https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2020/07/26/jewish-themes-in-the-graduate-1967/
The Jewish Angle in THE GRADUATE has been much discussed. But whatever its implications and meanings, there's no denying the brilliance with which Mike Nichols made the movie, something that eluded him in later works... though CATCH-22 has its moments and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE is pretty compelling as an arty take on the Sexual Revolution. So, the talent has to be discussed in relation to the film's impact. THE GRADUATE would likely have failed with critics and audience in lesser hands, whatever its message. It's like almost no one talks about GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER or just about anything by Stanley Kramer. Though Nichols ultimately didn't turn out to be a great director, he made one great movie, THE GRADUATE, much like Ridley Scott surpassed his limitations one time with BLADE RUNNER. Likewise, other key works by Jewish directors of the period must be considered(even in criticism) with an appreciation of their power as artists, wits, dramatists, expressionists. Even if there is a Jewish angle to THE GRADUATE and other works by Jewish artists, there is much more than mere ethnic propaganda. Stanley Kubrick made 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Roman Polanski made ROSEMARY'S BABY. Stuart Rosenberg made COOL HAND LUKE. Arthur Penn made BONNIE & CLYDE. Arthur Schlesinger made MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Richard Brooks made IN COLD BLOOD. Earlier in the decade, Blake Edwards made BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. Though Sidney Lumet would come to greatness in the 70s and 80s, he was emerging as a force as well. (Norman Jewison, who made IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, isn't Jewish despite the name.)
Now, not all the above-listed directors attained greatness. Rosenberg made one great movie, COOL HAND LUKE, but was mostly a journeyman director. But for whatever reason, it was the Jews(and then some Italian-Americans) who were most adept at hitching onto the new sensibility and conceiving new possibilities for Hollywood. Of course, many new or newer talents were not Jewish. Sam Peckinpah, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, and the like. But Jewish film-makers were among the key figures in the development of New Hollywood. They were bolder, hungrier, more curious, more radical, more hip to trends. They were also among the most admiring of the great European directors(most of whom were not Jewish) and some Japanese ones. Their impact on cinema was somewhat akin to Bob Dylan's on Rock Music, though it's arguable that the only Jewish film-maker to match the cultural significance of Dylan was Stanley Kubrick who struck a chord with both critics and the audience. To be sure, cinephilia of the Film Generation was somewhat different from the attitudes of Youth Culture. Whereas Rock fans had close to zero interest in pre-Rock music and foreign music — though Folk Rockers were more reverent of the past and other cultures — , Film Culture was about remembrance and international curiosity. So, the seminal film critics of the 60s didn't just discuss the latest trends and hottest hits but wrote extensively about foreign cinema and classic Hollywood. College kids who had no interest in music prior to Rock might nevertheless look up to Howard Hawks and Orson Welles as cultural heroes and icons.
Still, despite the respect accorded to the Old Hollywood greats by Andrew Sarris, Peter Bogdanovich, and their acolytes, the fact is the culture was changing fast. So, while even young cinephiles might marvel at a John Ford Western or Frank Capra comedy, they no longer believed movies could or should be made that way. There was a new spirit in the air, and Jewish film-makers were among the first to run with it. And yet, the Europeans and Japanese had been ahead of American Cinema in personal expression and experimentation. In a way, the new batch of Jewish film-makers had a greater affinity for non-Jewish-controlled foreign cinema and were rebelling against the Hollywood System controlled by old-fashioned Jewish executives and careerists. And they had their chance because the Old Studio system was either dead or moribund, just barely hanging on, as the result of Hollywood's loss of theater monopoly and the rise of TV.
