Is a rebellious nature treated as virtuous?

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In movies, television show, books, and other media of the 20th and 21st century so far, it seems to me that many items of media treat rebellion as if it were honorable. If my perception is correct, then why would this be the case?

Some people encourage rebellion for one's own good or for the sake of mankind, and some such folks encourage rebellion for the sake of simply trying to discover what is good for mankind.

Those noble sounding purposes being attached to the word rebellion, what is their purpose?

Rebellious nature = willingness to question authority/think for oneself/assert one's autonomy. In theory.

Don't ask. It's like holding high aloft a right to choose. You're not supposed to stop and wonder what the choice is, just assert that you have it.

With Natty_Boh's definition considered here ...

Is "status quo" always best for any and/or for all?!

It is interesting that a reference to a term with pejorative connotations is attached to opposition to rebellion, whereas rebellion itself is provided with copious ameliorative terms. So much media of the last few decades has the glorification of rebellion that it would not be surprising to find oneself conditioned to consider rebelliousness as a virtue. The "status quo", the current state of things, with so much nebulousness overlaps so many different situations - some of which are always going to be bad or good, but of course the bad situations are what are brought into consideration and only them, while the benefits of rebelliousness via "the end justifies the means" are the primary considerations for rebellion in general. Why is this so?

The Puritan Myth + the Revolurionary American Myth + the Frontier Myth + the 60s Myth.

And it makes for good cinematic qualities.

And Prohibition - we all laugh at the manifold ways found to evade that law.

I think this is a pretty huge part of it. It moves the plot along and makes a character easy to identify with (so long as what they are rebelling against is sufficiently negative). It's also not new. Charles Dickens used it too, David Copperfield. So did Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet.

Pondering ...

Ah. Hedonism among the defiant.

Tolerance of the rebel/radical topic

this is a very important question, and I am reading about this concept right now.

In North America, there is a history/tradition of honouring and praising and even rewarding rebellious conduct. Unfortunately, there is also a history of supressing such conduct in order to maintain and uphold the status quo to preserve the "freedom" of being the rebel, the different one, the person who bucks the trend.

Paradoxical? You bet.

In her book, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, the author, Rosemaire Garland Thomson writes about this paradox: "The cultural dilemma regarding the extent to which individual variations could be tolerated within a society based on freedom and equality was solved by installing the average man (italics mine)...in the position previously held by...[the dethroned]...aristocrat or king." (p 64).

Elsewhere Thomson writes that "...democracy's paradox is that the principle of equality implies sameness of condition, while the promise of freedom suggests the potential for uniqueness. That potential amounted for many Americans to a mandate for distinctiveness--the kind of nonconformity that Emeerson and Thoreau so vehemently extol in their efforts to formulate an individual self free from all restraint" (p 43).

Thomson is writing about Disabled persons, though the concept of disability is connected with persons who have different views and ideas than the so called norm.

Hope this helps. You are not alone in your observation.

Last edited by sartresue on 02 Mar 2011, 11:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

That is what I meant by "defiant", and within the context of the sovereign rule of the One who created us all.

Text and context topic

Then you might be in agreement with Thoreau and Emerson. I suggest you read up on trancendentalism, which is not the subject of Thomson's thesis.