As the first feature film to examine outlaw motorcycle gang violence in America, The Wild One (1953), received considerable intense media attention. And the sale of black leather jackets and motorcycles reached new heights after the film's release, and motorcycles became a symbol of youth rebellion. Because the film was inspired and loosely based on a real-life incident over the Fourth of July weekend in 1947 in Hollister, California, (publicized in an issue of Harper's Magazine in a January 1951 article titled "The Cyclists' Raid" by Frank Rooney), the film was banned in England for fourteen years after its release. Even in America, it was feared the film would be a bad example to some impressionable audience to copy its plot and incite delinquency.
'The Wild One' plugged into ambient anxieties about generational differences and youths' and adults' places as organized by 'battle of the generation'. As a landmark film of 50's rebellion, 'The Wild One' troubled borderlines that contemporary critical discourse continues to code as fragile: those between art and life, fantasy and agency, cinematic fiction and real life story.
Debate around the film all seem the film status as a youth statement. Within this framework, many critics took issue with depiction of the authority. In 'The Road to Romance and Ruin', Jon Lewis argued that the failure of institutional authority in The Wild One relates a dysfunctional, weak society. And Barbara Ehrenreich believed Johnny epitomized a kind of fifties male ego ideal, empowering the rigid, working-class, teenage male with the very masculinity a generation of fathers so obviously lacked. Those arguments depend firmly on few violence moments in the film.
'Violence' in the film was a common fascination with the increasingly visible 'battle of the generation' in popular culture. In the film, the teenagers seem like have been victimized too. However the film highlighted three shaking scenes of rebel youth, most spectators would believe adult was the victim. And those three shaking scenes were: one was when Chino's gang hovers outside the Police Department and cuts off telephone line connections at the main switchboard. The second one was Johnny's gang rides to the house of Charlie Thomas and put him jail and share the cell with Chino. The last one was when the bikers chase Kathie and terrorize her. Both gangs threaten to take over the town.
Meanwhile, people often forget the displacement embedded in the plot turn the definitively precipitates those youth over the edge of no return back to the good. The town's policemen did not do anything for the youth rebelling but let the townsfolk protect themselves by taking the law into their own hands
"You want to wait until somebody gets killed before we take action?"
Later, people watch those townsfolk perform as the youth, repeating the routine of chase exactly as the bikers chase Kathie and terrorize her to chase Johnny. It is believed that the youth went wild because they learn that form the adult. However, the teens took the action for pleasure whilst the adults did it to protect themselves from danger. This may be the film's most compelling fantasy, which keep emerging through this kind of cross-gender identification.
These are the one gender identification that was transferred to other, that creates a narrative logic of cause and effect. This may made some viewers only took the film's conclusion to decide its meaning; some youth may took the pleasure of fantastic identifications with embodies agents of speed, force and aggression in a cross-gender framework.
And they may pronounce the film dangerous and wrongheaded because they may though this film invite teenagers to take old Hollywood masculinity and male bonding in western tradition value, but this was not the film's aim.
Until a more successful authority, the sheriff from outside to arrests Johnny but refuses to hear the voice of teens; He treats Johnny essentially as a criminal. Even when before he let Johnny go, he lectures Johnny that
'I don't get you. I don't get your act at all, and I don't think you do either. I don't think you know what you're trying to do or how to go about it. I don't know if there's any good in you. I don't know if there's anything in you. But I'm going to take a big fat chance and let you go. There'll be a hearing on this tire iron business. You'll get a summons and you'd better show up.'
It can be read as other conflict between the generations. They did not communicate with each other, learn from each other. This made the case even worse. When Johnny understands the rule, understands how the male authority works, Johnny could went on his way. However how much he could learn without the communication.
Different from anyone else, Kathie was the only one who really understood what Johnny demanded. According to Jon Lewis, this could be seemed as strange lover affair straight out the movie western. However, I read in different way that she could seem as a strange connection between the youth and adult society. Because she was in adult society where potential obstruct to freedom of Johnny's mind. After Johnny heroically rescues Kathie from those danger bikers' men, he brutishly kisses and hugs her. At that time, He found they had some similar quality through her eyes. As she said "It's crazy. You're afraid of me. But I'm not afraid of you now.'' She knew that he was a good boy but those adults mistook him. Because he was authority of a bike gang, he knew she was the one he needed to avoid and he attempted to hide the real feeling of her when they first met. Then "I want to touch you,'' she walked close him and added that "I want to try'' but Johnny stopped her. He did not want any more connection with adult society. At least he found out the right place he could stand for. As Sheriff set him free, Johnny went out without a word, until Sheriff said "at least said thank you,'' but Kathie answered "he does not know how''
At last, he did know how to communicate with the adults. He returned to the café alone, wipes his mouth and eyebrows and painfully opened his mouth but soon he gives up. He pauses and dangles the motorcycle trophy from his hand, and then places it on the end of the counter and gave her a vague smile. And this was the first time he smiles in the film.
Jon Lewis pointed out that watching 'The Wild One', most people would feel great sympathy for what Johnny went through. As with any other good teen film, The Wild One was made for a cross purpose: sending an alarming message to adults and creating an irresistible and charming anti-social rebel hero for youth.
however I though The Wild One suggested specters that people need to re-concept youth desires and shift to adult's framework so that it can accommodate not only need or want, but also demand, at the same time; people need to acknowledge the similarity and contradiction between the generations, and recognize the aggressive and violent components of people's identifications.