At any rate, Jewish Power of Propaganda cannot be understood apart from the talent and visions that go far beyond whatever the original 'political' intent may have been. In some ways, David Mamet is an unpleasant Jewish chauvinist, yet he is also artist and thinker enough to raise questions and face truths that challenge his ethnic biases. (In contrast, Aaron Sorkin is a mere propagandist-hack, albeit a talented one.) Sergei Eisenstein's propaganda films are crude as message but works of genius as experimental formalism. ROSEMARY'S BABY would likely have been a third-rate movie in the hands of someone other than Polanski, just like JAWS would have been one more dumb monster movie if not for Steven Spielberg. (Polanski and other Eastern European directors are a special case. Whereas most of the great Western European directors were non-Jewish, many of the Iron Curtain's 'new wave' directors, especially in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, were Jewish. Though the White Right generally sees Jews as radical leftists, many of these Hungarian and Czech 'new wave' Jewish film-makers were problematic to communist authorities for their espousal of individualism, irreverence, satire, and/or something approaching libertarianism. Most were liberal than leftist, highly problematic as communism regarded liberalism as a bourgeois conceit. And even if not pro-capitalist, they leaned more towards social democracy than communism. Polanski detested communism, and Milos Forman, the Czech Jew in exile, found great success in Hollywood with ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, which would be very un-PC today, and AMADEUS, a work that is, at once, subversive of authority and defensive of genius as natural hierarchy.) Talent goes a long way, and whatever ideological agendas or ethnic biases may have shaped the works of Jewish directors, the top Jewish talents were not only born with natural intelligence but grew up with a genuine appreciation of arts/culture. As such, Mike Nichols' main objective was to make a popular but personal art film inspired by the cinema of Europe. (Nichols was especially impressed with Fellini's 8 1/2. THE GRADUATE also has nods to Michelangelo Antonioni and Francois Truffaut.) But if some American directors miserably failed at making Art Films— THE SWIMMER had all the elements to be a great piece of personal film-making but suffered from strained uneven direction, and Lumet's PAWNBROKER is an embarrassing assemblage of obvious homages to European Art House — , others found their own stride, and THE GRADUATE may be the most significant work in this spirit. At first glance, it seemed a Hollywood movie riffing on European Art film mannerisms, and yet, it was so genuinely American and Hollywood. Moreover, Nichols, unlike Lumet before him, totally made the work his own. Instead of imitation, he drew inspiration and found his own beat and rhythm. As such, while THE GRADUATE may resemble a work like BLOW-UP by Antonioni, it has a uniqueness all its own. Also, the great appeal of movies like THE GRADUATE and MIDNIGHT COWBOY owed to American Jews being less hung up with intellectual conceits. As much as they admired European cinema, they also loved humor, effect, and fun. Increasingly with European Cinema, there developed the purist notion that true art cannot be much fun or rely on time-tested conventions. Also, theory began to dominate practice. For instance, Pier Paolo Pasolini began his film career with lively works with expressive actors, but along the way, he got this idea that actors shouldn't act dramatically. Godard's films got increasingly self-conscious. Ingmar Bergman's films grew colder. Now, an artist who really knows what he's doing can make it work, as in the case of Robert Bresson. But too many aspiring auteurs in Europe became allergic to doing anything that might violate the monastic or radical mission of cinema as art or commitment.
In contrast, Nichols had far fewer such hang-ups. So, even as he drew certain ideas from European cinema, he was mindful to lots of humor along with the songs of Simon and Garfunkel, whatever worked. Such use of songs might have aeen deemed as cheating or relying more on non-cinematic expressions than on the pure possibilities of cinema. But the use of songs did wonders for THE GRADUATE, just like the use of classical music added another dimension to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. So, Nichols and others like him had the best of both worlds: The new language of Art Cinema as personal expression but also the eagerness to please and win over the audience with timeless tricks of entertainment. And that is why THE GRADUATE, like HAROLD AND MAUDE, works on so many levels. It is seriously committed to cinema as art but also shameless in presenting a good show. New Hollywood was closer in spirit to Serious Rock — Later Beatles, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, CCR — than Modernist Music that took out all the fun from music.
Turman bought the rights to the book for $1,000 and sent it unsolicited to Jewish director Mike Nichols (born Mikhail Peschkowsky) who signed on to the project. Turman’s search for financing led him to Jewish film mogul Joseph E. Levine—“the schlockmeister of the world”—who put up $3 million... Nichols assigned Jewish screenwriter Buck Henry (born Henry Zuckerman)... Songs by the Jewish duo Simon and Garfunkel were used for the soundtrack. Given the many Jews involved in the film’s production, it’s hardly surprising that Jewish sensibilities and ideological fixations pervade the final product.
