Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson

'THE GRADUATE' RECLASSIFIED

Tom S. Reck

ew recent films have enjoyed a success like Mike Nichols' The Graduate's -- not only at the box-office, but also as a source of popular symbols and a subject for serious, even technically precise, criticism. The papers I received in recent college classes on the film illustrate the possibility of the latter. First water symbolism in The Graduate was an important part of its imagery, the papers contended. The leading character is a young man named Benjamin Braddock, and in Ben's room there is a small aquarium. In the opening scene he is seen gazing into it as his parents and his parents' friends wait for him below to welcome him home and congratulate him on his completion of a successful college career. When Mrs. Robinson, an attractive friend of the family, coyishly throws to him the keys to her automobile, so he can drive her home, they land (significantly) in the aquarium, and Ben must plunge his hand in to join the trapped fishlings. Mrs. Robinson will soon have innocent Ben encased in her own neat trap.

Then: On Benjamin's birthday his parents try to drown him. Wearing their gift of a deep sea diving suit, Ben descends into the family pool to entertain the family guests with his nautical prowess. At pool's bottom, deformed in appearance by the grotesque mask, Ben simply stands, silently protesting their use of him. Water: suffocation, confinement, and conformity; are you getting it?

Later Ben's leap from the diving board into the water of the family pool will evolve to a leap into bed with Mrs. Robinson. His turning over on his water raft becomes a turning toward a nude Mrs. Robinson -- from the water trap of the family pool to the sex trap of Mrs. Robinson's bed at the Taft Hotel. (How would that lie with our portly, pompous 27th president?) It will be raining the day that daughter Elaine learns of Ben's affair with her mother; Mrs. Robinson will stand there soaked to the skin, the rainwater washing away mascara and powder to reveal for all the woman beneath, entrapping her in the tentacles of her own increasing age and neurosis. Finally, in the final reel of the film, much is seen of the waters of the San Francisco Bay as Ben crosses them to first watch, then court, and finally rescue his Elaine. His pursuit of her is a hectic one, made difficult by all manner of barriers and traps: fraternity make-out kings, jealous/hurt husbands, suspicious landlords, cars that run out of gas, and just bridges themselves -- with water beneath them naturally.

There is other symbology to The Graduate. There is the color, for example. There is Mrs. Robinson -- dressed usually in black -- photographed frequently against white. In the crucial scene, for example, in which Ben confesses the affair to Elaine, Mrs. Robinson stands there, stark, with black hair, severe black eye make-up, black raincoat, against a smooth white wall.

Other random examples of symbology or allusions in Nichols' film: the archetypal Phaedra-Hippolytis legend brought to contemporary life in Mrs. Robinson/Benjamin; the use of irony throughout -- for example, the original seduction attempt by Mrs. Robinson occurs in her daughter's room, with Elaine's photograph behind Benjamin as he gazes (and the photo seems to gaze also) at the naked Mrs. Robinson. The symbolism of the final scene is obvious and has been much commented on. In a modern Santa Barbara church where Elaine's wedding is in progress, Ben leans against the frosty glass, his arms outstretched in crucifix position. And he then bars the church door with a cross, to leave behind all the Mrs. Robinsons and Mr. Robinsons and Mr. Braddocks and Mrs. Braddocks, all the over-thirties, who have tried to crucify the love generation.

If we are to use only a literary approach to The Graduate, it would really come off rather well -- it gives the scholar a lot to play around with, to diagnose, to decipher. Yet, The Graduate, although a highly entertaining film, is not at all an intelligent film. It is, in fact, a hoax and something of a threat. And this becomes obvious only when one chooses to deal with the film not on a narrow literary level, but on broader terms.

To begin with, a number of people have pointed out that when crossing the Bay Bridge (allegedly on his way to Berkeley to salvage Elaine) Ben is on the upper-level of the double-decked construction, therefore going the wrong direction, therefore proceeding to San Francisco from Berkeley; and that the intimate encounter between Benjamin and Elaine is actually at the fountain at U.S.C., not at Berkeley as passed off. These two discrepancies (maybe minor, but irritating and glaring to anyone familiar with California geography) are no more bogus than much of The Graduate; and those work nicely, in fact, as surface representations of the picture's many internal failures.

What is of real importance about The Graduate (and there is a great deal of importance about The Graduate) is not what a few isolated symbol hunters may see in it, but rather, what millions of young theater-goers are using it for. Their reaction to it, non-intellectual, largely emotional, certainly non-literary, but still in a sense critical, is far more significant than that of any isolated symbol hunters may find. These millions have taken The Graduate as their Catcher in the Rye, are using it as The Sun Also Rises was also used. And it is particularly interesting to note that the lionizing is coming in from all quarters.

The old probably like The Graduate and like Benjamin because his hair is not shoulder length; he wears no beads, no sandals; he leads no activist protests or free speech movements. He bathes (as previously noted) and there is no mention of any interest in such disturbing things as war in Vietnam. His vices are the traditional American ones; he drinks bourbon (although Mr. Robinson is forever giving him scotch); he enjoys sex; he does not blow grass.

The young like Benjamin also, and this might be of no special surprise if it were not for the diversity of youth who are responding identically to him for divergent reasons. To illustrate: the so-called hippie types are assuming that Ben shares their disillusionment with The Establishment, which he really does not even if he keeps saying that he does. Although he drives an Alfa Romeo and wears nice wool blazers, they seem to feel he is ready to drop out. Actually anyone as afraid of a simple Mrs. Robinson as Ben is, would never be able to handle the Haight.

The young straights also like Ben. They identify strongly but fail to see that the kind of activity that occurs at the film's conclusion at the church is hardly the kind they could approve of if they were to encounter it somewhere other than on the screen or in a book. In the film they find it whimsical, boyishly charming, engagingly irresponsible. They see themselves even perhaps doing it; but they never would, nor ever for a moment really consider approval of others who did.

