The James Dean Deification of Charlie Kirk

Jason Colavito
/
September 27, 2025


There are eerie parallels between the two men in life, and in death. Can the right transform their young activist into a national icon?



A young man with windswept brown hair wearing a white T-shirt dies a sudden, shocking, and violent death, sparking a national outpouring of mourning almost unprecedented in American history. Fans and followers herald him as the symbol of a generation, a model of American youth, even divinely inspired. Thousands attend his memorial service, where speakers declare that the dead man’s work has only just begun. Meanwhile, his face appears in every magazine and the great capitalist marketing machine begins churning out merchandise bearing his name and likeness. He achieves his greatest fame in death, and across the media, pundits argue about his legacy and whether he was really the good and saintly hero his mourners made him out to be. Angry fans decry what they see as attacks on their hero.

This might be a description of the mourning over conservative activist Charlie Kirk, 31, who was assassinated during a campus event in Utah on September 10, but it is also a description of the convulsion of grief that followed the death of iconic Rebel Without a Cause actor James Dean, exactly 70 years ago next week, following his September 30, 1955 death at age 24. As a James Dean biographer, I could not help but notice that these two moments of national lamentation—sudden, unexpected, and, to outsiders, inexplicable—have uncanny echoes that help us to understand not only how the right is turning Charlie Kirk into a MAGA martyr and saint but also why this effort is hollow and likely to fail.

Today, James Dean is best remembered as a rebellious Hollywood outsider in blue jeans from a tiny Indiana town who set the standard for cool. Everyone knows the iconic image of him in a red windbreaker. Dean died when a car turning left on an isolated stretch of California highway crashed into his oncoming Porsche at sunset. At the time, Dean was a minor celebrity who had starred in only one movie, East of Eden, in which he played a troubled teenager. But that film had given teens something to hold onto, a piece of art they felt depicted them for the first time as they really were. News spread more slowly in those days, but as teenagers and young adults heard what happened, they were overcome with emotion in ways that confounded adults and confused even those convulsing with tears.

Newspapers reported that teenagers—girls and boys alike—spontaneously wept when they learned of Dean’s death. Tens of thousands sent letters to the dead Dean. Young men especially had an outsize reaction: They built statues of Dean, dressed like him, and imitated everything from his hairstyle to his mumbling diction and loose gait. Young women pasted his picture on their walls and measured potential boyfriends against him. Inside my copy of William Bast’s 1956 biography, James Dean, I found a note from its first owner, letting Dean know that a year after his death, she had finally found “a man who will fill your shoes.” A North Carolina teen caused a sensation by claiming to have become pregnant by Dean when his angel visited her after his death. Hollywood Art Studios sold 300 life-size $10 masks ($120 in today’s dollars) of Dean each week, made from a supple plastic called Miracleflesh that Life magazine reported felt like human skin and filmmaker Kenneth Anger claimed young girls took to bed with them.

More:
https://newrepublic.com/article/200951/charlie-kirk-james-dean-deification

On edit:

Didn't know much about Mr. Dean, so I found a minute-long biography for a quick look:

- click for very short video -

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Sf7242XKfxY?feature=share