Brando in The Wild One
Johnny Strabler (Marlon Brando) has a chip on his shoulder. The head of a motorcycle gang, he rides into a town with his men, watches the end of a cross country motorcycle race, accepts the second place trophy one of his men steals, ties it to his front fender. Stolen glory.
In The Wild One (1953), directed by Hungarian born Laslo Benedek (who made the first screen adaptation of Death of a Salesman), authority figures like the Sheriff (Jay C. Flippen) conclude that Johnny and his kind don't know what they're rebelling against. We're left wondering as Johnny and his gang take off at the end, after terrorizing a different town.
A member of a rival gang formerly associated with Johnny's, Chino (Lee Marvin), a drunken yet almost amiable lout, gets arrested after getting into an altercation with a prominent townie. The police chief, Harry Bleeker (Robert Keith), is a beaten down middle-aged man become already old, toothless in his efforts to exert authority over anyone. He drinks, he has a gun, but it seems he might use it on himself rather than grow a pair of balls. His daughter, Kathie Bleeker (Mary Murphy), knows her father is a coward. She works at the downtown cafe bar, the little town's main hangout. Her father's ineffectuality leads to her growing attraction to Johnny Strabler, even after she finds out he possesses a stolen trophy, an item he tries to give to her.
Chino's jailing leads to much mayhem. Motorcyclists driving everywhere, whooping it up, breaking windows, trashing the beauty parlor where one of their new girlfriends works. The gang members fuck with people, rile up the more belligerent among them--suited pillars of the community. The suits (squares) arm themselves and go after the motorcyclists. Some of Johnny's gang go after "his" girl, Kathie, cornering her, riding circles around her until Johnny arrives and tells her to mount his bike. They ride off into the country outside town. She puts her head against his leather-covered back, holding tight. A poetic traveling shot looking upward at the moon flashing through passing tree branches combines a romantic image with the philosophy expressed by Johnny, that of the necessity to "go."
At the same time as the making of this film, Jack Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans (published in 1958), a paean to Bohemianism, a work specifying the rebellion felt by the young at heart, but through the arts of writing, of jazz and poetry, of living freely away from conventional norms. Johnny Strabler lacks this peaceful Kerouac-style vision. He leads a pack of hoodlums; a bunch of aimless jerks lacking respect for authority but also lacking respect for the tenets of basic decency.
What overarching societal influence brings this about? I speculate that since this film was released during the final combat stages of the Korean War, a conflict characterized by a sense of utter pointlessness, the U.S. involving itself in the affairs of a tiny country on the other side of the world, a precursor to Vietnam, the young men in Johnny's gang would otherwise be dodging bullets in Korea. Instead, they're in the United States, a kind of Generation X, uninspired by the belief systems of their elders.
This type of film, the juvenile delinquent-themed entertainments (Blackboard Jungle, Knock on Any Door, Rebel Without a Cause, to name three prominent examples) of the late 1940s and 1950s, show youths unable to articulate what they want out of life. Is this due to the overwhelming reality of the Bomb?
The older generations created a weapon capable of snuffing out all human life, putting them in the position of symbolic parents holding a death blade over their progeny. The rebellion against this, even if inarticulately expressed, makes sense. Still, patriarchal Hollywood provided a lecturing frame around The Wild One and other juvenile delinquent-themed films of the period. No context for the gang's rebelliousness is provided; a text at the beginning intones the viewpoint we're supposed to adopt--that this story we're about to witness apparently happened somewhere and sometime in America, that we must be on our guard against it. Nothing about J. Robert Oppenheimer or Harry S. Truman and their nukes.
This general public acceptance of the necessity of "strong" defense, through possession of annihilation weapons, inspired the satirical and ironic viewpoints explored in subversive 1950s science fiction by writers like C.M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, and Philip K. Dick, whose 1954 short story "Foster, You're Dead" encapsulates the effect of government brainwashing of the American public, especially on its young citizens.
Johnny's gang, perhaps, rides roughshod over Norman Rockwell's America as a warning to those running the show, the "responsible" adults capable of destroying the world to safeguard their ideas--concepts chiefly benefitting themselves, such as the profitability of making war. These ruling cabals still run the show, just as in Johnny's time, lending extra weight to his reply to the question, "Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?"
"Whaddya got?"
