The last time I watched The Graduate I was around the same age that Dustin Hoffman was during filming (29, for those of you interested in trivia). I watched it again last night at around the same age as Mrs. Robinson (mid-40s, although Anne Bancroft was only 35 during filming, and that's it for trivia). All those years ago I experienced the film as the comedy/satire it's marketed to be, but age tempered my reaction. Yes, it is, in places, a very funny film, but it's ultimately an extremely sad, if not bitter, statement about post-war American bourgeois culture.
The film was released, and set, in 1967. Benjamin Braddock has just graduated from college and returned to his ancestral Pasadena home. From the establishing shots through the first half of the film he is portrayed as isolated, alone, and adrift. He walks zombie-like through LAX, attempts to disengage from the graduation party filled with his parents' friends, in fact appears to have no friends or social circle of his own. He is cut off from his parents' generation, the scuba suit in the suburban swimming pool just a literalization of his ennui. With the exception of Elaine, no one in his life even has a first name; not even a summer of sex with Mrs. Robinson personalizes her to the point where she can be named.
The affair itself does nothing to ground Benjamin, offering as it does only sex without real human contact. When he and Mrs. Robinson finally, at Ben's insistence, spend a few minutes talking, it only serves to show how cut off all human beings are from one another in this particular plastic-worshiping culture, rather than how they might engage. Benjamin's elders have nothing to offer him, and he can't imagine finding a home in their world.
On the other hand, although critics have interpreted the film as a statement on the "generation gap," Benjamin is equally estranged from his peer group. This is evidenced not only by the fact that he appears to have no peer group, but also in his character itself. He is clean-cut, polite, obedient. His disaffections are never turned outward. Unlike his contemporaries, he does not protest, demonstrate, grow out his hair, experiment with drugs. Before Mrs. Robinson he's even a virgin. His generation's preoccuations - free speech, free love, civil rights, Vietnam - are neither mentioned nor alluded to. His generation provides him no more succor than that of his parents.
His one act of rebellion, one moment of engagement, is his single-minded pursuit of Elaine, a pursuit that borders on the monomaniacal. He and Elaine in fact hardly know each other, and the fact that he feels so connected to her speaks more about the lack of connections in his life than it does about their relationship. The film appears to end in truimph, as Elaine flees the church with Benjamin to get on that bus and escape the marriage her parents have forced her into.
Look again at that final shot, though, and you see that this is as much a moment of confusion as it is of triumph. We see them looking out the back window, laughing as they are driven away. We then cut to the other passengers, turning in their seats to stare at the couple. They are isolated, cut off from the family at the church behind them and from the adults on the bus in front of them. This echoes the opening shot of the film, where a close-up of Benjamin's face pulls away to reveal the other passengers on the plane taking him home to LA, each in separate seats, each in separate worlds. The film dissolves to black with a shot of the couple sitting, staring ahead, blank looks on their faces. They don't know what to say, they don't know what to do, they don't know where the bus is heading. They may be "free," but they are also lost.
We end exactly where we began. Benjamin has achieved his quest only to find not the holy grail but instead a long road to nowhere on a bus filled with strangers. The greatness of this film lies not in the moments of pure comedy for which it is remembered but instead in the fact that pure comedy can be found even in this vast, desolate, uniquely American wasteland.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Magnificent Obsession
Like all obsessions, it began innocently enough. Join Facebook, my friend said, so you can play this game called Mafia Wars. It's really fun, it's a strategy game. I thought I might as well give it a try. After all, the whole thing was free.
I started slowly, not exactly sure what I was doing, but within a week I'd progressed to a level of play where I'd begun to acquire things: tommy guns, grenades, hideouts, body armor, members of my crew. Strangers began attacking me, which pissed me off. I acquired more defense and more attack, more weapons and more energy and more crew members. I began randomly attacking strangers in kind. I needed to do more jobs to pay for all the stuff I was acquiring, and then I needed more stuff in order to do more jobs. Suddenly it became necessary for me to log on to play the game three or four times a day in order to protect my assets, launder my money, ensure the survival of my character.
And so here we are, three weeks later. Because I work on my computer most of the day it's possible for me to check in on the game every few hours, and I find myself doing just that. I'm always running short of energy, but I can fill out ridiculous consumer surveys that lead nowhere but provide me with enough points to refill my energy and play the game even more. It's a downward spiral, solitaire on crack. I need help.
It would help if more people joined my mafia, but then again a larger crew would just enable me to fight and win more often, and to purchase more safe houses. What I really need is a different online activity, one that's less addictive. Or a real life. I need for spring to finally really arrive, so I can leave my house and turn my back on the soft glowing call of my monitor, sucking me in. Maybe what I need is to finally and irreversibly be whacked. Someone, please kill me, so I can live again.
I started slowly, not exactly sure what I was doing, but within a week I'd progressed to a level of play where I'd begun to acquire things: tommy guns, grenades, hideouts, body armor, members of my crew. Strangers began attacking me, which pissed me off. I acquired more defense and more attack, more weapons and more energy and more crew members. I began randomly attacking strangers in kind. I needed to do more jobs to pay for all the stuff I was acquiring, and then I needed more stuff in order to do more jobs. Suddenly it became necessary for me to log on to play the game three or four times a day in order to protect my assets, launder my money, ensure the survival of my character.
