs away, as the gang steadily advances. Jim finally picks up the knife, and when Buzz calls him a chicken again, he switches the blade out. The two pursue each other around the telescope on the observatory deck, and trade jabs as the gang looks on. At one point Buzz topples Jim, and Plato intervenes in the fray with a steel chain.
After Plato is removed, Jim manages to strike Buzz's switchblade out of his hand and pin him against the deck wall, holding his blade to Buzz's neck. Having lost, Buzz admits, "You're cold," and hands both of the blades back to Jim. He then challenges Jim to a "chickie-run" on a nearby bluff at 8:00 o'cock that night, over the protests of another gang member, who says it's too dangerous. Jim accepts the wager and tells Buzz casually he does chickie-runs all the time. Members of the observatory staff come to break up the gang's loitering, but they mock the staff's authority. After they leave, a confused Jim asks Plato what a chickie-run is.
Analysis
Rebel Without A Cause was a landmark film in the way that it portrayed teenagers as a unique sociological group, belonging neither to the world of children nor to the world of adults. Jim chides his mother for packing him peanut butter because of its infantilizing implications, but also at multiple points beseeches his parents for advice and guidance in a childlike way. The film's adolescent characters all assume defense mechanisms in order to project the confidence and world-weariness of adults, despite being inexperienced, insecure, and uncertain about their own identities and desires. Judy, for example, reacts at first to Jim's genuine expressions of friendship and kindness with affected displays of coldness and hostility, unwilling to make herself vulnerable to a stranger.
The automobile becomes a central symbol within this theme of strained adolescence and masculinity, reaching a climax in the chickie-run sequence. Although the teenagers are old enough to drive independently, they do so recklessly and without any regard for the well-being of others, or themselves. The automobile also marks out divisions in peer groups: Jim asks Judy to ride with him, but she tells him she "goes with the kids." If the car is a symbol of teenage identity and belonging, then driving becomes a metaphor for how one navigates this rocky social terrain. When Jim asks Judy and the gang for directions, they intentionally misdirect him, illustrating that the first impulse of teenagers is to challenge and provoke one another, rather than facilitate kindness and understanding. Plato's mode of transportation (a backfiring scooter) contrasts with the other characters' sleek convertibles, setting him up as a more vulnerable outsider figure.
Ray explores the complex relationship between masculinity, ritual, and initiation, in the way he renders Jim's first day at school. An upperclassman immediately chides Jim for stepping on the school's insignia, for example, but forgives him upon learning that it is Jim's first day. The gang is not so charitable, as exemplified in the shot in which they loom over him on the school's front staircase, intentionally blocking his path. Jim's masculinity—untested, uninitiated, unknown—is threatening to the integrity of the gang, who immediately go about "testing" it, as one might take a car for a test drive.
The planetarium sequence emphasizes the all-consuming intensity of adolescent emotional experience, likening it to the gravitational forces driving cosmological events like the big bang. Plato's sensitivity to the noise of the explosive planetarium display reflects his sensitivity to feelings of emotional upheaval and abandonment, leading him to meaningfully ask Jim, "What does he know about 'man alone'?" Plato, like Jim, is a character in search of a male role model, a father figure; the picture of Alan Ladd taped inside his locker is an early symbol of this desire, as is the way he attaches himself early on to Jim.
Buzz also factors into the film's examination of troubled masculinity. Significantly, Buzz does not want to antagonize Jim until the other members of the gang goad him into it, reflecting the way in which peer pressure trumps individual will in scenes of teenage socialization. Ray suffuses the spectacle of male violence with eroticism, such as when Judy seductively positions herself against Jim's car, or when Buzz slowly grazes the tire of Jim's car with his knife. Phallic symbols abound in the scene, such as the switchblades themselves, or the giant telescope around which Jim and Buzz pursue each other, representing the clash of masculinities for dominance. Ray subtly hints at the way in which Jim and Buzz's rivalry is in fact also a kind of courtship—Buzz admiringly calls Jim "cold," "abstract," and "different," smiling with exhilaration when Jim pins him with the knife. Nevertheless, both Buzz and Jim feel compelled to "perform" as antagonists for the benefit of the others, as exemplified by Jim's cocksure (but false) statement that he knows what a chickie-run it is.
