The Graduate: A Glance at Lust, Love, and Plastics - Essay Example

The Graduate: A Glance at Lust, Love, and Plastics The film The Graduate (1967) should have never become the legend of Hollywood that has crossed generations in its history and place within American culture. However, the film has an iconic place in the annuls of cinema history as lines from the film, music, and moments have become part of the cultural language. Older women who try to seduce younger men are often called a ‘Mrs. Robinson’, and the image of the hiked leg of Anne Bancroft as it is revealed a shocked Dustin Hoffman will for decades remain an iconic image. The film should have never been made, the book never part of the historical discourse of popular culture - but it was. In the process, the emotions of love, lust and the nature of plastics was provided a discourse in a story of the suburbs and the middle class. The film was made for $3000 dollars and has grossed $104, 397,102 (IMDB). The book by Charles Webb, published in 1963 had been on the shelves and then off of them, passing quietly as most first novels will through the literary system and into oblivion. The film was suppose to be the first film for director Mike Nichols, but his work Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf came out before The Graduate was released. However, it was The Graduate that won his only Oscar for best director. Dustin Hoffman, who was not the original actor slated to play Benjamin Braddock, had never had a real role in a film, but made his name through this tiny film, from a nobody writer (Whitehead 15). Nothing about this movie should have worked. However, The Graduate (1967) is legendary and every element came together in one of those magical moments of cinematic history that brings the myth of the ’sleeper’ film into reality. One has to wonder what the film, The Graduate (1967) would have been like had Robert Redford played the leading male role in the film as was intended (Whitehead 10). The semi-awkward, wide-eyed shock and desire that filled the expression on Dustin Hoffman’s face as he was seduced would have been a very different look on the all American pretty boy that was Robert Redford of the time period. There is no doubt that both actors were and are fine actors, but the film nuances would have been very different. The balance of innocence to depravity, the contrasts of the lusts of an older woman as they kindled the eager and corruptible lusts of a young man would have been thrown off as they assumed worldliness of a better looking young man would have given him a power that was denied to Dustin Hoffman. It would have been a different film. Instead, the film that was made became a sleeper hit, helping to revive the finances of a dying studio, and launching the careers of the members of the cast (Whitehead 12). No one who has seen the film will ever forget the long, lean legs of Anne Bancroft as they arched into a perfect frame of the semi-shocked form of Dustin Hoffman as she begins her seduction of the younger man. His portrayal of a young man exploring the nature of his sexuality was balanced by the work of Bancroft as she plays her role eliciting the right amount of sympathy, her corruption of a much younger man not defining her, but enhancing the character that she has developed. Lust erupts in this film, whether the viewer desires it to or not, the illicit affair a period of forbidden fruit which leads directly to the downfall of man, in this case, the loss of the woman he desires most in the form of Katherine Ross who plays Bancroft’s daughter. The themes of the film can be viewed from various aspects, some of which are defined by the period of time in which it was made, but others are timeless. From the time that the book was published in 1963 to the time when the movie was released in 1967, many changes in the culture had taken place, creating a great divide between the ideologies of ‘63 compared to those of ‘67 (Whitehead 14). The film, however, managed to touch on issues such as the gap between the belief systems of the generations as Ben rejects Mrs. Robinson in favor of her daughter, symbolically rejecting the old ideologies and embracing the new. Feminist issues are touched upon as Mrs. Robinson takes hold of her passions, her lust played out upon a young man whom she corrupts through her will to express her sexual self. As well, as the issue of marriage is discussed, the expectations on conventional relationships in comparison to the freedom that love brings provides a contrast in a time period where conventions were being challenged. Most of all, however, there is a central topic of the concept of ‘plastics’ as it represents the consumer culture and the middle class as they look towards the future through a disposable and created, inorganic world. Whitehead states “Ben throughout the film floats on the plastic raft, wears stylish plastic glasses, listens to plastic records, and eats at hamburger stands that use