My Favorite Rebels

There’s a famous line spoken by hunky biker Marlon Brando in the classic 1953 film The Wild One. When asked by a young lady, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” he replies, “Whaddya got?”

It’s an iconic question that must’ve seemed to sum up in two words (I think it was two words, anyway) what an entire generation of frustrated youths were feeling then.  At the time, there was a lot of rising rebellion among those youths who were sandwiched somewhere in the limbo between childhood and adulthood.  Although the word “teenager” as used to describe this middle ground didn’t really come into use until sometime in the 1940’s, teenagers in the 1950’s were – in large part – beginning to find their own voices, their own individualities, their own emerging cultural zeitgeists … and all of that newfound restless urge to personal freedom and expression set them at odds with their parents, whom they had previously kowtowed to.

Growing up as a good little shy, bullied, closeted queer kid in flagrantly homophobic and conservative Mississippi (which it still is), you’d think I might’ve had a lot to rebel against, but I never lashed out.  I simply withdrew further into timidity.  I was King of the Wimps. 

But looking back, I almost wish I had gone rogue and caused a stir.  If one doesn’t let ‘er rip from time to time, the timidity becomes a deeply ingrained habit.  People then get accustomed to you being that way and they seize upon being able to put you in a nice little box of expectation of how you should be.  Such was the case with me.

I think that’s why I grew to admire rebels, people who proudly and boldly and quirkily stood out from the mediocrity and complacency around them.  Men and women who stood up for themselves and stood their ground.  I loved the individuals – real and fictitious – who fearlessly defied expectations and who, for whatever reasons, bucked the numbskull Establishment in order to make the statements that they felt needed to be heard.  Perhaps I admired them all so much because I didn’t feel brave and crazy enough to do it myself.  I was, in effect, rebelling vicariously through the pioneer troublemakers out there who each did their own thing.

It’s important to note, though, that rebellion for rebellion’s sake only – or as Brando said, “Whaddya got?” – isn’t really the right way to go about it.  To be Alex in A Clockwork Orange and being unrelentingly destructive against society for no other reason than to be destructive is a no-win situation.  If, however, the rebellion manages to inspire positive changes in the way we live as individuals or advancements in our society, or challenges us to take a little bit of inspiration from their courage and somehow make it our own, then the rebels will have served a higher purpose than they might’ve envisioned.

So it’s in tribute to the idea of purposeful rebellion that I want to list some of the people who have inspired me with their standing up to – and sometimes their fighting back against – a society that would knock them down or would have them stay inside a box rather than color outside the lines.  Some of my choices may seem to you to be superficial and ridiculous, while others may not.  Either way, these are, in alphabetical order, just a few of my favorite rebels.  Who are yours?

• Johnny Cash:  Johnny came from abject poverty as one of seven children of an Arkansas cotton farmer, but eventually rose to the height of popularity in the country music industry.  Early in his career, he was resolute in his Christian faith and pushed for his desire to record gospel songs even when told they wouldn’t sell records.  His career had its ups and downs, primarily exacerbated by his alcohol and drug abuse, the latter of which finally ended in rehab in 1992.  Johnny’s blunt honesty in everything he did and said, his steadfast desire to make music his way even when dealing with his meddling record labels, his vocal disdain for the changing Nashville country music establishment when it put him out to pasture, his speaking up on behalf of the common man and Native Americans, his self-avowed identification with outlaws, his late-career renaissance popularity with punk rockers and hipsters, and his partnership with alternative-rock music producer Rick Rubin are just a few of the qualities that made the Man in Black a rebel icon for all time.

• James Dean:  Dean was an enigma, and the legend of the real man within that enigma has only grown in the 57 years since he died in a car crash.  He skyrocketed to stardom in those ‘50s years when teen restlessness was at its zenith, and his carefully cultivated surly rebel-without-a-cause persona almost instantly became a touchstone for the time.  Many teenagers looked to Dean as their deliverer; he became the bad boy who boys wanted to be and girls wanted to be with.  (I still do!)  Actor Martin Sheen has been quoted as saying about James Dean, “When I was in acting school in New York, years ago, there was a saying that if Marlon Brando changed the way people acted, then James Dean changed the way people lived.”  That is probably true.  Every generation needs its heroes and looks to the icons it identifies with to give it hope – regardless of whether those heroes are squeaky clean role models or slovenly, rebellious libertines.  We all choose what works best for each of us.

