The AmericanDark ComedyFilm B Y
M E L A N I E
J E N K I N S
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All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written persmission of the publisher. Instruis Publishing 1494 Old York Rd #200, Abington, PA 19001 www.instruis.com ISBN 978-1-9821-0260-9 ISBN 978-1-4391-4267-7
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the graduate THE AMERICAN DARK COMEDY FILM
BY MELANIE JENKINS
synopsis 2
imagi
ne
a movie called
the graduate.
It stars Robert Redford as Benjamin Braddock, the blond and bronzed, newly minted college graduate adrift in his parents’ opulent home in Beverly Hills. And Candice Bergen as his girlfriend, the overprotected Elaine Robinson. Ava Gardner plays the predatory Mrs. Robinson, the desperate housewife and mother who ensnares Benjamin. Gene Hackman is her cuckolded husband. It nearly happened that way. That it didn’t made all the difference.
eh r
, u o y o t ’e s
Mrs.R obinson
Fear of
theFut
ure
When the story begins, Benjamin Braddock has just arrived back home in Southern California after graduating from college in the East. And even though he’s smart, accomplished, and rich, guess what — he’s unhappy. Like every Disney princess, he wants his future to be “different” in some vague way — not something
his traditional parents’ friends encourage him to embrace at his graduation party. But one of the guests at this party, Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s business partner, has other designs on Benjamin beyond giving him career advice.
She wants a ride home...
and sex.
Benjamin obliges with the ride home but ducks out when the come-ons start to get a little overt-like, when Mrs. Robinson gets naked and tries to trap Ben in the room with her. But, later on, after having some depressing experiences that leave him feeling totally disconnected from everyone, Ben decides to give Mrs. Robinson a call. They meet at a hotel and commence their affair. After some comic misunderstandings with the hotel staff, a guilt-ridden Benjamin almost bails. But after Mrs. Robinson suggests that he might be “inadequate,” he
...busy.
plunges in, and they get
like Mother, likeDaughter But guess what again? Having an affair doesn’t actually make him happy, either. It actually makes him feel kind of disgusted and empty. He continues to drift aimlessly in his parents’ pool when he’s not giving Mrs. Robinson “the time” (as they used to call it back then). But plot complications quickly ensue. Benjamin’s parents have been nagging him to date Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine, and after trying to sabotage the date by taking her to a strip club, ends up hitting it off with her.
Could this be...
love?
It could be, but the budding relationship is soon crushed when Ben’s virtually forced to confess the affair to Elaine when Mrs. Robinson threatens to do it herself. Naturally, Elaine doesn’t want to see him anymore; she refuses to believe that her mother was the one who initiated the affair. She goes back to college at U.C. Berkeley.
It’s just like shaking hands! Ben’s relationship with Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate is not about love. They hardy talk during their trysts; the nature of their relationship seems to be purely sexual. On the other hand, he and Elaine bond over the conversations they have, sympathizing with each other over their doubts about the future and the world they’re entering. Ben feels like they’re soul-mates. Whether this is true love or not remains to be seen, since they don’t really know each other that well. But compared to the other relationships in his life, it must seem like a zillion times more authentic
connection
and connected. For someone as paralyzed and remote as Benjamin, the
for the first time in a long time.
with Elaine wakes him up
The Graduate was a pretty provocative movie for its time,
deliberately left out much of the actual sex acts because he
Hello darkness, my old friend
wanted to emphasize how little of a relationship there was
Ben moves to Berkeley to try to convince Elaine to marry
between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson.
him and seems to make some progress. But it turns out she’s
even though you can see more sex today on prime-time TV. The raciness is really in the seduction. Nichols said he
engaged to this other dude, Carl Smith, a typical blond fratIn the film, sex is part of Benjamin’s disastrous attempts to
boy type. Mr. Robinson corners Ben and threatens to bring
grow up and find some meaning in his life, but all it really
legal action against him if he continues to see Elaine. Elaine’s
does is make him realize how empty his life is. He tries to
yanked out of school by her parents and rushed into marry
get Mrs. Robinson to talk to him before they have sex so
Carl. Ben ends up crashing their wedding, fighting off the
he feels they have at least some kind of relationship. What
irate wedding guests, and absconding with the bride. They
a square! We see Mrs. Robinson play on Benjamin’s sexual
escape on a Santa Barbara city bus, at first elated with
worries in order to seduce him — accusing him of being a
their romantic daring, and then perhaps a bit bewildered
virgin
or concerned about his sexual adequacy.
Ben tries to dismiss what happened between him and Mrs. Robinson by telling Mr. Robinson that it was just “like shaking hands,” but the affair has disastrous consequences for Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. Ben gets off more or less scot-free. He feels guilty, but he gets the relationship he wants in the end.
about their uncertain future…
And that’s where the movie ends.
creative content 1
BENJ AMIN BRAD DOCK
Mr. Braddock : Ben, what are you doing?
, l l e I would say that I’m just drif ting. W “ ” . l o o p e h t n i e r e H Mr. Braddock : Have you thought about graduate school? Benjamin : No. Mr. Braddock : Would you mind telling me then what those four years of college were for? Benjamin : You got me.