And so here we are, three weeks later. Because I work on my computer most of the day it's possible for me to check in on the game every few hours, and I find myself doing just that. I'm always running short of energy, but I can fill out ridiculous consumer surveys that lead nowhere but provide me with enough points to refill my energy and play the game even more. It's a downward spiral, solitaire on crack. I need help.
It would help if more people joined my mafia, but then again a larger crew would just enable me to fight and win more often, and to purchase more safe houses. What I really need is a different online activity, one that's less addictive. Or a real life. I need for spring to finally really arrive, so I can leave my house and turn my back on the soft glowing call of my monitor, sucking me in. Maybe what I need is to finally and irreversibly be whacked. Someone, please kill me, so I can live again.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Waiting On My Bonus
Our tax dollars are hard at work, paying performance bonuses to AIG executives. The debate over whether or not the bonuses should have been paid is now three days old and makes me sleepy, so I'm not going to join in. Instead, I would like to formally request that the federal government pay me a bonus for my stellar 2008 fiscal and executive performance. The highlights:
1. Having bought a new house in September 2007, I attempted to sell my old house at precisely the wrong time, and listed said house for too much money. In 2008, I continued to be unable to sell the old house and watched its value plummet. However, I did find tenants for the house, turning what was a street of homeowners into a street with a rental property and thereby further eroding the value of that particular asset. Bonus time!
2. I sold my business in August, 2008 and began looking for work in the fall, at precisely the time when the financial crisis hit hard. In other words, I have been looking for work in the middle of nationwide hiring freezes. However, because I was self-employed I do not qualify for unemployment benefits. My lack of employment is in this sense actually bringing added value to the American taxpayer by not costing him a cent. For this lack of planning and foresight I should be rewarded.
3. When my investments lost 35% of their value through the end of last October, I decided that the bottom had clearly arrived and let everything be, single-handedly averting a complete panic. Those assets have since lost even more value, demonstrating the sheer idiocy of a laissez-faire attitude toward the markets. This is precisely the kind of performance that cries out for a bonus.
4. Although I am careful to pay as little in taxes as possible, I believe I am entitled to receive much more in return than I could possibly put in over my lifetime. Isn't that how markets work? Where's my payout?
Surely these arguments are as persuasive as any given by the AIG Corporate Communications office. I shall assume that my check is in the mail.
1. Having bought a new house in September 2007, I attempted to sell my old house at precisely the wrong time, and listed said house for too much money. In 2008, I continued to be unable to sell the old house and watched its value plummet. However, I did find tenants for the house, turning what was a street of homeowners into a street with a rental property and thereby further eroding the value of that particular asset. Bonus time!
2. I sold my business in August, 2008 and began looking for work in the fall, at precisely the time when the financial crisis hit hard. In other words, I have been looking for work in the middle of nationwide hiring freezes. However, because I was self-employed I do not qualify for unemployment benefits. My lack of employment is in this sense actually bringing added value to the American taxpayer by not costing him a cent. For this lack of planning and foresight I should be rewarded.
3. When my investments lost 35% of their value through the end of last October, I decided that the bottom had clearly arrived and let everything be, single-handedly averting a complete panic. Those assets have since lost even more value, demonstrating the sheer idiocy of a laissez-faire attitude toward the markets. This is precisely the kind of performance that cries out for a bonus.
4. Although I am careful to pay as little in taxes as possible, I believe I am entitled to receive much more in return than I could possibly put in over my lifetime. Isn't that how markets work? Where's my payout?
Surely these arguments are as persuasive as any given by the AIG Corporate Communications office. I shall assume that my check is in the mail.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
St. Pat's Trivia
I don't have a drop of Irish in my blood, but as it turns out my ancestors made an important contribution to the way St. Patrick's Day is celebrated in the United States. Back in Ireland, for centuries March 17 was a holy feast day. People would attend Mass in the morning, then go home and celebrate. Until the 1970s pubs were even closed, hard as that is for Americans to believe. Because March 17 always falls during Lent, Bishops would waive the stricture against meat, and celebrants would consume the traditional feast of Irish bacon and cabbage.
Early Irish immigrants to the US were either upper middle-class or in fact wealthy, but the potato famine brought wave after wave of poor Irish to our shores. Many of them congregated on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where they lived in a ghetto neighboring the Jewish and Italian ghettos. Discrimination kept them poor, and their poverty meant that they couldn't afford the luxury of bacon. The immigrants took a cue from their Jewish neighbors and discovered corned beef, a cheap alternative to bacon. And so we have my great-grandparents, living in poverty somewhere around Hester Street, to thank for today's preponderance of corned beef and cabbage. Sometimes cliches are true: we are all a little bit Irish today.
