Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson

[zigzag]

I don't know if vapid is the word I would use, m. Dazed, confused, docile and powerless would be better descriptions. And my recollection is that they cruised into an unknown future in a bus. The Alpha was abandoned, symbolic that decadence and tradition had failed them. It was a cultural thing, not political.

[milod]

Ziggy...

 

Well, after having lived through the era, I saw it as highly political. That itself was one of the frustrations of so many folks I already knew in politics on both U.S. "parties" at the time. And by '73, I'd come to know some "names" of the era.

 

I have some images of the film still, although it's been ages ago.

 

Yeah, the cultural thing too, but it was all highly tied into politics - not so much party-oriented, but more along the lines of political culture. "Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don't criticize what you can't understand..."

 

"Be clean for Gene" was a big deal, for example. George M wasn't just a politician, he was Dad of a classmate, both of whom I liked and respected. It was a different age.

 

Yet what most bothers me is that someone(s) here seem unwilling to consider something out of their experience as reflecting a truth beyond their scope, hence the minuses. Given that I've had my fair share of credible death threats in real life, a "minus" on a guitar forum is quite a trivial gesture reflecting similar response as a child tossing mashed potatoes; it's only discouraging in the sense that some folks obviously and by intent choose such ignorance and childishness.

 

When ignorance is a virtue and knowledge a vice, where is our future as a culture?

 

My high school and college classmates, and friends since those days, have traveled many different pathways in terms of culture and politics, and remain folks for whom I continue both respect and affection.

 

But then we also would have after-class discussions along the lines of the cultural and intellectual consequences and reverberations of the expression of artistic creativity in a number of fields. Nowadays that capability seems somewhat lacking. Again, it's not "politics," yet if one considers the root meanings of "politics" and "political culture," ignorance by intent is a shame and a reason I shall be quite happy to quit this earth when that dark shadow raises his scythe to make his harvest.

 

m

[cookieman15061]

It's interesting, isn't it, how knowledge, understanding and the classics of both get a minus?

 

m

 

 

Only on a guitar forum m.

[jdgm]

To me the "Graduate" was sheer entertainment and the soundtrack was just superb.I don't go into it deeply,I just like a good movie.

I agree with this. "Easy Rider" was too. Hoffman's next big one was "Midnight Cowboy" which was very different.

Anyone remember "Alfie"?

[Dennis G]

it did NOT "Make" Simon & Garfunkle! LOL They were doing just fine,

on their own, years before that. It didn't HURT their career, for sure...

but, even without that wonderful soundtrack, they'd have done just fine!

Okay, so I was trying to minimize my words LOL. Yeah, S&G were doing fine, but as you said, it certainly didn't hurt them, but had to have given them a bit of a push.

 

And while we're on the subject of cougar/coming of age movies, there's always "The Summer of '42" no?

[PingPongBob]

Well...

 

When you're on first name basis with the left's majority leader in the US Senate and presidential candidate Geo. McGovern, also on the left, as well as similar relationships with folks in similar if somewhat lesser positions on the political right, you tend to like those folks a lot more than you like the average run... ditto Harry Truman whose hand I once shook, albeit obviously a long time ago.

 

For what it's worth, I also tend to get along better with theologians than average "adherents." Then again, I even got to sit through classes with the guy who actually wrote the book, "Situation Ethics."

 

So just blame my background and leave it there.

 

If you ain't read Aristotle and the "allegory of the cave" in Plato's Republic, you ain't likely to catch on.

 

m

 

Worst movie review ever.

 

But I'm not surprised when it's the "been there done that" guy on almost all of his posts. The I can't play a Fender so I recommend you buy a cheap Epiphone instead guy. I'm older than you so if you don't agree with me you're ignorant guy and last but not least the guy who says minuses are trivial is so upset by receiving them, he mentions them in at least 3 posts in this thread.

 

Maybe I'm just an ignoramus.

 

BTW...The Graduate is in my top ten movies of all time.

[heymisterk]

Let the record show, m, that I did not give you any of the minuses; I was just trying to share my affection for The Graduate, not dispute your knowledge of Greek philosophers and/or your family connection to one of my political heroes. And if I were to dispute your knowledge, it would not be on a thread devoted to The Graduate.

[heymisterk]

On a related note... these guys did a good job with this cover I think...

 

Loved this cover...still have it on a mix CD somewhere.

[zigzag]

I see your point, m, and while the movie was, unquestionably, a reflection of, and statement on, the political culture of the '60s, the Hoffman and Ross characters were, themselves, not political, IMO.

 

While I have also shared similar frustrations with some members of this board in the past, I often have to try to remember where I am.

[milod]

Actually I rather enjoyed the movie. Never said I didn't. I figured it was very good acting, too. Very good acting can excellently portray shallow people.