But Jewish finance and Jewish producers had long been a dominant force in Hollywood. Also, Jewish writers had been embedded in Hollywood since its inception. And many music composers were Jewish. So, THE GRADUATE is hardly different from works of Classic Hollywood in the preponderance of Jewish money and talent.
In the hands of director Mike Nichols, however, the story became a scathing critique of bourgeois WASP American culture and the oppressive burden it purportedly imposed on young Americans. Nichols employs two recurrent visual metaphors to symbolize this oppressive culture: black-and-white stripes and water.
Many people saw the movie that way, but I'm not sure Nichols meant it that way. When pressed about Elaine and Benjamin by a young female fan of the movie, he answered that they'd probably end up just like their parents. Also, even though there is gentle mockery of upper middle class life, it's hardly hateful. (If anything, even as the audience is glibly laughing at the 'shallow' people in the movie, they are attracted to displays of affluence and the good life, also true of works like LA DOLCE VITA and LA NOTTE. Would THE GRADUATE have been as successful if it were about a working class guy living in a tenement? MARTY with Ernest Borgnine proved to be more or less a one-off thing.)
Benjamin's woes have less to do with social oppression than loss of youth. He's worried about the future, i.e. it has arrived, he's living in it, so it no longer exists for him. This is a universal problem faced by people all over the world. When you're young, the future is always something in the distant horizon. It's always a day ahead, like the song from ANNIE. Or consider how Scarlett in GONE WITH THE WIND always assures herself that 'tomorrow will be another day'. This procrastination about the future loomed larger among the boomer generation as more of them grew up in affluence, could attend college, and followed their bliss, that was as long as one was young and still at work or play. But school eventually ends, and one must be an adult with responsibilities and burdens. So, even though the movie is based on Charles Webb's novel, its spirit also flows from CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger. Braddock is not a victim of social oppression, that is made clear. His parents provided him with everything. He has a nice big room all to himself. He could attend the college of his choice far from home. His graduation gift is a fancy sports car. And as the movie makes clear, his parents pretty much allow him to do as he pleases. At one time, his father expresses displeasure with Ben's taking it easy, but he doesn't do much about it. Also, Mr. Robinson's advice to Ben is that he should sow some wild oats and have the time of his life(without realizing it would lead to an affair with his wife). Later, when his mother asks him what he does all night long and his answer isn't forthcoming, she just walks away and leaves him alone; she's a very understanding, even permissive, parent.
A special thing about THE GRADUATE is it finds a special beauty in the melancholy. In a way, Ben wants to break out or break on through to the other side, but the meaning is in the struggle, not in the victory. He studied hard all his young life to be a top student and graduated with honors, but it seems hollow once it's behind him. Same with his 'second graduation' with Elaine as trophy wrested from the church wedding. His greatest desire is to win her heart and make her his. It becomes an all-consuming passion and obsession... but once he has Elaine with him in the bus at the end, he begins to feel somewhat empty again. The dream is always sad, even a bit depressing, because its realization seems so elusive, even impossible. The dreamer hopes the dream will become reality, but per chance it does, the result is always bound to be anticlimactic. So, Ben is caught in a psychological trap. A neurotic-romantic, he's given to aching for what's beyond his reach. And yet, upon attaining his dream, he realizes that he was truly happy when he was in yearning. It's like hunger calls for satiation but, once satisfied, soon fades in pleasure.
Once he gets it, he realizes it's just one more trophy and life goes on. It's like the scene in BLOW-UP where a bunch of guys tussle over a broken guitar neck, but it is tossed aside soon after it's taken by one guy. It's the curse of a dream coming true. It just becomes more of mundane reality and loses its luster as future vision.
Things can never be normal with Ben and Elaine even if they do eventually get married. After all, she made her wedding vow and is legally wed to Carl Smith. So, she must go through the whole legal rigamarole of filing for divorce. And if Ben and Elaine were to tie the knot to make it official, they will still be estranged from their parents, especially the Robinsons. Ben’s father can’t be too happy either as his partner in the law firm is none other than Mr. Robinson. In time, Ben and Elaine as married couple will likely end up like their parents, but their lives can never be normal due to strained situations with their parents(and perhaps the scandal of the wedding crash).
