Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967, dir. Mike Nichols) (photo by Bob Willoughby) “How sheepish one feels, realizing the movie is no work of genius. In fact, what was once an all-important signpost to adulthood is really little more than a simple romantic comedy whose ‘countercultural’ message, insofar as it has one, is decidedly retrograde. Or perhaps The Graduate is really a tragedy, considering that what we thought we were watching was something altogether different than what’s actually on the film. (Women, in particular, may be disappointed to rediscover that Ben’s coming of age requires them to participate from the wrong side of the bed sheet.) What’s alarming is that the film, which so perfectly captured its era, seems to have turned on us. No longer a blueprint for liberation, it’s practically an anthem to conformity. In The Graduate we remember, Ben rebels against that model of the world, racing to steal Elaine away from the altar, beating off her family and her would-be future (and his) with a crucifix he pulls off the wall of the church. One of the first ’60s movie characters to say “Fuck You” to the Establishment, Ben lives in our memory as a rebel who hijacked his own awful fate. On actual celluloid, it’s a different story. You don’t need Nichols’ one moment of supreme, painful insight, that awful, final glimpse of the couple ‘escaping’ at the back of the bus, barely able to look each other in the eye, to see that nothing Ben does is particularly heroic. Rather than striking a blow for self-determination, he ends up with the exact girl his parents have picked out for him. He barely knows her, but he pursues her because she’s everything her mother isn’t: respectable, safe, ready to forgive him for having no vision at all. ” -excerpts from Robin Dougherty’s essay,  Here’s to You, Mrs. Robinson

Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967, dir. Mike Nichols) (photo by Bob Willoughby)

“How sheepish one feels, realizing the movie is no work of genius. In fact, what was once an all-important signpost to adulthood is really little more than a simple romantic comedy whose ‘countercultural’ message, insofar as it has one, is decidedly retrograde.

Or perhaps The Graduate is really a tragedy, considering that what we thought we were watching was something altogether different than what’s actually on the film. (Women, in particular, may be disappointed to rediscover that Ben’s coming of age requires them to participate from the wrong side of the bed sheet.)

What’s alarming is that the film, which so perfectly captured its era, seems to have turned on us. No longer a blueprint for liberation, it’s practically an anthem to conformity.

In The Graduate we remember, Ben rebels against that model of the world, racing to steal Elaine away from the altar, beating off her family and her would-be future (and his) with a crucifix he pulls off the wall of the church. One of the first ’60s movie characters to say “Fuck You” to the Establishment, Ben lives in our memory as a rebel who hijacked his own awful fate.

On actual celluloid, it’s a different story.

You don’t need Nichols’ one moment of supreme, painful insight, that awful, final glimpse of the couple ‘escaping’ at the back of the bus, barely able to look each other in the eye, to see that nothing Ben does is particularly heroic. Rather than striking a blow for self-determination, he ends up with the exact girl his parents have picked out for him.

He barely knows her, but he pursues her because she’s everything her mother isn’t: respectable, safe, ready to forgive him for having no vision at all. ”

-excerpts from Robin Dougherty’s essay,  Here’s to You, Mrs. Robinson