‘Ben..come with me for a moment, I want to talk to you…I wanna say just one word to you, just one word. Are you listening?
Plastics, There’s a great future in plastics, think about it. Will you think about it?’
My favourite scene from any moment in the history of film comes in Mike Nichols’s 1967 film; The Graduate. The scene itself resonates with me, as a 20-year-old, so much because I feel as if I have lived that scene throughout my adolescence and young adulthood dozens of times. Mr Maguire, who imparts what he sees as life-changing advice to the central character Ben, could so easily be a family relative or friend at some long, arduous Christmas party that I have endured over the past four or five years. The scene captures our seniors’ belief that they have great wisdom that can gently ease us on our way with just a few words. This idea of a senior’s ‘wisdom’ being imparted to a disillusioned youngster runs deeper than just a mere attempt to self-validate. It is an attempt to conserve a class and to conserve certain (often very structured) belief systems through different generations. Ben, as the central character, is moved forward in the film by trying to fight these ideas of conservatism off.
While the futility of imparting the advice of ‘plastics’ to a young adult would have been an amusing moment in 1967, by the 2020s, the idea of ‘plastics’ makes the scene all the more ironic and in many ways sad. The attempt to maintain a future that is reflective of the past was a battle in the 1960s and a battle that characters like Ben tried to fight. Now, in 2024 we can see a planet that has been devastated by climate change from various behaviours distinct to human consumption and attitudes and our generation is one that will try to fight off the past, and like Ben, forge a fresh, new future. The Graduate is routed in its time and yet has transitioned into the consciousness of a 20-year-old living 60 years after it was released. Great art will, in whatever form it takes, be able to stand the test of time.
Watch the scene here…