BenjaminBraddock Age: 21 Hair: Brown Eyes: Blue Height: 5’10” Weight: 183 lbs
Benjamin Braddock is a
mess.
Anxious, lost, aimless, alienated, disaffected — the character’s been called all those things. The film presented his dilemma so well that 35 years later, one writer used the term “Benjamin Braddock Syndrome” to describe a graduate, who, moving back with his or her parents, saw the future as bleak and devoid of possibilities. Forty-five years after the film’s release, another writer used Benjamin as Exhibit A in what she termed “Real World Syndrome,” which is evidently epidemic among recent college grads who are thrown into the harsh realities of planning a future. Our guy Benjamin has just graduated from a prestigious college in the east and should have a promising future ahead of him. He’s got loving, if a bit overbearing, wealthy parents who are very proud of him; he was a smart, accomplished athlete and student leader back in school; he won a fellowship to graduate school. He even got the most killer sports car ever for a graduation gift. None of that seems to matter to Benjamin right now. He’s just turned 21 and has no idea what to do with is life. He can’t see any meaning in his four years of college and he feels alienated from the society he grew up in. He sees his parent’s lives as empty and superficial. He wants something “different,” but he can’t say what. He’s in a kind of paralyzing existential panic. It’s hard to believe that he was a BMOC just a couple weeks earlier.
creative conte
ent 2
Elaine: I just don’t think it would work. Benjamin: Why wouldn’t it? Elaine: I just don’t think it would. Benjamin: Tomorrow? Can we get our blood tests tomorrow morning?
“Why don’t you drag me off ” ? h c u m if you want to o marry me s Benjamin: Why don’t I just drag you off? All right, I will. Right after we get the blood tests...
Elaine Robinson Age: 20 Hair: Brown Eyes: Blue Height: 5’6” Weight: 126 lbs
Benjamin falls in love with Elaine Robinson, a girl he knew in high school but didn’t like very much. Oh, he’s also
having an affair
with her mother.
Other than the fact that Katharine Ross was sweetly gorgeous, we don’t know much about Elaine, even by the end of the film. We know she’s a sensitive, good kid; she’s embarrassed to the point of tears by the goings-on at the strip club. When Benjamin tries to explain why he’s been such a jerk, she gets it. She feels like an outsider herself, and they can bond over that shared feeling of anxiety about their futures. She doesn’t like living by other people’s rules, either. Elaine’s family is a lot like the Braddocks — dad’s an attorney, mom stays at home drinking and having affairs with 21-year-olds. Oh, wait. Maybe they’re not like the Braddocks (unless there’s a side-quel called Mrs. Braddock we don’t know about).The Robinsons are unhappy, but the film doesn’t develop an idea of how growing up in that family has influenced Elaine’s character. We only get a hint of that in the wedding scene, when it’s only after looking at her parents’ angry faces that she seems to decide to run off with Benjamin. Before she meets Ben, Elaine’s on a typical path for an affluent young daughter of a professional family. She’s at a great college and is dating a frat boy that her parents approve of. She’s not involved in the radical political scene at Berkeley and we don’t see any evidence of drugs. Maybe she’s wanted to rebel, but she hasn’t. The date with Ben shows us that behind her good-girl persona, there’s a young woman who’s been questioning the premises of her life.
ELA INE ROBI
NSON
, n i m a j n e I am not trying to B “ ” . u o y e c u d se
Benjamin: I know that, but please, Mrs. Robinson, this is difficult... Mrs. Robinson: Would you like me to seduce you? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Benjamin: I’m going home now. I apologize for what I said. I hope you can forget it, but I’m going home right now.
Mrs. Robinson
Age: 42 Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown Height: 5’8” Weight: 103 lbs
Mrs. Robinson is a friend of Ben’s parents, which means she’s known Benjamin his entire life. She’s smart, direct, sexy, cynical, very attracted to Benjamin, and – we later find out – very bitter about her life. On the one hand, she seems formidable; on the other, highly vulnerable. She pursues Benjamin relentlessly until he agrees to meet her, and she manages to keep him interested. But, at the same time, her need to do this indicates that something’s seriously missing in her life. Call us old-fashioned, but happily married and content people don’t typically the grown-up children of their friends and colleagues.
start seducing
Quick trivia note: Director, Mike Nichols, and production designer, Richard Sylbert, wanted to use some sort of visual cue to playfully suggest that Mrs. Robinson was like a predator stalking her prey. They did this by giving Bancroft leopard-skin and tiger-stripe clothing and décor and fur-coats. Nichols credited his reading of Henry James’ “The Beast in the Jungle” for this inspiration. As we watch the seduction progress – and actually work – we get a better sense of what Mrs. Robinson wants out of it. She doesn’t seem to be looking for an emotional relationship with Benjamin. This isn’t a torrid, infatuated affair. She wants sex, and the comfort and release that it brings. She’s looking for oblivion, a way to forget her own unhappy life — at least, that’s apparently what she wants. Like Benjamin, she seems lost and adrift herself. During much of the sex, the shots of her face show us she’s checked out. Benjamin has to beg her to say a few words instead of just jumping into bed.
YOU’RE THE
First Person I COULD
STAND
TO B E W I T H .
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F O R E D U C AT I O N A L P U R P O S E S O N LY.