Young people have always been characterized by being highly active and committed alternative viewpoints. Industrialization and urbanization made life more comfortable and freed up much time for young people, thus, spawning teenage culture in the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century. This combination, coupled with severe social problems such as poverty, racialization, ageism, and homophobia, led to juvenile delinquency. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the portrayals of unruly youth from three movies and three scholarly articles to find out what exactly motivates their behavior.
Unruly Youth and Adaptation
Although Travis is already twenty-six years old in the film, he nonetheless represents later generations of young people. His disobedience to social norms is due to his moral changes during the Vietnam War and his long absence within the framework of a standard urban society (Taxi Driver). Costas describes similar reasons that contribute to social marginalization in his work, studying the formation of the favela population; however, he puts more emphasis on racialization (Costas 117). In the end, marginalization forces both the protagonist of the film and the residents of favelas to illegal activities, such as violence and participating in drug trafficking.
The motivation for asocial behavior is both resistance and coping. The main driver of such a mental strategy of Travis and the favela residents is an unsuccessful attempt to adapt to social norms that were once natural (Costas 117). Failed social adaptation contributes to the increase of misunderstanding and, consequently, the conflict between urban communities, which results in an open clash, as in Taxi Driver, or in the avoidance of legal behaviors.
Unruly Youth and Self-Expression
The criminality of the youth in The Warriors movie, in turn, is a result of a breaking down of societal control and the anarchy which follows. The powerlessness and passivity of the police led to the formation of many aggressive gangs that fight for the zone of influence and simply express their cruel nature. Parenti studies a similar opinion of US police officers on the cultivation of juvenile delinquency, who explained this process through the prism of the broken windows theory (71). The absence of persons who can ensure the authority of the law and, thereby, support the well-being of the community leads to such Napoleonic goals as the capture of all of New York.
Without a doubt, the reason for this rebellious behavior of young people is the desire for self-expression and self-satisfaction. It is confirmed by the motivation of Luther, the main antagonist of The Warriors, who says that he just likes to act brutal and cruel. Additional evidence of this assumption is also segregation through outward self-identification of members of gangs based on costumes and gender.
Unruly Youth in Oppression
La Haine offers probably the most realistic look at the sources of wayward youth, at least in France. The director emphasizes the whole range of social issues, such as police brutality, racial prejudice, lack of access to education, and poverty, which provoke violent protests among multicultural and multi-ethnic youth from the Paris ghetto (La Haine). Siciliano, who studies La Haine in her work, agrees with the proposed social preconditions, also highlighting cultural fear and the nationalist post-colonialist mindset as their source (212). La Haine achieves an incredible level of documenting through the truthfulness and relevance of highlighted social issues.
Constant pressure from the urban majority and social institutions helps to form the rebellious behavior of both the indigenous people of the Paris ghetto and newly arrived migrants. Such an almost Spartan way of life and thinking often leads to a tragic outcome, as was shown in the climax of the film (La Haine). The accumulating negative moods of the inhabitants of the ghetto break out into riots that cause another wave of police brutality repeating the vicious circle of violence.
Conclusion
This work examined six sources, namely three films and three scientific sources, in order to determine the causes of youth rebellion in the urban environment. The results show that the main predecessors of the unruly mindset and actions are unsuccessful social adaptation, a need for self-expression, and urban oppression. These problems are typical for both developed countries, such as the US and France, and developing countries, such as Brazil.
Works Cited
Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis. Directed by Walter Ruttmann, performance by Berliners, Fox Film Corporation, 1927.
Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. Psychology Press, 2002.
Costas, Gundo Rial y. “Spaces of Insecurity? The “Favelas” of Rio de Janeiro between Stigmatization and Glorification.” Iberoamericana (2001-), vol. 11, no. 41, 2011, pp. 115-128.
Dimendberg, Edward. Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity. Harvard University Press, 2004.
Invisible City. Directed by Hubert Davis, performances by young black children, National Film Board of Canada, 2009.
James, Ryan Kristopher. “Keeping the Kids out of Trouble:” Extra-Domestic Labour and Social Reproduction in Toronto’s Regent Park, 1959-2012. PhD dissertation, York University, 2017.
La Haine. Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, performances by Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, and Saïd Taghmaoui, Canal+, 1995.
Parenti, Christian. Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis. Verso, 2000.
Roy, Ananya. “Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 35, no. 2, 2011, pp. 223-238.
Siciliano, Amy. La Haine: Framing the Urban Outcasts. Okanagan University College, Department of Geography, 2007, OUC.
Slumdog Millionaire. Directed by Danny Boyle, performances by Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, and Madhur Mittal, Celador Films, 2005.
Smith, Neil. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. Routledge, 1996.
Taxi Driver. Directed by Martin Scorsese, performances by Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, and Albert Brooks, Bill/Phillips Productions, 1976.
The Naked City. Directed by Jules Dassin, performances by Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, and Dorothy Hart, Universal Pictures 1948.
The Third Man. Directed by Carol Reed, performances by Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, and Orson Welles, London Films, 1949.
The Warriors. Directed by Walter Hill, performances by Michael Beck, James Remar, and Dorsey Wright, Paramount Pictures, 1979.