Media and Collective Identity - Historical Examples

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)

This story is about Jimmy Stark (James Dean), who is a young man that arrived to a new town where he met Judy (Nathalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo). Jimmy is a problematic man that has been travelling from one town to another because of his behaviour and his problems with the justice and the alcohol. Since the moment Jimmy arrives to his new High School he is involve in troubles with a local gang that its leader is Buzz (Judy’s boyfriend).

Jimmy wants to fit in this gang, so that Buzz arranges a nocturnal “Chickie Run” with Jimmy, that is a car race that ends in a cliff where the cars are eventually destroyed, so that the winner is the last person that jumps off its car. Unfortunately Buzz can not jump off his car and dies. Jimmy feels guilty for Buzz’s death and for the rest of the evening he thinks a lot in what he has recently done. Trying to find answers Jimmy asks his subjugated father what is the best thing to do, but his father does not help him at all and Jimmy goes for a walk.


Jimmy, Judy and Plato go to an abandoned huge house that looks like a castle. They look like a perfect family until the other gang members get there looking for Jimmy because they want to be sure that he will not say anything about what has happened in the cliff.
Scared and confused Plato goes to the Planetarium looking for a place to hide from the other gang members. Jimmy and Judy follows him and get to the planetarium, too. This is the place where happens a terrible confusion. The Police thinks that Plato is guilty for Buzz’s death and want to catch him. Jimmy helps Plato but after a discussion, The Police shot Plato causing his dead.

QUADROPHENIA (1979)

The film, set in 1964, follows the life of Jimmy Cooper (Phil Daniels), a young London Mod. Disillusioned by his parents and a dull job as a post room boy in an advertising firm, Jimmy finds an outlet for his teenage angst by taking amphetamines, partying, riding scooters and brawling with Rockers, accompanied by his Mod friends Dave (Mark Wingett), Chalky (Philip Davis) and Spider (Gary Shail). One of the Mods' rivals, the Rockers, is in fact Jimmy's childhood friend, Kevin (Ray Winstone). An attack by hostile Rockers on Spider leads to a retaliation attack on Kevin. Jimmy participates in the beating, but when he realises the victim is Kevin, he doesn't help him, instead driving away on his scooter.

A bank holiday weekend provides the excuse for the rivalry between Mods and Rockers to come to a head, as they both descend upon the seaside town of Brighton. A series of running battles ensues. As the police close in on the rioters, Jimmy escapes down an alleyway with Steph (Leslie Ash) a girl on whom he has a crush and they have sex. When the pair emerge, they find themselves in the middle of the melee just as police are detaining rioters. Jimmy is arrested, detained with a volatile, popular Mod he calls 'Ace Face' (Sting), and later fined the then-large sum of £50. When fined £75, Ace Face mocks the magistrate by offering to pay on the spot with a cheque, to the amusement of the fellow Mods.

Back in London, Jimmy becomes severely depressed. He is thrown out of his house by his mother, who finds his stash of amphetamine pills. He then quits his job, spends his severance package on more pills, and finds out that Steph has become the girlfriend of his friend Dave. After a brief fight with Dave, the following morning his rejection is confirmed by Steph and with his beloved Lambretta scooter accidentally destroyed in a crash, Jimmy takes a train back to Brighton. In an attempt to relive the recent excitement, he revisits the scenes of the riots and of his encounter with Steph. To his horror, Jimmy discovers that his idol, Ace Face, is in reality an undistinguished bellboy at a Brighton hotel. Jimmy steals Ace's scooter and heads out to Beachy Head, where he rides perilously close to the cliff edge. Finally, he crashes the scooter over a cliff, which is where the film begins, with Jimmy walking back from the cliff top in the sunset back drop.

TRAINSPOTTING (1996)

Trainspotting is the tale of Scottish heroin junkies and their lives in Edinburgh. The motley crew of addicts (Mark Renton, Spud, Alison), an unhinged man whose drug is hurting people (Begbie) and the clean ones, (Tommy, Gail, Lizzy). Mark makes a decision to quit heroin and is joined by his friends (one of which just comes off it to prove to Mark he can do it easier than he can). While off the skag, the friends go through numerous unfavourable events, prompting them to resume their addiction, but a tragic turn of events makes Mark resolve to leave his old life behind and go to work in London. He soon finds out that he can't always leave his past behind that easily.