The Graduate and the Aquarium of Expectation
“Mrs Robinson, you are trying to seduce me!” This is Dustin Hoffman’s famous line from Mike Nichols’ 1967 film, The Graduate. His character is Ben Braddock, a recent college graduate returning to his home in Los Angeles, and dealing with the prospect of his future. Confronted by sexual advances by the wife of his father’s longtime friend and business partner, Ben makes this astute observation. When looking into why, out of all of the powerful moments in this film, this line is so memorable, it may be helpful to ask what comes to mind when remembering it. What makes this moment so famous is not the line itself but the striking composition of the shot which it resides within. Ben stands small and anxious in the background of the frame, dwarfed and entrapped by the flirtatiously spread out leg of Mrs. Robinson arching out in front of him, dominating the foreground. It is this iconically designed visual that creates the power of not just this line, but the scene as a whole.
There are a few through lines in The Graduate, that give visual respresentations to some of the films central themes. Beyond the actual composition of the shots, there are many visual choices that define the world of the film. The construction of the visual world of the film through setting and wardrobe, and the persistent use of striking visual motifs, work to parallel the constant struggle within Ben. The visual design deepens the film’s portrayal of claustrophobic societal pressures, and highlights Ben’s desire to find a semblance of freedom and self actualization outside of rigid social expectations.
Returning home from the east coast having completed college, Ben feels uncomfortable being around his parents and their friends. Their behavior, their homes, and their prodding questions about what he plans to do with his life, all feel old fashioned; so much so that Ben seems to be living in a world of black and white, literally. The places where Ben is surrounded by these parental figures --- his parents' home, the Robinsons’ home, the hotel room where he begins his affair with Mrs. Robinson --- are all almost entirely decorated with blacks and whites. The blank white walls frame Ben as he stares numbly, searching for meaning. The blacks and greys of his parents’ dinner guests’ outfits surround and suffocate Ben at his welcome home party. The blown-out bright white of their pool flares and ensnares its occupants. The absence of color allows the viewer, whether they are conscious of it or not, to gain a better understanding of how Ben is feeling when he is in these environments. All around him, the world of his parents is dull and abrasive, both visually and otherwise. Bogged down by old fashioned expectations, he is pestered about what his future holds; they ask him what he will do and what girls he likes, they tell him to sow wild oats, or just simply advise him “Plastics”. All the while he is trapped in an intolerably clean visual environment of empty white and rigid black. With all of their success, neither his parents nor any of their friends seem to have ever thought to add some color to their lives. This colorlessness becomes especially apparent as some color begins to make its way into Ben’s view.
Having been in a world devoid of vibrancy and peers, everything changes when Ben goes on a date with Elaine Robinson. Before this point, one of the only color present in his life had been the frequent leopard print on Mrs. Robinson’s jacket, the predatory implications of which illustrate the direly unequal power dynamic of their affair. Mrs. Robinson is dressed luxuriously and alluringly, and her animalistic pops of color may have drawn Benjamin in, but by the time her daughter arrives, much of her intrigue and attractiveness are long gone.
As Ben is coerced into going on a date with Elaine, the entire visual vocabulary of the film shifts. The jarring deep red of the strip club mirrors Ben’s initial attempts to antagonize Elaine, but nonetheless provides a welcome addition of vibrant color for the first time in the film. This continues as their night together goes on. They are surrounded by a brilliant, colorful street mural as Ben apologizes to Elaine, and their night can begin anew. As they eat their drive-in fast food, for the first time the world behind Ben is bustling and loud with people his own age. The colors and composition of the scene strengthens the idea that he is finally somewhere he feels he belongs. He is not hidden away in a hotel under a fake name with a woman more than twice his age; he is out on a date with a pretty girl eating french fries. Before this, the blank white that surrounded Benjamin in his frequent closeups project the emptiness and aimlessness that he felt within himself. His lack of direction in life and apathy towards his future were mirrored in the uninspiring, sterile world he inhabited. Now the vibrancy and action of the world around him show, for the first time, that he feels something.
