The red jacket that Dean's character Jim Stark wears in Rebel Without a Cause is so iconic that it was appropriated only eight years later by Bob Dylan on his 1963 record "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." Supposedly. To me Dylan's jacket looks suede, and brown––quite different than Dean's bright red windbreaker.

In the days before anyone with an internet connection could compare the two jackets in less than 30 seconds, associations like this could germinate in the public consciousness until Don Maclean cemented it in American mythology in the third stanza of "American Pie"––the song not the movie! Even by 1971, only sixteen years after the film, Dean's red jacket had become the stuff of legend.

The jacket is important not only because of how the James Dean mystique mushroomed in the years following his death; the jacket is vital to the meaning of the film. Jim Stark longs for attachment, "If only I had one day in my life where I didn't feel confused, where I felt like I belonged," he says in one particularly poignant moment.

Yet, the bright red jacket (like Natalie Woods' bright red dress) standing out as it does against more the muted tones worn by the other characters shows us that Jim does not want to belong at the cost of personal uniqueness. He wants to be special AND fit in, to be an original and be at home in the world.

This is one of the classic quandaries of Enneagram Fours which we will be talking about tomorrow. While you may not be a Four, the tension in Jim's mind is a very human one. So, let's talk.