Vic Neptune
Johnny Strabler (Marlon Brando) has a chip on his shoulder. The head of a motorcycle gang, he rides into a town with his men, watches the end of a cross country motorcycle race, accepts the second place trophy one of his men steals, ties it to his front fender. Stolen glory.
In The Wild One (1953), directed by Hungarian born Laslo Benedek (who made the first screen adaptation of Death of a Salesman), authority figures like the Sheriff (Jay C. Flippen) conclude that Johnny and his kind don't know what they're rebelling against. We're left wondering as Johnny and his gang take off at the end, after terrorizing a different town.
A member of a rival gang formerly associated with Johnny's, Chino (Lee Marvin), a drunken yet almost amiable lout, gets arrested after getting into an altercation with a prominent townie. The police chief, Harry Bleeker (Robert Keith), is a beaten down middle-aged man become already old, toothless in his efforts to exert authority over anyone. He drinks, he has a gun, but it seems he might use it on himself rather than grow a pair of balls. His daughter, Kathie Bleeker (Mary Murphy), knows her father is a coward. She works at the downtown cafe bar, the little town's main hangout. Her father's ineffectuality leads to her growing attraction to Johnny Strabler, even after she finds out he possesses a stolen trophy, an item he tries to give to her.
Chino's jailing leads to much mayhem. Motorcyclists driving everywhere, whooping it up, breaking windows, trashing the beauty parlor where one of their new girlfriends works. The gang members fuck with people, rile up the more belligerent among them--suited pillars of the community. The suits (squares) arm themselves and go after the motorcyclists. Some of Johnny's gang go after "his" girl, Kathie, cornering her, riding circles around her until Johnny arrives and tells her to mount his bike. They ride off into the country outside town. She puts her head against his leather-covered back, holding tight. A poetic traveling shot looking upward at the moon flashing through passing tree branches combines a romantic image with the philosophy expressed by Johnny, that of the necessity to "go."
At the same time as the making of this film, Jack Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans (published in 1958), a paean to Bohemianism, a work specifying the rebellion felt by the young at heart, but through the arts of writing, of jazz and poetry, of living freely away from conventional norms. Johnny Strabler lacks this peaceful Kerouac-style vision. He leads a pack of hoodlums; a bunch of aimless jerks lacking respect for authority but also lacking respect for the tenets of basic decency.
What overarching societal influence brings this about? I speculate that since this film was released during the final combat stages of the Korean War, a conflict characterized by a sense of utter pointlessness, the U.S. involving itself in the affairs of a tiny country on the other side of the world, a precursor to Vietnam, the young men in Johnny's gang would otherwise be dodging bullets in Korea. Instead, they're in the United States, a kind of Generation X, uninspired by the belief systems of their elders.
This type of film, the juvenile delinquent-themed entertainments (Blackboard Jungle, Knock on Any Door, Rebel Without a Cause, to name three prominent examples) of the late 1940s and 1950s, show youths unable to articulate what they want out of life. Is this due to the overwhelming reality of the Bomb?
The older generations created a weapon capable of snuffing out all human life, putting them in the position of symbolic parents holding a death blade over their progeny. The rebellion against this, even if inarticulately expressed, makes sense. Still, patriarchal Hollywood provided a lecturing frame around The Wild One and other juvenile delinquent-themed films of the period. No context for the gang's rebelliousness is provided; a text at the beginning intones the viewpoint we're supposed to adopt--that this story we're about to witness apparently happened somewhere and sometime in America, that we must be on our guard against it. Nothing about J. Robert Oppenheimer or Harry S. Truman and their nukes.
This general public acceptance of the necessity of "strong" defense, through possession of annihilation weapons, inspired the satirical and ironic viewpoints explored in subversive 1950s science fiction by writers like C.M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, and Philip K. Dick, whose 1954 short story "Foster, You're Dead" encapsulates the effect of government brainwashing of the American public, especially on its young citizens.
Johnny's gang, perhaps, rides roughshod over Norman Rockwell's America as a warning to those running the show, the "responsible" adults capable of destroying the world to safeguard their ideas--concepts chiefly benefitting themselves, such as the profitability of making war. These ruling cabals still run the show, just as in Johnny's time, lending extra weight to his reply to the question, "Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?"
"Whaddya got?"
Vic Neptune
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