#17 ‘The Graduate’
Mommy Issues, Misogyny, and the Myth of the Blank Slate Boy
The Graduate (1967) is often praised as the voice of a generation—a sharp, stylish satire of suburban malaise and post-college drift. But really, it’s a mopey, masturbatory fantasy about a blank-faced boy who fumbles through sex, boredom, and entitlement while the women around him are reduced to either cougars or virgins, depending on how well they tolerate his self-pity.
Dustin Hoffman plays Benjamin Braddock, a recent college grad with no direction, no personality, and yet an unshakable belief that the universe owes him something more profound than his parents’ swimming pool. He floats through life like a damp piece of white bread, sulking into a scuba mask and somehow attracting the attentions of not one, but two women who, bafflingly, exist solely to reflect his existential ennui back at him.
Let’s begin with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft, far too good for this). She’s intelligent, bitter, bored, and unapologetically sexual—so of course, she’s vilified. The film frames her as a predator, a warning, a smirking emblem of adult corruption. She seduces Benjamin, sure—but only after he dithers like a confused boy scout and still ends up feeling victimized. Her complexity is flattened under the weight of his narrative: she’s not a person, she’s a cautionary tale in a slip.
Then we have Elaine, her daughter, played with wide-eyed bewilderment and zero interiority. Benjamin stalks her, gaslights her, and quite literally kidnaps her from her own wedding—and somehow, this is portrayed as romantic. The infamous final scene on the bus, with both of them staring into the void like confused toddlers, is treated as profound. But what it really says is: he has no plan, and she has no choice.
Elaine is not a love interest. She’s a trophy. A symbol of innocence and redemption, handed to Benjamin because he’s tired of being disillusioned by women with thoughts, histories, and motives. The film wants to say something about rebellion, but what it really says is: when boys get bored, women pay the price.
And let’s not ignore the age-old Oedipal undertones, simmering under every line. Benjamin doesn’t love Elaine—he wants to erase the shame he feels for sleeping with her mother. His pursuit of Elaine isn’t romantic, it’s therapeutic. He’s trying to absolve himself by rebranding his creepy decisions as love. Spoiler: it’s not love. It’s projection with a car chase.
Yes, the Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack is iconic. Yes, the cinematography is inventive. But all the visual cleverness in the world can’t distract from the fact that The Graduate is a film about a privileged man-child who drags two women through his identity crisis and somehow emerges the hero.
2 out of 5 plastics
(One for Anne Bancroft’s withering stare. One for the soundtrack. The rest got left behind in the backseat of Benjamin’s borrowed Alfa Romeo, along with the myth that this is a feminist coming-of-age story. It’s not. It’s just another elegy for mediocre men who think their confusion makes them deep.)