 

Any good book or movie or play will have multiple layers; some perhaps by intent, some perhaps as unintended consequences of the writer or filmmaker's art. Some underlying layers may themselves be rather simplistic, some exceptionally complex.

 

Seriously, I do find it difficult not to see different layers of meaning, allusions and metaphor, in most anything that would fall more or less into what Aristotle would likely add into "poetics," were he to return and update it.

 

MrK...

 

I would have bet money you weren't the one having childish tantrums playing with cute little red minuses to show your dislike of something you may or may not have understood.

 

Actually I did go to school a year with one of George M's daughters. (As I recall, my little sis had some classes with another of the M daughters.) I did have him tell his secret service guy(s) (that's a long time ago) to "Let Milo in, I know him" during his campaign for the presidency. I happened to both like and respect him. And there are some other connections.

 

When Tom Daschle was running for the House the first time, it was a horrid wait for him during recount games. Nothing untoward or questionable except that it was close enough for a recount. We and our wives sat on my living room floor having a glass or two of wine and laughing at the occasional strange turns life might make.

 

While he was still majority leader in the Senate he was in town to make a special donation to the local museum that he knew was, and is, a pet project of mine - laughing that we're a "political odd couple."

 

And again, some interesting asides and tales I'd tell you about over a coffee or other libation. (My wife, for example, framed the note from him praising her Korean cooking.) Some day perhaps...

 

Pingpong... I never suggested such as "I don't like Fenders so buy an Epi." I freely admit I don't care for Fender necks on their six-strings, and I've stated numerous times I'd probably buy a Tele were it to come with a flatter radius and a shorter scale.

 

But then as has been long noted, those who don't read have little advantage over those who cannot.

 

That the minuses weren't on me, but on some folks whose perceptions are at the foundation of all we're currently discussing in terms of art, does tend to bother me.

 

However, you might well have made a far better suggestion about your own perceptions in your last post than I might offer.

 

m

[PingPongBob]

Actually I rather enjoyed the movie. Never said I didn't. I figured it was very good acting, too. Very good acting can excellently portray shallow people.

 

Any good book or movie or play will have multiple layers; some perhaps by intent, some perhaps as unintended consequences of the writer or filmmaker's art. Some underlying layers may themselves be rather simplistic, some exceptionally complex.

 

Seriously, I do find it difficult not to see different layers of meaning, allusions and metaphor, in most anything that would fall more or less into what Aristotle would likely add into "poetics," were he to return and update it.

 

MrK...

 

I would have bet money you weren't the one having childish tantrums playing with cute little red minuses to show your dislike of something you may or may not have understood.

 

Actually I did go to school a year with one of George M's daughters. (As I recall, my little sis had some classes with another of the M daughters.) I did have him tell his secret service guy(s) (that's a long time ago) to "Let Milo in, I know him" during his campaign for the presidency. I happened to both like and respect him. And there are some other connections.

 

When Tom Daschle was running for the House the first time, it was a horrid wait for him during recount games. Nothing untoward or questionable except that it was close enough for a recount. We and our wives sat on my living room floor having a glass or two of wine and laughing at the occasional strange turns life might make.

 

While he was still majority leader in the Senate he was in town to make a special donation to the local museum that he knew was, and is, a pet project of mine - laughing that we're a "political odd couple."

 

And again, some interesting asides and tales I'd tell you about over a coffee or other libation. Some day perhaps...

 

m

 

Nice backtrack & what does your been there done that have anything to do with the movie?

[milod]

Ziggy...

 

Yup, the two protagonists weren't "political," but reflected the zeitgeist, sad though it may have been.

 

As for pingpongbob...

 

The point as Ziggy noted is that there was a very rapid change of culture in the time in which the movie was crafted.

 

It reflected a lot of the underlying cultural factors involved. I was pretty much in the middle of a lot of it, but after a point, watching from the outside.

 

A very, very good movie from the time period that gets the spirit pretty well on is "Getting Straight" with Elliott Gould.

 

m

[heymisterk]

I saw the character of Dustin Hoffman as portraying - brilliantly - a victim of his parents' social class and subsequent expectations, expectations he would have had a nervous breakdown trying to fulfill. But his rebellion causes Mrs Robinson to play dirty, which leads to extraordinarily entertaining results. There is one glorious scene where his Alfa Romeo bursts out of a tunnel and onto the Bay Bridge as Simon and Garfunkel begin the most heartfelt raw version of Mrs. Robinson...it takes my breath away every time.

 

I have heard people make comparisons between this movie and Salinger's "Rye", and I do find some similarities in the angst of our protagonist and a desire to break out of societal expectations. If Holden or Benjamin is vapid, I find it to be very entertaining.

 

Someone mentioned Midnight Cowboy as another movie, a movie Hoffman took after The Graduate...a risky move that turned into another brilliant movie for him.

