Ashes of Gold loss of innocence and rites of passage: selected tales from 1950's Hollywood rebels to 1960's youth gangs

Abstract

The title of my dissertation “Ashes of Gold” derives from Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” . The poem is mentioned in “The Outsiders”, and the protagonists, Johnny and Ponyboy, speculate about its meaning. In the middle of such problematic lives, every character deals with his coming of age, and how can you “stay gold” when you are a rebel? My intention is, therefore, to build a bridge between the traditional Hollywood teenage-rebel forefathers in American cinema( “The Wild One”, “Rebel Without a Cause”, “Blackboard Jungle”), and some selected later works which involve group/gang processes that tend to complicate the theme of “staying gold” even more (“West Side Story”, “The Outsiders”, “The Warriors”). I intend to discuss topics related to the loss of innocence and the entrance into adulthood, to trace what it means to be a man and, at the same time, preserve one’s “goldness”: some of the characters manage to do it while others turn to ashes. In this case, death and redemption will be discussion matters, too. Some space will be paid to the interaction between the main characters and the surroundings they live in, from the general setting of the city to personal and specific places (and non-places), in order to understand in which way such backgrounds contribute to one’s personal growth. Moreover, a chapter will be dedicated to the relationship between the rebel and the Other, in a way that examines the causes of external conflicts and inner distress in which the protagonist is involved. Apart from gangs, rumbles and machismo, I intend to say something about female counterparts in the chosen movies: girls’ attitude towards such male-centered realities, the way in which they pursue their personal aspirations, their roles according to males’ expectations and how they relate to the “staying gold” parameter. The whole analysis will follow a path which mainly makes references to the movies, but it is my intention to support my considerations with excerpts from the above mentioned novels and a selected bibliography.