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Showing posts from June, 2020

Review: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

According to Albert Camus, rebels are not egotistical individuals. For an act of rebellion to succeed, suffering must be seen as a collective experience. The dictum, whatever its words, is invariably along the line of “I rebel – therefore  we  exist.” Any occasional indulgence in individual self-interest would derail the movement from its primary motivations, which comprise, above all, a resolute denial of superior authority and a dogged pursuit of the common good. For a rebel, his final choices inevitably boil down to either “All” or “Nothing” – all of his appeals answered and sufficiently taken care of, or to concede defeat, which means, in many cases, death: “Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knee.” The Rebel  was published in 1951, a seminal essay that heralded the upcoming “age of revolt”, which, as history shows, has soon evolved into a subculture of its own. A growing interest in challenging the entrenched, antediluvian societal values and traditions gri