So Nichols has pulled his clever ruse on all, although clever is likely not the proper term here. Accidental might do better, since Nichols' abilities as a director are still unproven. The only thing I can see he did for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was to leave the dialogue essentially alone, which anyone other than maybe Louis Mayer would have done anyway.

From a broad critical point of view, not a limiting literary one, the most interesting thing about The Graduate is its attitude toward sex, which is, in short, an anti-sexual attitude. In years previously, pretty young people struggled diligently to convince us that sexual inhibitions were the hang-up of puritanical parent and frustrated teacher-types. Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue, for example, fought courageously for free love in A Summer Place, but what they must have had in mind, I guess, was free sex for young persons, not for anyone past thirty, free sex for Troy and Sandra, or Tab and Natalie, or Annette and Fabian, but not for Anne Bancroft, who is far too old for such pleasures, and far too bright maybe.

It is, in short, reverse prejudice. Instead of parents cautioning, "Sex is something you must wait for -- it will be yours, but later," we get now the children warning: "Sex is something you must give up on your thirtieth birthday" -- it is what roller skates and soap bubbles are to children.

The advertisements for The Graduate read: "This is Benjamin. He's a little worried about his future." And because he is a little "worried" about his future, he is immediately held up as sensitive, suffering and fully worthy of our sympathy. The funny thing is that Mrs. Robinson is also a little worried about her future (and her past and her present). And it is because she is, that she is presumed to be neurotic, not trustworthy, and an object to ridicule. It is certainly a double standard to say the least; and it says a whole lot about youth and its attempt to monopolize despair, disillusionment, and confusion.

I am not sure if it is Nichols' fault or that of Anne Bancroft, an actress whose intelligence is hard to ignore, but for anyone interested in recognizing it, Mrs. Robinson is easily the most admirable character in The Graduate. You see it clearly in the bedroom scenes, especially when Ben says to her, "Can we talk about something, Mrs. Robinson?" and she curtly answers him that she hardly feels they have anything to talk about. She is exactly correct, of course, since Ben can barely speak, much less converse intelligently; and if the audience is not smart enough to know this, Mrs. Robinson at least is. She is wise enough to see what she needs is a simple distraction from her own disillusionment with upper-classism, from Los Angeles suburbianism, from marital disunion, not a hopelessly stupidly sophomoric discussion with a wet-behind-the ears collegian -- not a false, sentimental and contrived love affair with a youth-lover, but pure and simply, a sexual orgasm. It is exactly her refusal to "talk" to Ben that illustrates her perception and intelligence' and it is her world-weariness that marks her as a woman worth looking at twice.

Yet it is for her dissatisfaction with herself and with her life that young audiences are condemning her, while they are congratulating Benjamin for similar qualities. The young audience cannot even see how Ben uses Mrs. Robinson, not only for amusement during a long and dull summer, which might be excusable since she is using him for the same reason, but in order to childishly titillate himself. He asks in reference to here college affair: "Where did you do it, Mrs. Robinson?" And then "In a car? You did it in a car?" And then, "What kind of a car was it, Mrs. Robinson?" This audiences see only as evidence of Mrs. Robinson's cheapness and furtiveness. Sex in a car becomes synonymous with sneaky sex, with grabbed-for, shameful sex: and the mildly perverse and voyeuristic aspect of Benjamin's interest misses them entirely.

The Graduate, in fact, as hinted at, takes a Puritanical attitude toward sexuality altogether. The romance between Benjamin and Elaine is strictly asexual. A couple of innocent good night kisses -- nothing more. Sex is something for frustrated adults, like Mrs. Robinson and like the bar flies who watch the stripper with the tassels in the L.A. nightclub where Ben takes Elaine to hurt her. Ben and Elaine? Who needs it? They have youth and they have hamburgers and they sit on park benches and look at each other -- longingly. Things like the stripper at the L.A. nightclub even make Elaine (a college student! at sophisticated Berkeley!) break up in embarrassed, humiliated tears.

The Graduate is, of course, only the latest of important films constructed to tell young people what they want to hear, to coddle them, and reassure and reinforce them. False as it is, The Graduate and other films of this genre are important because of their immense popularity, either individually or as a group.

There were the two James Dean epics, East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, which have been credited with giving juvenile delinquency, or at least rebellion against parents and the Establishment, a fascinating mystique. Dean is all right, you knew, because in Rebel he made sensitive faces and also because he likes cars; and anyone who likes cars can't be all bad, just as ten years later in The Graduate anyone who plays Simon and Garfunkle records can't be all bad. A Summer Place (1960) and Splendor in the Grass (1961) preached the same message: things would be all right if the young people were just left alone to screw. (When 40-year-old Anne Bancroft asks for the same privilege, she is condemned for her audacity.) These were all major productions, and, as such, influential films. But the rock-and-roll films of the '50s (Rock Around the Clock; Don't Knock the Rock; Rock, Baby Rock; etc.) and the beach films of the '60s (Bikini Beach, Beach Party, Beach Blanket Bingo, etc., etc.) were the low-budget purveyors of the same youthful sub-culture mystique.

So I guess the final statement is this: More important than the consistency of the water symbolism in The Graduate is the number of young people who (soon to be voters) have taken it over as their credo, who have been either informed or reinforced that people over thirty are neurotic/nymphomaniac/alcoholic, if they are female; materialists/imbeciles/cuckolds if they are male. Maybe Over Thirties will someday become our new Negroes (while 200 Ph.D.'s argue over color imagery in The Graduate).

TOM S. RECK teaches in the English Department at Chico State College in California.

- Commonweal