While I'm on the topic I have one final bit of St. Paddy's trivia. The color normally associated with Saint Patrick is blue. The wearing of green began a couple hundred years ago in the US, and was a show of solidarity with the Irish struggle for independence from England. OK, one last note of trivia and then I'm really done: Saint Patrick was undoubtedly an important guy, but he couldn't have driven all the snakes from Ireland, because Ireland never had any snakes to begin with. The terrain doesn't support them. Happy green drinking to all!
Early Irish immigrants to the US were either upper middle-class or in fact wealthy, but the potato famine brought wave after wave of poor Irish to our shores. Many of them congregated on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where they lived in a ghetto neighboring the Jewish and Italian ghettos. Discrimination kept them poor, and their poverty meant that they couldn't afford the luxury of bacon. The immigrants took a cue from their Jewish neighbors and discovered corned beef, a cheap alternative to bacon. And so we have my great-grandparents, living in poverty somewhere around Hester Street, to thank for today's preponderance of corned beef and cabbage. Sometimes cliches are true: we are all a little bit Irish today.
While I'm on the topic I have one final bit of St. Paddy's trivia. The color normally associated with Saint Patrick is blue. The wearing of green began a couple hundred years ago in the US, and was a show of solidarity with the Irish struggle for independence from England. OK, one last note of trivia and then I'm really done: Saint Patrick was undoubtedly an important guy, but he couldn't have driven all the snakes from Ireland, because Ireland never had any snakes to begin with. The terrain doesn't support them. Happy green drinking to all!
Monday, March 16, 2009
Free the Weeds
I've spent a decent number of hours and a decent number of dollars over the past two weeks to do a spring clean-up in my yard. The fact that I dedicated days to leaf blowing and raking just four months ago seems to have mattered little. I have a partially wooded lot, full of older and not necessarily healthy trees, and winter's after-effects include a yard full of downed branches, sticks, pine needles, and leaves blown over from the neighbor's.
I know some people either like or take satisfaction from yard work, but I'm not one of those people. It feels to me that I'm fighting repeated battles with nature, and nature always wins. Pull a weed and two replace it, cut the grass and it just grows back, trim the hedges and they climb twice as high. Why do we bother?
Until around a hundred years ago, Americans didn't have lawns. Their yards were comprised of dirt and utilitarian vegetable gardens. Until the invention of the lawn mower the only way to trim a lawn was either by scythe or by letting sheep or cattle graze, so it really wasn't worth the bother to plant grass. Our native grasses aren't lawn grass, so until the invention of hybrid grass that could withstand our climate without too much watering, lawns were pretty much the province of the wealthy who could afford the paid labor needed to trim and water grass.
What made people bother? Why replace carefree dirt and healthful gardens with high-maintenance grass? To some degree we have the American Garden Club to thank. During the 1920s these grass enthusiasts waged an aggressive PR campaign promoting the beauty and benefits of the lawn. By then, the middle-class could afford a rotary lawn mower and to buy produce rather than grow it, so the notion of a lawn for every house took hold. To a large degree we also have the American hatred of the weed to thank. One thing manicured grass can do is take up all the space, light, and nutrients available and starve away weeds.
In order to make life easier, or at least to make my life easier, all that would need to happen is that every invasive plant species currently categorized as a weed be recategorized as a thing of beauteous splendor. A cultural appreciation of dandelion, crabgrass, goldenrod, sumac, and every other thing that wants to take over my property would allow me to give my property back to the forces of nature. Nature doesn't want me to have a yard. It wants me to have a clearing filled with sticks and leaves and "weeds." I'm tired of fighting it.
I know some people either like or take satisfaction from yard work, but I'm not one of those people. It feels to me that I'm fighting repeated battles with nature, and nature always wins. Pull a weed and two replace it, cut the grass and it just grows back, trim the hedges and they climb twice as high. Why do we bother?
Until around a hundred years ago, Americans didn't have lawns. Their yards were comprised of dirt and utilitarian vegetable gardens. Until the invention of the lawn mower the only way to trim a lawn was either by scythe or by letting sheep or cattle graze, so it really wasn't worth the bother to plant grass. Our native grasses aren't lawn grass, so until the invention of hybrid grass that could withstand our climate without too much watering, lawns were pretty much the province of the wealthy who could afford the paid labor needed to trim and water grass.
What made people bother? Why replace carefree dirt and healthful gardens with high-maintenance grass? To some degree we have the American Garden Club to thank. During the 1920s these grass enthusiasts waged an aggressive PR campaign promoting the beauty and benefits of the lawn. By then, the middle-class could afford a rotary lawn mower and to buy produce rather than grow it, so the notion of a lawn for every house took hold. To a large degree we also have the American hatred of the weed to thank. One thing manicured grass can do is take up all the space, light, and nutrients available and starve away weeds.
In order to make life easier, or at least to make my life easier, all that would need to happen is that every invasive plant species currently categorized as a weed be recategorized as a thing of beauteous splendor. A cultural appreciation of dandelion, crabgrass, goldenrod, sumac, and every other thing that wants to take over my property would allow me to give my property back to the forces of nature. Nature doesn't want me to have a yard. It wants me to have a clearing filled with sticks and leaves and "weeds." I'm tired of fighting it.
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