The Paradox of The Graduate

If you've been following my writings for long, you might know that I'm really not a fan of American Beauty. I find its depiction of domestic America scathing, reductive, and, most of all, without insight. I don't regret having dedicated an entire essay to how squirmy the film is, or that it's still one of my best-performing pieces. 

But maybe, one might say, I just don't like films that critique the American dream? Maybe I think that domestic suburbia is just beyond analysis or interrogation. To that I say ... I really like The Graduate.

    I find that film's observations both more on-point and more meaningful. I think it's got great performances and witty dialogue, and it strikes the balance between drama and comedy gracefully. And I'm not alone in my assessment. The Graduate was a smash hit when it was released in 1967, landing on five or six AFI Top 100 lists in the years since.

    But what's interesting to me is the way this movie is celebrated alongside films rebellious films like Dr. Strangelove and Bonnie and Clyde. I have always found its connection with these sorts of movies odd. What's a movie about suburban listlessness doing alongside a movie about the inevitability of nuclear annihilation? 

    The Graduate is one of those rare films where I don't think even film criticism at large really understands why it's so good. The film landed in a time where popular cinema was loud and rebellious, and so we kinda assume The Graduate is the same. Popular criticism marks The Graduate as a ritual in nihilism, but somewhere between the youthful ennui and dark cynicism, a surprisingly bright portrait of optimism, agency, and self-actualization shines through. 

    By this, I don't mean The Graduate is something like The Sound of Music. This movie spends way too much time marinating in its own angst to be what I'd call an "optimistic" movie. That said, while the movie scouts out the experience of living in a world resigned to its own shoddiness, the movie does not leave disillusionment or cynicism as the audience's only weapons against such a world.

    Since the film's social context is such an integral part of understanding its appeal, we'll start by looking at film in the 1960s. Then we'll browse over some of the film's central characters, especially our lead, Benjamin Braddock. We'll wrap up by looking at the weird way film criticism has classified the movie's famous finale. 

Welcome to the ‘60s

       To give us some kind of framework, let’s tally some of what went on in the United States in the 1960s: the space race, the women’s movement, the Civil Rights movement, the beginning of the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict, lots of drugs, the looming possibility of nuclear apocalypse, a couple of assassinations, protests every other Tuesday. Historian Kenneth T Walsh described the 1960s as such, 

“By the end of the decade, however, Americans had lost much of their innocence and optimism. Some young people … turned violent in their effort to fight ‘the system.’ Few events were as pivotal as the escalating Vietnam War, which was taking the lives of thousands of American soldiers and countless Vietnamese every year. Americans increasingly believed that their leaders, civilian and military, had falsely persuaded them that the war was worth fighting and was winnable.”

I don’t want to come off as reductive or make it seem like the 1960s was this stain on American history. The country made a lot of progress during this time with things like race and gender, planting seeds for modern discussions on the subject. But like most periods of social change, it was a stressful time. An exhausting time.

         As such, two dominating themes within this era were angsty rebellion and resigned cynicism. The world was broken, and all anyone could do about it was write lsd-induced songs about how the world would always be broken. This was the era that gave us Bonnie and Clyde, a film that celebrates two kids who decide to start robbing banks because they’re just that bored. 

    In addition to, or perhaps because of, these cultural conversations, Hollywood saw the dissipation of the Hays Code, a sort of precursor to the modern MPAA rating system that dictated what could or couldn’t be presented onscreen. (For more on the Hays Code, see my essay on From Here to Eternity.) By the 1960s, the Hays Code was on its way out, and so filmmakers were having fun experimenting with all kinds of tools they weren’t allowed to use before. 

    Many films sold themselves on being edgy and controversial, on showing you things you couldn't see onscreen 20 years ago. 1969’s The Wild Bunch, for example, showed an unprecedented display of onscreen violence. Most notable was the film’s climactic shootout which showcases characters being riddled with bullets uninterrupted for five minutes. This was done deliberately on the part of Sam Peckinpah, who wanted to use this film as a comment on violence as a spectacle. Moreover, when you think the world is going to tear itself apart, there’s something perversely cathartic about watching that violence play out on the big screen. (Cathartic, not necessarily healthy.)

         Where does The Graduate fit into this conversation?

        While not a fraction as violent as a movie like The Wild Bunch, the movie poked the bear in other ways. Benjamin’s affair with Mrs. Robinson was transgressive not only for displaying an above-normal amount of sex in the movie (still tame by today’s expectations), but also for its violation of social norms. The scandal would have rocked your local PTA board, and that’s exactly what the film was hoping for. Because the system this film was critiquing was not atomic warfare nor social stratification but rather the circus show of domestic living.

        We've talked a lot about films that fought against the systems like government and corporations, but there's also the system of suburbia, the small-scale political battlefield fueled by the appetite to prove that one had the most wholesome household on the block. The 1960s had a lot of feelings about that as well. When the world is crumbling, this need to assure yourself, and the neighbors, that you are safe from the hurricane becomes all-encompassing, even suffocating. The Graduate spoke to a search, even a desperate search, for the appearance of affluence at any cost.

         Reflecting on the social climate in which The Graduate was made, lead actor Dustin Hoffman said in an interview with AFI,

“We were coming from a time after the great depression … It took twenty years for America to suddenly pull itself to where it could not only afford to be material, but maybe more than any other time in the twentieth century … material things suddenly took the place of love. ‘I got my kid a new car.’ It was a substitute for love. The kids were aware of it, and the kids resented it.

“Your children were not your children. They were no different than a new car. They were an object that you could say, ‘he’s at Harvard now,’ … I remember my father saying to me when I would say I didn’t want to play the piano anymore, ‘Do you have any idea how much money we have invested into you since you first started taking lessons?’”

         The best way to describe the movie, in short, is that The Graduate is the movie American Beauty thinks it is: a critique of suburban flaccidity in which a character grows tired of chasing some socially imagined construct of wholesomeness and starts to act for himself.

“The Graduate” comes home

        The film opens as Benjamin Braddock returns home after finishing college. Though he receives a hero’s welcome from his parents and neighbors, Benjamin himself is little more than a shell. Benjamin wants to tell his parents that he has no idea what to do with his life now that he's an adult, but they’re too busy congratulating him to hear. The only person who does take notice of Benjamin is his neighbor, Mrs. Robinson. She asks Benjamin to drive her home, and he graciously helps her out. But once he’s home alone with her he soon realizes that Mrs. Robinson has more in mind for him, and she offers herself to him sexually. Benjamin at first recoils at the thought, but he eventually acquiesces, and he begins a secret affair with Mrs. Robinson.

         Benjamin wastes his days away lounging about aimlessly, directionless as ever, and wastes away his nights in bed with Mrs. Robinson. Their nights together are filled with little discussion, only mindless sex. On the subject of her unhappy marriage or meaningless suburban existence, Mrs. Robinson says very little, but when Benjamin mentions her daughter, Elaine, Mrs. Robinson forbids Benjamin from ever talking to her. However, when his parents coerce him into asking Elaine out, Benjamin is left with little option.

         Determined to keep himself undesirable, Benjamin remains aloof with Elaine during their date. But he drops the act and they spend the night getting to know one another. The seeds of friendship are planted, far more satisfying than anything Benjamin has known in a long time, and he resolves to end things with Mrs. Robinson. However, she has other plans and threatens to tell her daughter the truth about their affair in order to keep them apart. Benjamin gets to Elaine first, and she disgustedly screams at Benjamin to get out.

         Determined to win Elaine back, Benjamin follows her to school. She initially cold shoulders him, but her sympathy wins out, and they begin a casual courtship. They ponder what kind of future they might have together when Elaine is suddenly taken away by her parents to marry someone else.

         Though Elaine’s parents threaten Benjamin if he comes after her, Benjamin chases after Elaine on her wedding day. The chase takes Benjamin all across the state, and he arrives just as the bride and groom exchange vows. But when Benjamin calls out to Elaine, she goes after Benjamin and the two run out of the chapel together and hitch a ride on a bus.  

         I went into this movie with a somewhat disdainful eye. Righteous ennui has never been the thing I look for in film, which is why I generally have a hard time with this era of Hollywood, but this was about one semester into my formal study of film, back when I was even less of a boat-rocker. Most of what I knew about this film was that it had Dustin Hoffman sleeping with a woman twice his age and then going after her daughter. It sounded repulsive.

       Imagine my surprise when I really responded to what I was seeing. The first scenes have Benjamin’s neighbors basically assaulting him with their enthusiasm and vomiting small talk all over him, all while the despondent Benjamin doesn’t even crack a smile. All of Ben’s associates are starving to congratulate them, but you get the idea that not one of them genuinely cares about him. He’s just a rabbit’s foot that everyone wants to rub their hands on. The whole thing is captured in these claustrophobic close-ups that just make everything seem so overwhelming.

         This isn’t just boredom. This isn’t just disenchantment. This is isolation. This is what it looks like when you become a living dessert tray, when your social circle has been allowed to freely snack on your psyche until you’re nothing but a husk. Who wouldn't want to fight back against that?

    In short, I found Benjamin tremendously sympathetic, and watching him come to terms with his own agency was a very satisfying experience. The Graduate succeeds where American Beauty falls short owing to the same thing that makes The Graduate distinct from many other rebellion-based films of the time: its main character.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Braddock

    As a reference, I turn to Cool Hand Luke, released the same year as The Graduate. The former sees Paul Newman playing a defiant prisoner shaking up the iron grip of the corrupt warden. The prison warden tries to tell Luke one thing, and Luke does the exact opposite to prove how he won't be broken. Luke is much more emblematic of the kind of character that was popular during this era. The rebellious anti-hero who willfully fights a one-man-war against the establishment.

    Benjamin Braddock is not that character.

        Benjamin’s defining characteristic, at least at the start of the film, is his passivity. He’s just so directionless that he gets suckered into this manipulative affair with a woman twice his age. Benjamin’s problem is that he has nothing to define himself. Like a world that values appearance at any cost, he has a direction but no goal, so he attaches himself to the first thing that brings him a suggestion of meaning.

The cost this has on Benjamin is most apparent during the film’s “Sound of Silence” montage in which Benjamin’s affair is constantly juxtaposed against shots of him floating lifelessly on his inflatable bed as he drifts across his family pool. Benjamin’s affair with Mrs. Robinson, like his passionless lifestyle, has him untethered from progression or meaning.

    In the study of 1960s poster children for rebellion, Benjamin Braddock is an unusual case. He’s disenchanted, absolutely, but he’s not exactly a warrior for change, nor does he have a chip on his shoulder. He somehow embodies the disenfranchisement of this time period despite being polite to a fault. Bonnie and Clyde are over here robbing banks, and Benjamin’s idea of sticking it to the man is excessive sunbathing.

Benjamin's non-agency makes him an easy target for Mrs. Robinson. Even after Benjamin catches on to what she’s doing and calls her out for it, Mrs. Robinson gaslights him into thinking he was just imagining things and until he’s begging for her forgiveness. Then not five minutes later she’s naked standing between him and the bedroom door. It’s this power imbalance that highlights just how demeaning this affair really is.

This touches on his other defining trait, another thing that makes him so unusual in this field. Benjamin is strangely innocent, unspotted from the world, and he is desperately afraid of doing anything anyone would disapprove of. Note how difficult it is for him to lie to the front desk clerk at the hotel so he can book a room for his affair with Mrs. Robinson. His people-pleasing impulses blind him from the insidious or ill intentions of others.

         At the same time, this innocence is also Benjamin’s saving grace. His honesty signals a kind of moral center that makes him a breath of fresh air in this suburban circus. Benjamin hasn’t yet been worn down by the unrelenting monsoon of cynical living, the pursuit of wholesome appearance or monetary success. There’s still a chance he might escape the trap with his moral compass still intact.

        While we’re here, I guess I’ll touch on Mrs. Robinson, around whom much of the discourse centers. One of the big talking points is to what degree Mrs. Robinson is or isn’t a cradle-robbing creep. Originally, the verdict seemed to be that, yes, Mrs. Robinson is a manipulator and thank goodness that Benjamin escapes her spiderweb.

        But sympathy for Mrs. Robinson tends to fluctuate through the decades. The last decade or so has seen an especially unusual amount of sympathy being afforded to Mrs. Robinson with the tables turning on Benjamin. Vox writer Alissa Wilkinson wrote in December 2017, “… but it becomes clear at some point that Benjamin has the upper hand simply because of who he is: free, young, wealthy, with his whole life in front of him, and she needs him, on some level, to assure her she’s not invisible.” Wilkinson goes on to vilify Benjamin by saying he is “destined for a lifetime of getting what he wants and then getting tired of it,” which I think is assuming a lot about Benjamin’s character.

This brand of criticism does make a little more sense when you realize that much of this pushback against Benjamin came after the allegations against Dustin Hoffman in 2017. This is another significant aspect of film discourse—criticism is influenced by the social environment in which it arises. In this particular case, these analyses tend to victimize Mrs. Robinson a little more than what she is owed. After all, it is Benjamin during their nights together who continually makes bids for connection from Mrs. Robinson, bids that she brushes aside. If there is a victim in this relationship, I don’t think it’s the one coercing the kid she’s known since he was in grade school into having secret sex with her and then using his shame around that affair to try blackmailing him.

    I’ll clarify, I wouldn’t cast Mrs. Robinson as a Maleficent-grade mistress of all evil. But neither, I think, does the film itself. There are moments when the black widow covering gives way and the quiet languishing underneath leaks through, and actress Anne Bancroft does a fantastic job selling this side of her as well. One such moment comes partway through her affair with Benjamin where he asks her to tell him about her life. Through subtext, we learn that Mrs. Robinson gave up her dreams and ambitions of studying art to marry her husband, to whom she is just another commodity, another merit badge he can show off to his neighbors at the party. Mrs. Robinson takes advantage of Benjamin’s lack of direction, but she ultimately is afflicted with the same illness.

         Benjamin faces the same fate as Mrs. Robinson if he doesn’t grow a backbone and learn to chase things outside of his comfort zone. That’s why it’s perversely satisfying during the climactic wedding when everyone is yelling at Benjamin for disrupting the wedding. Mrs. Robinson, and every other miserable person in this film, has traded her soul for social approval, here Benjamin does the exact opposite. 

On the surface, the ending represents Benjamin’s self-actualization, his final victory. But remember that this is the 1960s. Every institution, even Hollywood, is under scrutiny, and even the promise of a happy ending is no longer a given. Much in the same way that #MeToo influenced how some viewers read Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of Benjamin, the sheer exhaustion and disenchantment of the 1960s colored the reading of the film.

Let’s talk about how this film ends. 

 

So What About that Ending?

         See, the film ends with Benjamin and Elaine busting out of the wedding chapel and hitching themselves on the first bus they find to take them far, far away from the meaningless monotony in which their parents were saddled. Or so they think.

         Once Benjamin and Elaine hop on the bus, basically stumbling over each other in laughter, they are instantly met with the skeptical and disapproving glances of the other bus patrons. The dampening glances has an effect on the two, and their enthusiasm fades. Rather than instantly dissolving to black in the Hollywood tradition, the camera holds its fix on Benjamin and Elaine for about a minute. As a result, we get to see what happens after the euphoria of their grand escape wears off. The smiles dim, and suddenly Ben and Elaine are on a bus full of strangers heading nowhere. What have these crazy kids gotten themselves into?

         A common takeaway from the ending is that for all the effort Benjamin has spent chasing down Elaine, he is still right back where he started. He still has no idea what to do with his life. If anything, he’s worse off. In addition to having no long-term plan, Benjamin’s now alienated his entire community and thrown himself into a relationship with a woman he’s only known for a short amount of time. (The exact timeline isn’t specified within the movie.) Benjamin thought he was escaping the mousetrap of domestic drainage, but he’s only dragged Elaine with him to the bottom of the fish tank. The bus they escaped on is ultimately taking them nowhere. Or worse, to the very life of emptiness they were running from. Because not only is emotional degeneration all-encompassing, it’s also inevitable, even for those who try to escape it. Writer Arnav Srivastav explains,

“In their bid to liberate themselves and fly off into the future as independent adults, Elaine and Ben realize they’ve done so with the sole intention of battling a consequence. Do they even love each other? What will they do next? These are two questions which instantly hit the two. The sudden change in emotion is a realization of the consequences they’ll face in the future … The sound of silence guides them to an uninformed decision and an uncertain future.”

I think this reading works. It’s interesting, I’ll give you that, but I was very surprised to find that this was the most commonly accepted reading of the film. Mostly though, there’s a nihilism to this reading that doesn’t sit well with me. From emptiness we came, and to emptiness we return. Owning up to my own biases, maybe the musical lover in me just needs to accept that not every film needs a "happy ending." Makes sense. Not every story in real life has a "happy ending."

But when I come back to the cultural and social value of the story, I don't necessarily know what the takeaway is supposed to be. It just doesn’t feel fair to call out the futility of domestic showboating and then punish the two people who actually try to reject it. That's not to say that unhappy stories can't be enlightening (William Shakespeare has entered the chat), but there's also more to tragedy than just dropping the bomb in the last minute of the movie. There's a difference between characters not escaping their character flaws and pasty nihilism.

    I feel like this idea--that people can't help but be complicit in their own misery and don't really change their nature--is better demonstrated in a film like Election. That film is also a satire of sorts about humans and their inability to sit with tedium and the way they delude themselves out of ever taking responsibility for any of their actions, and it actually does end with almost every character in more or less the same station they started (or in some cases slightly worse). It works better there because you actually see the process by which these characters continue to dig themselves in their respective holes. It doesn't end by rick-rolling the audience with the characters and their immutable character flaws.

    In The Graduate, though, Benjamin has a degree of self-awareness. He demonstrates growth. He breaks free of the patterns that contribute not only to his own misery, but that of his entire society. Feeding into this idea that he is cut from the same wallpaper as everyone else in his ecosystem of garden ornaments speaks to a level of nihilism that maybe made sense in the 1960s, but we aren't in the 1960s anymore.

Mike Nichols and Dustin Hoffman

    It’s also worth noting that the film’s final shots were apparently just a thought experiment on part of director Mike Nichols. While shooting the scene on the bus, Nichols just thought to keep the camera rolling and hold out the scene to watch what actors Hoffman and Ross would do if he did not tell them to stop acting. It’s the kind of filmmaking trick which, while not exempt from analysis or scrutiny, is better characterized as an experiment than a statement.

Another thing to remember about film language is that the terms and definitions aren’t fixed, nor do they correlate one-to-one. “Long take of main couple” doesn’t de facto mean “main couple=sad and unfulfilled.” The dimming grins read just as naturally as the onset of solemnity that comes with maturation. Childlike giddiness melting away into the dignified wisdom that comes with age.

    The shot of the judging elderlies is another great example of this “eye-of-the-beholder” principle. The prevailing reading points to the lifeless passengers scowling at Ben and Elaine as some kind of wake-up call. But one of the first aspects of the film that I personally connected with was the futility and hollowness of social approval, which the movie calls out so aggressively in its opening minutes. The masses were very smiley with Benjamin at the start of the film, but what did they know? It makes no more sense that the frowny-faces of the people on the bus would carry any more authority. If anything, the inclusion of this shot should signify that Benjamin has finally learned to reject the approval of his environment and act for himself.

    I also want to dig a little more deeply into Benjamin's want vs need dichotomy because I feel that there's a disagreement on what exactly those things are and whether Benjamin does or doesn't get them. What exactly does Benjamin need?

At a glance, it feels like what Benjamin needs is a solid life strategy, and because he doesn't have that by the time he's on the bus with Elaine, it feels like he's just stuck on the ferris wheel. That's what most critics I've read would say, but I'd argue that this is better characterized as his want. Benjamin thinks that predictability will give him what he wants, but so do all his insincere and miserable neighbors.

Benjamin would probably like some direction in his life (don't we all?) but I don't think Benjamin is suckered into his affair with Mrs. Robinson simply because he didn't have a clear four-year-plan. He chooses to use this affair as a distraction from his emptiness. The problem isn't that Benjamin doesn't know what to do with his future, it's what he does, or rather what he doesn't do, in the face of uncertainty. Benjamin at the start is so confused and desperate for meaning that he'll find it in bed with the wife of his dad's business partner.

    As Benjamin starts desiring substance more earnestly, he starts taking greater leaps to achieve it. I point to the episode in which Mrs. Robinson threatens Benjamin to tell Elaine about their affair. Mrs. Robinson gives Benjamin two alternatives--stay away from Elaine, or watch as I take away the only thing you care about. Either way, he loses, but Benjamin does something here that's especially striking for his character: he gives himself a third option. He tells Elaine himself--he runs to tell Elaine himself. Knowing that he's already lost Elaine either way, he chooses the one thing still in reach for him: ownership over his situation.

         But the best example of this change comes during his last interaction with Elaine before her parents take her away. When Benjamin presses her, “Are we getting married tomorrow? The day after tomorrow?” She simply replies, “No,” and walks off, but turns back to give him one last kiss, and they both smile. Again, Benjamin wants definition, he wants guarantees. Can we please just get married tomorrow?

    Elaine offers no promises, just the truth of the moment. The confession that what they have now is good. They'll figure out the rest as it comes. At the start of the film, this kind of uncertainty was overwhelming to him, but here he’s accepting that the future will be what it will be, and he need not lose sleep--or morals--over something so out of his control.

    A lot of the discussion around the ending revolves around the idea that Benjamin and Elaine are fated for misery because there's no way they're going to stay together. (Which is kind of a weird sentiment to me, their relationship gets more development than basically any superhero couple, and I don't see anyone doubting whether Clark and Lois are going to make it.) But to me, the long-term viability of their relationship is almost irrelevant because by this point, we have seen them actively reject the comfortable but demeaning fates their society has prescribed for them. That is something their humdrum parents would never do. Even if their relationship did dissolve, after they got off the bus or much later, we have seen them jump off sinking ships before, and I think there's reason to believe they'd tread water until they landed somewhere safe.

         Truthfully, Benjamin doesn’t have any more direction than what he had when he got off the airplane, but again direction wasn’t really what he was missing. Benjamin was just so desperate for a sense of meaning or autonomy that he grabbed onto the first opportunity that presented itself to him, even if it was degrading and empty. A central part of Benjamin’s arc is learning to sit with the unrest of uncertainty, knowing that he has nothing to tell his neighbors but knowing that he still has principles to hold on to. It's those principles that compel him to chase down Elaine even as the world is telling him no. Having learned how to fight for something now, Benjamin will be better armed to take on his future, whatever that may look like.

The Sound of Silence

    We saw a resurgence in films targeting suburbia again in the late 90s and early 2000s, the apex of this trend being American Beauty in 1999. The 21st century mostly moved away from this form of lampooning in the wake of events like the 2008 recession. Stability started to feel less odious than excess or abundance, so irritation slid away from the suburbs and more toward the realm of the uber-rich, as seen with media like Schitt's Creek or The White Lotus. Yet even as tastes have warped and flipped, The Graduate feels eternally accessible.

    The question of whether The Graduate has a happy ending ties into why we tell stories to begin with. When a character finally acquires their holy grail—and a holy grail can mean the infinity stone that saves the galaxy or a meaningful romantic relationship—it offers a sense of hope to the viewer. Seeing their victory gives us an excuse to try. Nowhere is this dynamic clearer than with Benjamin Braddock, a character who goes from wanting nothing to finally trying. Maybe Benjamin and Elaine don’t have their entire life’s story planned out yet. That’s fine. Benjamin went through a whole lot of crap to learn that that’s fine. They’ll take things one step at a time.

   In film criticism at large, there is a sort of credence and prestige to rejecting the traditional Hollywood happy ending. This is thought to be more insightful or realistic. That is why the Taxi Driver era of filmmaking that immediately followed The Graduate is often discussed with such reverence. I do genuinely feel like there is a place within film to look at these feelings and experiences, and to do so without the safety net of "happily ever after" in sight, but I also think there is something dangerous, or at least futile, about letting cynicism become the default.

         A lot of attention has been given in the last few years to the potential parallels between the social climate of the 1960s and that of today, particularly in light of things like the BLM protests of 2020. If we accept that the fights we are fighting today are as significant as those we faced way back when, then I guess the question we are faced with is how we wish to approach the fight. Do we believe that meaningful change is possible? That cycles can be broken? That our efforts to reject constraining beliefs or actions can yield positive influence? When we see something wrong in our society, do we actually think we can change it? Because none of us really know what our future looks like, but if we want to know what meaningful change looks like, we'd best start expecting it within ourselves.

            --The Professor