plastic-ware” (21). The plastic of the work refers to the “pseudo-reality” of the suburban life that is lived by the characters, their world defined by the utterance of the word - ‘plastics’ (Whitehead 21). Stein calls the this replacement of the organic nature of the garden of God’s Earth to the “socio-mythology of paradise as a man-made achievement” (98). Through the consumerist commentary of the film, the nature of the future as defined outside of the organic, made through an unnatural and chemically produced product, might also be indicative of the unnatural occurance of the affair between the older woman and the younger man, the balance of natural and organic lusts and love against the inorganic and the presumption of the unnatural concept of the older woman and the younger man. In this sense, the age configuration goes against procreative interests, thus making it organically unnatural - in other words, not material to the right or wrong of the age issue, but to the organic ‘rightness’ of the issue. The film was critically highly successful, however in thinking of what might have been with the lead role played by Robert Redford, one understands what it means to say ‘movie magic’. Hoffman is called “A homely non-hero” by Life magazine film critic David Zeitlin, as well as stating “A swarthy Pinocchio makes a wooden role real” (Zeitlin). Zeitlin states that “The script depicts him as well-fed, well-bred, and handsome - a walking surfboard” which would have described Redford well, but it is curious to wonder if in creating the character from a man who did not glimmer on the screen, creating lustful stares from the audience, merely by showing up, if it did not lend something more to the role. After all, in The Way We Were, Redford made us believe in him past his good looks which were the center of his role, where in this film, Hoffman made himself the sexual center despite not easily representing that stereotype. Lust was an evolution of character development, making it far more interesting and believable. All in all, the film is the definition of sophistication, its themes reaching deep into the cultural emergence that was occurring at the time and commenting elegantly on the middle class bourgeoisie. Crowther writes of the Hoffman’s character “With Mr. Hoffman's stolid, deadpanned performance, he gets a wonderfully compassionate sense of the ironic and pathetic immaturity of a mere baccalaureate scholar turned loose in an immature society. He is a character very much reminiscent of Holden Caulfield in J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye”. He then further goes on to say of Bancroft’s character, “And with Anne Bancroft's sullenly contemptuous and voracious performance as the older woman who yearns for youth, Mr. Nichols has twined in the netting the casual crudeness and yet the pathos of this type”. The film creates a discourse on middle class life, for its lust and innocent corruptions, unaware of the greater society and the problems that would overwhelm the bourgeoisie should they think too much upon it. The world is a microcosm of needs and visceral desires that fill up the spaces in their lives until the conventionality of it all becomes the corrupting element. The word that best describes the film is iconic, its principle characteristics being symbolic of the ideological emotional culture of the 20th century, with the sophistication of thematic explorations that dominated the popular discourse of the time period. The issues are no less valued now than they were then, the concepts of an inorganic world and the pseudo-realities of the future, now existing in the present as the media has replaced the symbolism of ‘plastics’. That same scene, filmed today, would most likely be the engaging sound of the words “new media” with a finger put to the lips and a wink, thus framing the same type of future that was predicted within the film. The consumerist culture lamenting the loss of its youth, much the same as Mrs. Robinson mourned for her own and reached towards Ben to gain back the emotions of her younger life. The nature of how the film was made gives hope to ventures that seem to have none, its success beyond that which could have been imagined. The choices made to create the magic of the film a delicate balance that worked, the awkwardness of Hoffman perfectly resembling the culture as it raced towards the future - towards plastics. Works Cited Crowther, Bosley. “The Graduate” The New York Times. 22 December 1967. Web. 2 May 2011. IMDB. “The Graduate”. IMDB. 2011. Web. 2 May 2011. Stein, Jeffry J. Life, Myth, and the American Family Unreeling: The Spiritual Significance of Movies for the 20th Century. Boca Raton, FL: Universal Publishers, 2005. Print. Whitehead, J W. Appraising the Graduate: The Mike Nichols Classic and Its Impact in Hollywood. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co, 2011. Print. Zeitlin, David. “The Graduate”. Life. 24 November 1967. Web. 2 May 2011. Read More