Word: rebel
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...gave Big Tobacco much of a chance on April 8 when it declared war on Congress. Least of all John McCain. The Arizona senator was the good guy, after all, a war-forged Republican rebel with an unsold conscience and an unassailable cause: saving America's children from the demon's weed for just $1.10 a pack. And for a while, most Republicans were too scared to argue...
...scorcher. Rear Window (1954). Well, actually, the whole Hitchcock canon, actually, but my pick is Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. Down By Law (1986). Jim Jarmusch's extended character study (incorporating a few digs at Hollywood convention) is probably the funniest American movie ever made. Rebel Without a Cause (1955). The cinematic codification of the obsession with youth that dominated postwar American pop culture. Platoon (1986). Oliver Stone takes us to the heart of the battle for the soul of the American male...
...that defined Brando's screen character, and that somehow articulated the postwar generation's previously inarticulate disgust with American blandness and dishonesty, its struggles to speak its truest feelings, are powered by that rough ambivalence. The rage and self-pity of his grievously wounded paraplegic in The Men, the rebel angel of The Wild One, above all On the Waterfront's Terry Malloy, the dock walloper struggling for transcendence--these roles informed our aching hearts at the time, and go on tearing at us when we re-encounter them...
...these films and songs--an undying verve and assurance. But the energy was controlled, confined by the need for universal acceptance. In a homogenous culture you want everyone to see your movie, listen to your radio show, sing your song. That meant playing by the rules. Even the pioneer rebel Paul Robeson did that, speaking eloquently, singing handsomely, shrouding his revolutionary sexuality...
...bogus, how beguiling, that in the midst of the Depression, Hollywood erected Art Deco penthouses for swells with nothing better to do than dance the night away. Did audiences rebel at this fantasy vision? No, they wanted escape--escape into elegance. Nearly everyone opted for that patina. Gangsters and jazzmen went to their gigs in cool dark suits; gas-station attendants wore bow ties. To look natty was to buy into the Hollywood myth. Mr. DeMille might never come to Podunk, but Middle America was always ready for its close...