Ben stays in the fish tank

Rating: 5/10 (27 January 2006)

Jeff Baker Prof. Niemi New Amer. Cinema 27 Jan 2006 The Graduate "You're not one of those agitators?...one of those outside agitators?" "Oh - no sir."
Although some have made The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) out to be a film of social rebellion, the main character Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) remains just as trapped at the end of the film as he is at the start. Besieged by 'the normal life' of an upper-middle class milieu, Ben seeks the blank pleasure in just "drifting here in the pool" after graduating from college a track star and Frank Helpingham Award Scholar. He is "a little upset" about his future, which seems void of anything real or substantial. In an ominous exchange during his graduation party in the beginning of the film, Mr. McQuire tells him, "There's a great future in plastics," and it is clear to the audience that Ben views his future as an expanse of plastic thereafter. He attempts to 'rebel' against this inevitable-seeming future, but manages to simply run away and generate a whole new slew of problems for himself and Elaine Robinson (Katharine Ross).
The beginning of the film has Ben being passed by on the people-mover at LAX by a fair amount of interesting characters, most notably a sailor and a cowboy. Ben is just cruising along there on after having just finished college. When he arrives at home to find his parents have thrown him a party and invited all of their friends, he asks his father (William Daniels), "could you explain to them that I have to be alone for a while?" Ben needs time after four years of intense academic achievements to digest what he's just done. He needs to focus his experiences and make sense of them all in order to figure out what's next. Everyone thinks he'll go on to graduate school, but he doesn't seem too enthused about more school. And he doesn't want a job in plastics, which is what his parents' friends are into. Aligned with the spirit of the late '60s, Ben is mortified at the thought of becoming his parents. So instead of continuing school, he decides to just float on his raft and to float on Mrs. Robinson, metaphorically speaking of course (in reference to the jump cut that starts with Ben jumping onto his raft and cuts to him landing on Mrs. Robinson).
But Ben wants more, or at least thinks he does. So he tries to drop his fling with Mrs. Robinson and take off after Elaine Robinson. He realizes that a relationship with Mrs. Robinson is hopelessly off limits to him in any conventional sense, but Elaine is. She is a younger version of her mother and by going after her, Ben is rebelling against his pseudo-parents, the Robinson's (Mr. R. told be he thinks of him as a son). This strange incestuous rebellion keeps him within the familiar, within the family unit and he doesn't need to extend himself out into society for love or relations.
In the end, when Ben and Elaine run off from her wedding to Carl, they are both still trapped. They may be fleeing from their old suburban life, but where are they headed? She is now legally bound to Carl, but she is with Ben. This will lead to a reckoning at some point where she'll need to go back and sever the ties (or be sucked back in). And where is Ben? He's in another fishbowl. The imagery of the rounded bus, the camera looking in the windows at him elicits a sense of being adrift again in a fish tank (imagery from the beginning of the film). There is nowhere for them to go, and they haven't proved anything except their determination to provoke Mr. & Mrs. Robinson.