[milod]

I guess being of roughly the same era as Hoffman's character, I've a bit of a right to state that "we" had far more choices than our parents had, and that in itself played a powerful role as you suggest, in the paths taken.

 

I wasn't seeing it in historical perspective, nor even artistic perspective at the time, but rather closer to choices and dilemmas that I and all of my generation confronted - to suffer outrageous fortune or to oppose and seek any other fortune we might hope to find that might be better, or at least "other."

 

I'm far less certain than you that it's as much a matter of the parents' social class. I saw the same conflicts among those whose fathers might have been a delivery truck driver and their mothers a school lunch cook. I lived, not just saw similar splits of "The WWII Generation" and their children across "social classes."

 

If you can, please read Peter Coyote's "Sleeping Where I Fall." I was a freshman, he a senior my first college year. He's also been, if not still, a pretty decent guitar player. Ken Adelman was in the same school in roughly the same era and has had a rather interesting and totally contrasting road compared to Pete. Both are brilliant followers of their own muse.

 

I'm not namedropping, but mentioning some folks well known in general, yet that I've known well enough to contrast their choices as those of my own generation. Study both a bit and then ask, who truly was the greater rebel against peer expectations?

 

Why there was perhaps an even greater conflict than the normal generational "thing" for the generation we're talking about?

 

The choices available when growing to adulthood in the 30s were for the most part far less than ours gaining adulthood in the late '50s and early '60s. It certainly offered a very different perspective on how one could live one's life more than how one should.

 

I think most of the immediate pre-baby boomers are rather interesting because each of us in his or her own way ended up being greater rebels, whether claiming to be for or against the youthful rebellion of the era, than those a few years younger than us. We just weren't so blatant about it.

 

Then again, our parents hadn't yet crafted a world where we'd have so many choices that, in comparison to those of the late '30s and '40s, we would press to make for ourselves. Marketers were, I believe, correct in considering that they could sell to "us" regardless of "our" politics, by assuming a bit of rebellion whether exhibited by joining the Marines or clashing with cops in Chicago and then heading to Canada.

 

The movie conveniently closes without picturing the subsequent grappling for place... or a number of "issues" of the day involving girls' internal conflicts in an era of cultural conflicts on female roles, especially "after the pill."

 

Yes, I liked the movie. No, I didn't like it because of the photography or perceived social message, but because there were very good actors, acting like kids I went to school with.

 

m

[cookieman15061]

Or Hoffman's character simply was done with school and still had no clue as to what he wanted to be.

 

Just like most of us.

 

Regardless of what's going on around us, class envy ,politics, meddling parents, etc. at some point we make choices.

 

Even as the movie ends the uncertainty of both character's future is universal to me and how I felt once college was over.

 

What now?

[Big Bill]

CB...

 

 

OTOH, the minuses indicate apparently that some here prefer ignorance to a deeper vision.

 

 

I think the minuses are due to how you are sitting on the saddle of that high horse. If you are looking for more folks with the same "deeper vision" as yourself, I don't think the Gibson Forum has as many as you hoped.

[milod]

Bill...

 

No high horse, just stuff I recall from high school and dinner conversations at home as a kid.

 

Apparently such is no longer taught - or, at least, no longer learned.

 

Again, no high horse, Dad was his own bull mechanic in the sort of small town car and Harley dealership one might have found in the '50s in the U.S. So I grew up with a wrench in my hand as well.

 

m

[charlie brown]

Part of the problem, with forums, and other "e-mail" like conversations,

is that there are NO other sensory input/output "clues" to the actual

mood, or position one is taking. So, a lot depends on past posting

experience, by/from that person, and even so, it's still hard to tell,

at times, where exactly some are coming from. They can, by words alone

(and, even more so, by the readers own "mood," at the time) be misconstrued,

quite easily. It was one reason the "emoticons" were invented. But, even

with those, there's still problems, all too often. Accurate "Communication"

is a constant struggle, in the best of situations, with ALL sensory clues.

But, without all those clues, it's even more problematic. IMHO, as always.

 

CB

[Big Bill]

It makes me realize how important body language is. Tone of voice...

[charlie brown]

Bill...

 

No high horse, just stuff I recall from high school and dinner conversations at home as a kid.

Apparently such is no longer taught - or, at least, no longer learned.

 

Again, no high horse, Dad was his own bull mechanic in the sort of small town car and Harley dealership one might have found in the '50s in the U.S. So I grew up with a wrench in my hand as well.

 

m

 

Yeah...Remember Those?! It was one thing I really enjoyed, as a kid...Dinner conversations, with

my parents, friends, and other family members! Fun, and often quite interesting, as well. Now, people

often don't even sit down to eat, much less..."together!" <_< And, if they do, they "text"

one another, rather than actually "talk," even sitting right across the table. :unsure:

 

CB

[milod]

CB....