• Jesus:  It always amuses me when so many misguided people seem to paint a portrait of Jesus as an elite exclusionist who would apparently only hang out with and approve of wealthy, white, socially-prominent, powerful, greedy, morally flawless, heterosexual people.  They seem to have the sole direct hotline to Jesus’ true intentions.  The Jesus I have come to know and love, however, stood for the complete opposite of those characteristics. I've always thought of him lovinginly as kind of a homeless hippie teacher who also happened to be the Son of the Most High God. Yes, this great Jewish rabbi taught that we should all love one another, but – as I’ve read in the Bible – Jesus had a particularly special place in his heart for the poor, the downtrodden, the outcasts, the sinners, the messy and the broken.  In other words, most of us.  He was perfect and without sin, but he could also get really royally ticked off, as he did when during the Passover he entered the holy temple and found it had been made a place of commerce.  His peaceful teachings to the people and the social concerns he advocated for threatened the Roman authorities’ grip on power.  Sounds pretty rebellious to me!  But he was also crucified for that rebellion.  Most importantly, it's his selfless sacrifice for mankind until the end of time and beyond that is perhaps his greatest legacy.

• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:  Dr. King is one of my biggest personal heroes because he tirelessly led a positive social movement during an extremely turbulent time in American history at great personal risk to both him and his family, all while staunchly advocating nonviolence as a central creed of that movement.  Dr. King pushed very hard against the prevailing social and political order of the day, and that makes him very much a rebel.  However, he did not believe in an eye for an eye.  He believed in the good of man.  For his efforts, he was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.  But it’s that terrible day in April 1968 when he paid the ultimate price for his dream of a better world for people of all races.  I’ve often wondered what that world would have been like had Dr. King not been assassinated.  It’s a loss that grieves me to this day.

• Rosa Parks:  Mrs. Parks refused to give up her seat on that Montgomery, Alabama bus after being ordered to by the driver in order to make room for a white male passenger who was still standing.  "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night,” said Mrs. Parks in The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People who Broke the Back of Jim Crow [Williams, Donnie; Wayne Greenhaw (2005). Chicago Review Press. p. 48].  Her peaceful but brave defiance served as the catalyst for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Civil Rights movement.  That makes her a rebel icon for all time in my book.  Bravo, Mrs. Parks, bravo.
•  Stonewall Inn Rioters:  There was still a climate of strong-arm persecution and intimidation by the authorities against homosexuals in public in the late Sixties, especially in places like bars where those in the GLBT community gathered to fellowship and be themselves.  But that tide began to turn when – on the night of June 28, 1969 – New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn gay bar in Greenwich Village, sparking a six-day-long uprising by patrons of the bar and their supporters.  The police pushed the gays, and the gays pushed back in a mighty show of force that stunned police and demonstrated the unified GLBT refusal to be persecuted any longer.  That act helped set off the gay rights movement, without which gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people wouldn’t have come as far as we have.

• “Julia Sugarbaker”:  I know what you’re probably thinking … a fictional TV sitcom character in the same list as inspiring real-life heroes and rebels as Jesus and Rosa Parks?  I’ve totally lost my simple mind, right?  Wrong.  As created by the writer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and portrayed by the late actress Dixie Carter on Designing Women, Julia broke the mold of what Southern women should be.  Yes, Julia grew up in Old South wealth, privilege, and aristocracy … a lifestyle steeped in many now-outdated stereotypes.  But the character of Julia herself was no stereotype.  She was a powerful, strong, independent woman.  She was a sassy, unapologetically liberal feminist who could cut you down to size with her sharp, tart tongue and leave you shaking in your shoes.  She stood up for the downtrodden and the shunned when they were unable or afraid to.  She was an outspoken firebrand who railed against shameful traditions like racism and homophobia.  No wonder all gay men love her.  She's someone we aspire to be and wish we could have as a friend.  To top all of that off, she was also a devout Christian character on network television.  You go, ma'am!