Throughout the film, there is always the sensation that Ben is constantly being observed. Near the start of the film, as his welcome party rages below him, Ben sits in his childhood bedroom in front of a fish tank. The shot is a closeup; all the viewer sees is Ben’s head surrounded by the aquarium, almost placing him within it. Immediately afterwards, he is shown off by his parents to all of the guests at the party as the perfect son back from a prestigious east coast school. This subtle visual choice begins to hint at his feeling of being watched and looked in on, a motif that is expanded throughout the film through the use of imagery that mimics that of the aquarium. Most obviously there is the scuba suit that his father insists he show off to some house guests. In the scuba suit, Ben is not only literally watched by a small representative population of his parents community in his very own backyard, but is also a scaled-up exact replica of the little scuba diver that resides in the aquarium. This reference is very effective at portraying not only Ben’s feelings of absurdity but also the concept that Ben is a sort of exhibition for his parents and their longtime friends. They are his expectant observers on the pool deck as they are of his life and future; they watch him slip into the pool and even hold him under as they expect him to show them what they want to see. He has no choice but to comply and submerge. As the camera drifts away from him and as air bubbles rise, he really does look like the aquarium scuba diver, and Ben’s life does not seem to be his own.
But the symbol of the aquarium goes beyond the scuba diver. Throughout The Graduate there is continual use of windows and glass to separate characters and obstruct view, almost always with the significance of display and expectation. The image of Ben as an exhibit in a fish tank is repeated when he is in the phone booth in the hotel. He is a nervous young man in a little glass box surrounded by people looking in; even in his clandestine affairs, Ben finds himself in a place of uncomfortable display. Ben wears sunglasses when he is being cold to Elaine, but they are gone when he rushes to apologize as he chooses to disobey Mrs. Robinson. Entrapment, exhibition, and division are all suggested by glass over the course of the film, but ultimately glass signifies expectation: the expectation of an attentive audience wanting a show to go well; of a parent hoping their child is successful; and of society requiring students to finish college, get a job, and start a family. More than all of these though, is Ben’s expectations for his own life, as he is continually unfulfilled its reality. Boxed in and put in a glass display case, Benjamin has been the unwilling subject of these expectations; he is fed up and broken down, and as he arrives at Elaine's wedding to find a final, massive glass wall separating him from her, he pounds on the aquarium walls and screams her name. Whether you’re conscious of the motif or not, this is a powerful image. Ben is trying to get through the rigid social pressures that have held him back, to break the wall of expectation, and finally have the freedom to be with the woman he loves and realize the vision of what his life should be.
Important Footnote:
But the thing is, it isn’t really clear why either one of these people would want to be with each other at all. The final shot of Ben and Elaine coming to their senses on the bus makes that obvious. So what are they actually after? Well, if we look at the symbols that I have covered throughout the film, Ben really isn’t looking for love. He scoffs at Mrs. Robinson’s initial advances and doesn’t really seem interested in Elaine except as a desperate way out of his current situation.
I think the entire film is some sort of response to the dreaded question “So, what are you going to do after you graduate?” It radiates that existential malaise that you can feel in those summers when you don’t have much to do and you start to think, so is this just what life is? You can feel the reaching for something: a lurid affair, barging in on a wedding and running away with the bride, and words denoting opaque industries for quick you are expected to work (see: “plastics”). It contains all of the things a young adult may wonder what the future may hold for him, when he still doesn’t really know that much about the world. Ben is desperately reaching for something, and it isn’t success or direction or love. It is freedom that he is after-and in a much bigger sense than just from his parents. And he pounds on the glass in his fight to get there. At the start of the film, Benjamin stands still on a moving walkway at the airport, drifting slowly backwards to a life he has not chosen, carried by a force that is not his own, with Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence playing hauntingly. At the end of the film, he sprints forward on his own two feet to a life no one really wants for him but himself.
A happy ending, except for that final, crucial 30 seconds.
In that final scene, when the running, pounding, screaming, laughing, chasing, and kissing is over, and Ben and Elaine are just two people on a bus, their attitudes slowly return to the same, blank uncertain stares, that they have had for the rest of the film. More than a condemnation of Elaine and Ben’s relationship, this final scene calmly rebukes the philosophy of explosively rejecting norms through lurid affairs and brave confessions of love. This isn’t how people, and their feelings on life actually change.
If you don’t realize that, no matter the fanfare and excitement, after a little while, the Sound of Silence returns- and with it, the same, haunting, aimlessness and the slow realization, that perhaps, that is just what life feels like.