 

Yup. I think we talked more about "stuff" and even "ideas" more than just about other people, too, even from 10-12 years old. It may have been about building our own go-carts with a lawnmower engine or rebuilding the engine or such, but it was "stuff." It was no big deal to rebuild my old Chrysler's 4bb and replace points and plugs, for example, when I was 19 because just about every male I knew probably could have done the job too. Of course, maybe other than guitars there's not so much that's user modifiable nowadays.

 

And... most of my friends were in 9th and 10th grade Latin classes too; went pheasant hunting together... etc.

 

A different world nowadays, I think. Computer messing ain't much of a team sport, and wasn't even when I got into it.

 

m

[charlie brown]

CB....

 

Yup. I think we talked more about "stuff" and even "ideas" more than just about other people, too, even from 10-12 years old. It may have been about building our own go-carts with a lawnmower engine or rebuilding the engine or such, but it was "stuff." It was no big deal to rebuild my old Chrysler's 4bb and replace points and plugs, for example, when I was 19 because just about every male I knew probably could have done the job too. Of course, maybe other than guitars there's not so much that's user modifiable nowadays.

 

And... most of my friends were in 9th and 10th grade Latin classes too; went pheasant hunting together... etc.

 

A different world nowadays, I think. Computer messing ain't much of a team sport, and wasn't even when I got into it.

 

m

 

 

Yeah, My folks, and I never really discussed "other people" (especially, in a gossip sort of way) as

that was "taboo," in my family, back then. We might discuss a nice thing that happened, or a concern

for other's, if they were going through a "bad patch," etc. But, it was limited, and willingly so, to only that.

Eveything else was Work (home or farm), school related...or, our own personal interests, as well.

Some "politics and religion" things might be discussed, between the "grown up's," but even

opposing points of view, were never "heated," and always civil, and respectfully discussed. Even when

they'd just agree, to disagree. They were, quite often, "enthusiastic"...regarding their points of view.

But, always civil! I found that, even as young boy, those kinds of topics, and hearing those kinds of

discussions, really interesting. It often led to MY asking questions, seeking knowledge that I might

not otherwise have done, on my own...at least, not at that age. So, I really cherish those

memories, and those times!

 

Anyway...back to "The Graduate!"

Would, that we'd have all been so "lucky!" Anne was awesome!

 

CB

[jdgm]

Perhaps we might return to the OP?

 

"The Graduate" is comedy with that dark, near-black streak which makes it very engaging indeed; both Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross were fantasies for any young man who saw it (and inevitably imagined himself in that situation or one like it) at the time. That is what Hollywood is all about.

 

The screen play was based on a 1963 book by one Charles Webb who is still alive and living in England, and who eventually wrote a sequel to his novel. But no-one I know has ever read the book or the sequel.

We remember the movie for Bancroft's searing performance but what made it so attractive and memorable was that song and how Simon & Garfunkel's music was so tightly edited into the film, and fitted so well. As noted, the rawness of it really added to the atmosphere - typical orchestral film music wouldn't have worked nearly so well - and this was a breakthrough in terms of showing the film industry new possibilities.

 

It was directed by Mike Nichols who was a hot property in theatre (much more important in those days than today) and had made his film directing debut with the black-and-white "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" which featured Taylor and Burton at their absolute peak. That film is probably still quite hard to watch.

After "The Graduate" Nichols directed "Catch-22", a blacker comedy and as successful an effort as it was possible to make a coherent film out of Joseph Heller's extraordinary book, and then "Carnal Knowledge" and later "Silkwood", "Working Girl", "Postcards From The Edge" and so on.

 

But "The Graduate" absolutely nails the state of 60s youthful confusion that one or two posts have mentioned already. And the music lights and shades it perfectly.

 

And, to underline the iconography, here is a European Renault car advert featuring 2 well-known Brit comics of the time, from 1998. Only one minute, worth a look!

 

 

Trivia - do you know the tune here, and who wrote it?

 

Regards, one and all!

[RaysEpiphone]

Yes I agree it was a good movie but I don't see it as a full-out Comedy, it's a Drama in the sense of the old style Dramas form the 30's and 40's. These old "Drama" film's have Comedy in them but it wasn't complete, silly "Schick" stuff. Large amount's of "Schick" in a film was reserved for the Marx Brother's and such.

 

As for the song, it's one of the first one's I learned for my Solo Acoustic Act and it's still on my main set-list now so that say's some thing about how I feel about it.

[heymisterk]

In an interview with Paul Simon I read, the version of Mrs. Robinson you hear in the movie is all he had written; he didn't turn it into the version that appears on the Bookends album until after. I love the bit that gets played in the movie: just the acoustic guitar and Paul and Art singing with raw emotion, perfectly reflecting young Benjamin's despair at losing Elaine...