The Graduate

In the last 24 hours, I watched The Graduate for the very first time. As a movie, I truly appreciate all the acclaim bestowed upon The Graduate. Few films in history have managed to paint such a vivid portrait of a character. After an hour and forty-seven minutes, I feel like I know Benjamin Braddock as well as I know my own brother. His growth over the course of the film, from a shell-shocked, wide-eyed kid not even old enough to drink, into a confident, charismatic young man who is in control of himself and his emotions (if not his life in general) is marked and remarkable. Unfortunately, I don’t much care for Benjamin Braddock the character.

Braddock is seen as an archetype of the baby boom generation. He is disillusioned with the vision of America that his parents created, and unprepared to deal with the pressures they place on him now that he has entered adulthood. He is a little worried about his future, but he doesn’t seem all that interested in doing something about it. That is, until he gets to know the Robinson family. His relationship with Mrs. Robinson is pretty weird, but I guess I can understand why he would do it. She is a hard woman to say no to. On the other hand, his relationship with Elaine is pure petulance. He wants to be with her simply because her mother forbids it. Or should I say simply because his current lover forbids it? The fact that both of those statements are true is more than a little icky.

By the end of the movie, Braddock is a self-obsessed hound-dog who will do and say whatever it takes to get what he wants, no matter the consequences to other people. If he really was a defining character of that generation, it’s no surprise that our younger generations will be left cleaning up the Baby Boomers’ mess long after they are gone.

In truth, however, Braddock is the unchanging portrait of the early-twenties American suburban WASP. The accusations lobbed at him have been repeated to every generation since the Baby Boomers. Lazy, directionless, self-absorbed. And where does he get the money to pay for all those nights in that hotel room? What does it say that Benjamin Braddock could easily be a Gen-Xer, or a Millennial? It says that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Perhaps this should give me hope. After all, Baby Boomer Benjamin Braddock and his contemporaries now run the country. I am Millennial Benjamin Braddock, and I look at my parents’ generation with a blank stare when they say to me, “One word - Plastics.” In the real world, Benjamin Braddock has become just like his father. It stands to reason that since I stand in Benjamin Braddock’s shoes today, I will someday follow in his footsteps and look down on my children as lazy and aimless.

Except this metaphor is flawed. I am not Benjamin Braddock. I would not make the same choices he did. I understand that boring people like me don’t make for good book and movie characters. If you wrote a book about my life so far, you would have trouble selling it to dentists to put in their waiting rooms. I understand why the Benjamin Braddocks of the literary world exist. They make for fun stories. It discourages me a little bit, however, that the world is run by Benjamin Braddocks.