(Warning: Spoilers)

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is about forming the cool-special couple by sublating a difference:
1) The difference originates from Plato’s mismatched socks (red and blue).
2) Then it gets translated into the special difference of Judy as a woman.
3) It finally reaches Jim and:
a. Renders him indifferent (cool) by contrast.
b. Makes him a man (not a chicken).
The result is a “cool man” (unchicken) coupled with a “special woman” (chick).

Although Plato (Sal Mineo) is not sufficiently black, brown or yellow to be called a person of color (he is Sicilian-American), his symbolic position in the story is that of people of color: His admiration towards Jim (James Dean) does not primarily symbolize repressed homosexual love as critics would prefer to have it, but the admiration of a colonized people towards the colonizing master.

When Plato shows Jim the abandoned mansion and holds the candles to illuminate Jim and Judy (Natalie Wood), he is glad to enable their coupling by playing the local host. He is not jealous, he is happy to be their audience, he is willing to let their performance occupy his imagination, but this also amounts to Plato’s self-erasure.

Jim and Judy pretend to consider renting the mansion from Plato: For the couple to succeed, the true host must be thrown out of the picture and be reduced to an impersonal gaze. This is what happens when Plato eventually gets killed by the police, at which point the mismatch in his socks can be translated into the “special” woman (Judy) who can in turn define the “cool” man (Jim).

The mismatched socks appear two times and constitute a gaze that bridges the private to the public. In the first instance, Plato is sleeping while Jim & Judy observe the funny mismatch and have a laugh. Here is the dialogue:

Jim: (Laughs) Must have been a nervous day.
Judy: (Laughs) He must have started out nervous.
Jim: I’ve done that, though. Haven’t you?
Judy: Uh-huh.

In this “private” moment Jim & Judy collaborate in the act of “depriving” Plato of dignity:

1) They mark Plato’s “neuro-divergence” by stating that he “started out nervous” (remember that the scriptwriters made Plato kill puppies in the beginning).

2) They enjoy their superiority of being awake (“woke”) while Plato is asleep (ignorant).

3) Due to the name “Plato”, this act also liberates them from thinking further (about why they found the mismatch funny in the first place) since philosophy must have “started out neurotic” just like Plato.

4) Even more significantly, they immediately cover up their collaborated act of deprivation by expressing tolerance and good will towards Plato’s “original nervousness” by “sharing his experience”: Jim & Judy also mismatch their socks sometimes (though not as frequently as someone who kills puppies).

In the second iteration of Jim observing the mismatched socks, there are two modifications:

1) Plato is now dead instead of being asleep.
2) Jim’s father is present instead of Judy.

This second iteration translates the private moment of Jim-Judy into the public relation between Jim and his father. Two simultaneous achievements take place:

1) Since the local host is out of the picture, the woman can now occupy the primary place of difference.
2) The father is here to cover up the woman’s inexistence and make the “special woman” exist.

Jim temporarily loses his coolness to establish the exceptional place of his father, after which he can finally become the permanent “cool man”, the quintessential “unchicken”; all of this thanks to Plato’s sacrifice by the scriptwriters.

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner