As the spring commencement season winds down, many recent graduates feel trepidation about leaving the academic and purposeful comfort zone. Exiting the high school or college environment implies facing relentless pressure from parents, educators and society to remain on a linear path that leads to a university degree, graduate school, or the workforce. For this reason, young adults feel obligated to conform to a system in which they express having no active voice or personal control. Often, they feel more flummoxed and adrift than when they started academia with such promise. Therefore, it is not surprising that defiance between young people and their parents occurs when the former begins to question their intended life’s purpose. No movie captures this awkward, painful, and confusing internal dilemma better than the screen adaptation of The Graduate, which transcends its late 1960s release date. The film’s satirical, humorous, and overt messaging relates the complex, altering events that result from the relationship triangle of Benjamin Braddock, Mrs. Robinson, and Elaine Robinson that resonate with new peer groups who identify with the generational gap commentary, applicable to their personal lives.
In 1967, the film adaptation of Charles Webb’s The Graduate established the standard of transcending cinema that captures the feelings of being young, inexperienced, confused and uncertain about the choices to make during the conjuncture and transition to adulthood (Kelly par. 10). In an era where inertia propelled twenty-year olds into radical lifestyle decisions, The Graduate avoids the themes of the progressive cultural and political shifts that defined the latter half of that decade, such as the Vietnam War and student protest movements (Bonner pars. 4-5). Rather, the film deals with how to young people come to terms with the uncertainty of impending adulthood and responsibilities against the backdrop of an older generation’s rigid suburban values of conformity and homogeneity (Smith par. 2). These shifting cultural and social attitudes of the postwar generation struggling to find self-identity and break free from the claustrophobic suburban grip gained popular acceptance in the late 1960s. The film obtains its edge and commercial success from the volatile, generational clashes and the climatic romance detonator that fuels the protagonists’ life-altering moment during the final, culminating scene. Prior to 1967 and the growing appeal of antagonism between generations, the film would not have garnered that prevalent audience identification that fueled its box office success.
Recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock finds himself facing unease and uncertainty on how to own his future endeavors. He is worried about his future and suffers dismay when learning from one of his father’s friends that his future is in plastics (Nichols, The Graduate). Benjamin returns home to Pasadena, California to spend the summer with his controlling parents. Braddock returns as a bewildered and clueless pawn, who becomes the centerpiece of his family’s constant cocktail parties. Benjamin seems dazed and uncomfortable with his parents’ over-hyped attention of his academic success and feels overwhelmed with their incessant probe in deciding plans to seal his future. What will be the catalyst that breaks through Benjamin’s passivity to make him act and wrest control of his future from his overbearing parents and their friends who exert pressure on Benjamin to follow their formulaic footsteps of their successful lifestyle, even if it is a superficial and unfulfilling one? The answer to Braddock’s immediate woes came in the calculated, predatory seduction and subsequent affair with Mrs. Robinson, the spouse of his father’s business partner. Although shocked and repelled by Mrs. Robinson’s proposition, Benjamin accepts. Both characters find common ground in the absence of meaning in their lives. For Mrs. Robinson, it is a momentary interlude from the emptiness of enduring in a loveless marriage blunted with alcohol; while for Braddock, it is an excuse to avoid dealing with the future. Braddock is comfortable in this isolated bubble but comfortable sphere of his parents’ generation until he reconnects with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine, who becomes the vehicle that allows Benjamin to break from his parents’ paralyzing, conservative world (Bonner par. 6).
Uncomfortable with his affair with Mrs. Robinson but wishing to appease her, Benjamin agrees to respect her wishes of not pursuing Elaine. Nevertheless, Braddock’s father and Mr. Robinson conspire for Benjamin to have a date with Elaine. Caught in a difficult situation, Braddock tries to repulse Elaine but eventually realizes that there is a connection and chemistry between them. Finally, Benjamin finds purpose and meaning despite Mrs. Robinson’s strenuous attempts to halt Benjamin and Elaine’s budding romance (Nichols, The Graduate). Although the affair comes to light and the Robinsons’ thwart to keep Benjamin and Elaine apart, Braddock embarks on a cross-country journey to halt Elaine’s marriage to a former boyfriend. The ultimate moments of generational opposition comes when just married Elaine runs away with Benjamin. To prevent their parents from stopping them, both bar the entire wedding party inside the church by placing a giant crucifix across the front door (Nichols, The Graduate). The wooden cross represents that symbolic generational resistance and split with their parents’ expectations. Even though Benjamin fails to stop the marriage, both Elaine and he finalize this chaotic adventure on a city bus with looks of uncertainty as to what the future holds for them (Nichols, The Graduate).
Ironically, when Webb published his coming-of- age novel in 1963, it received lukewarm reviews and seemed destined to fade into oblivion as another tale that highlighted the angst of the novel American suburbia, similar to the works of John Updike and John Cheever (Kureishi par 1). The tome’s themes of a younger generation’s disillusion with the hypocrisy of their parent’s generation failed to connect with readers still affixed in the conservative tradition of the1950s. Nevertheless, the novel’s biting take on the suburban stagnation of suburbia from the point-of-view of a naive college graduate piqued the interest of a young Hollywood film producer, Lawrence Thurman, who identified with the main character and optioned the book’s rights for $1,000 in 1964 (Kashner par. 2). The movie version triumphed as Hollywood underwent its own seismic, cinematic shifts that paved the way for a new type of American film.
In the mid-1960s, Hollywood was in the process of redefining movie making that saw the demise of the powerful studio system, the impact and appeal of the television industry, and the rise of independent movie theaters (Hitchman 3). Regardless of this trend, old Hollywood failed to connect or decided to ignore the baby boomer generation altogether, costing studios revenue, as they remained clueless over what genres appealed to this particular audience (3). Fast-forward to 1967 where against a backdrop of social upheaval, a new breed of Hollywood movie emerged that honed in on the postwar generation “disillusioned by the Vietnam War, disenchanted by the ruling elite, and less willing to conform than their parents [generation]” (3).
Despite the burgeoning changes in attitudes towards creating a new type of film that catered to a younger peer group, the major studios were not interested in producing a film version of The Graduate (Kashner par. 9). From the start, the making of this adaptation was the arduous work of industry outsiders, starting with Thurman, continuing with an unknown director, Mike Nichols, and concluding with the addition of novice screenwriter, Buck Henry (Kashner pars. 8-13). For two years, Thurman faced an uphill battle of convincing studios to finance filming a book that studio executives deemed unfunny under the guidance of an unknown and untested director (par. 9). Nevertheless, Nichols’ success in directing Broadway plays and a screen adaptation of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf convinced independent producer Joseph E. Levine from Embassy Studios to finance the project based more on Nichols’ directing prowess rather than the novel’s strength (Hitchman 3 and Kashner par. 10).
Other elements that made The Graduate revolutionary was the casting against type of stage actor Dustin Hoffman as Braddock, for Robert Redford, who more closely resembled the book’s protagonist wanted to play the leading role (Hitchman 3). Another innovative strategy was using songs from folk duo Simon and Garfunkel rather than creating an original score. This novel soundtrack approach helped the movie’s popularity and introduced its usage for future movies (3).
Finding oneself in the whirlwind of personal and cultural turbulence and redefining a personal interpretation of the status quo are central themes in The Graduate. Redefining and empowering that path continues to fuel each contemporary generation. It is why the nearly fifty-year-old film remains relevant to today’s current crop of eager or terrified graduates. The vibrant and humorous screen adaptation taps into that wellspring of youthful rebellion stifled by their progenitors and society’s expectations that finally erupts and reveals itself as undefined, individualistic decisions that lead to an ambiguous and uncertain crossroads.
Works Cited
Bonner, Mehera. "The Graduate." Pop Matters. Pop Matters.com, 2 Oct. 2007. Web. 26 May 2016.
Hitchman, Simon. "New Hollywood: American New Wave Cinema (1967-69)." New Wave Film.com. S. Hitchman/A. McNett, 2013. Web. 23 May 2016.
Kashner, Sam. "Here’s to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of The Graduate." Vanity Fair Mar. 2008: n. pag. Web. 25 May 2016.
Kelly, Megan. "Why ‘The Graduate’ Still Resonates Today." The Artifice | Www.the-artifice.com. The Artifice, 22 May 2014. Web. 25 May 2016.
Kureishi, Hanif. "Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson." The Guardian [London] 5 Sept. 2009: n. pag. Web. 25 May 2016.
Smith, Nicole. "Issues of Gender and Generation in the Film “The Graduate” (1967) - Pages 1-2."Article Myriad. Article Myriad, 7 Dec. 2011. Web. 23 May 2016.
The Graduate. Dir. Mike Nichols. Perf. Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross. 1967. AVCO Embassy Pictures/United Artists, 2014. DVD.