That said, THE GRADUATE had an almost universal appeal because it was as sentimental as it was cynical. It was like the Beatles and SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, an album beloved not only by youths but older people and even highbrow types. It was a Rock album pandering to Summer of Love and Youth Culture, but it was also arty and even a bit old-fashioned, with tunes like “When I’m Sixty Four” and “She’s Leaving Home”, a song that is rebellious in message but traditional in delivery. (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT was also a winner with both young and older audiences.) Young people regarded Ben as a rebel-hero who says hell to ‘plastics’, experiments in free love, seeks authenticity, and takes action to realize his dreams. And yet, even non-radical or non-experimental boomers could relate to him because he initially comes across as something of a square and stuff-shirt, someone who focused more on books than all the groovy things happening around the period. Charles Webb's novel came out before Counterculture happened, whereas the movie was made in its midst. The scenario feels all the more alienating for that reason. It's like an early 60s mindset time-traveled to the latter-60s. Now, one might say that those were just a few years, but SO MUCH happened between 1963 and 1967. That sudden sense of change was the subject of FUTURE SHOCK by Alvin Toffler. If Ben were graduating from high school in the movie, he might be ecstatic. Alas, he graduated from college and officially became an adult just when the culture of youth was taking off to new dimensions. He's too young to identify with his parents generation but just old enough to feel out of sync with the youth culture. Thus, he feels alienated from old and young. And yet, he feels attracted to Mrs. Robinson who, though twice his age, seems defiant of growing older by making up her own rules. And part of the reason he may feel such attraction to Elaine is she's still in school and therefore symbolizes the youth that has passed him by, at least in official capacity. Ben was following the track of being an Organization Man than a Creative Soul. Or, at the very least, he's like an Early Beatle with suit-and-tie who suddenly finds himself transported to the Age of Aquarius. For older or more traditional audiences, it was a story about a guy who initially finds escapism with easy sex with an older woman but then falls in true love and wants commitment and marriage. As for the ending, it can be seen as a rebellion against social norms(as how many people crash weddings?) or confirmation of true love, the classic fairy-tale of a hero saving a damsel from distress.
And it’s also what happened between them at the night club. Ben was acting like a total ass but later confesses that he went against his nature due to parental pressure. Of course, that’s not really true as the real reason he tried to sabotage the date was because Mrs. Robinson had forbidden him to date her daughter. Anyway, something clicked in that moment. Elaine is a physically a fully blossomed woman, but there is still something of the little girl inside. You can tell she hasn’t yet lost her innocence, and she lives in something like a paper doll world. Ben realizes how much he hurt her, and he does everything to make amends and this creates a special bond between them. With the kiss, Elaine goes from weeping girl to a real woman, and Ben goes from a confused adult without direction to a man who finally understands what gives his life meaning: Elaine as his true love. (At the same time, there is a quality of puppy love.) With Mrs. Robinson, he was toyed with and used, and he used her in turn. It was just about sex and to stave off boredom. An escapism from life. But with Elaine, there is no guile and gamesmanship. He feels natural in her presence. His plan was for a short date where he’d act the jerk, make Elaine dislike him, take her home, and be done with it. But Elaine’s reaction in the night club is more that of a vulnerable girl than an angry bitch. He sees a side of her he never expected, and in turn, he feels born-again when he tries to console Elaine. It's as if he's finally found his true self and no longer feels so alienated. Thus, the problem was less social alienation than auto-alienation. It suggests that an individual is only half-a-person, therefore a person can only be complete when he meets one's soulmate. It lends a mythic overtone to the movie — Greek mythology says Zeus separated men and women from their embrace, therefore life is about men and women trying to reconnect with their lost mates. Much has been made of the Christian and Jewish angle of the story, but perhaps the main appeal is closer to Greek mythology and Western fairy tales. Earlier in the decade, there was a hit French movie called BLACK ORPHEUS, the telling of the Greek myth with black actors. THE GRADUATE is like the Jewish Perseus. At any rate, it was this ‘subversive’ and multi-faceted blend of cynicism and sentimentality that made THE GRADUATE so special. But the same could be said of THE GODFATHER, which is both a heart-warming family story and a cold & ruthless gangster tale.
The perennial theme of Jewish alienation from a WASP-dominated mainstream American society played an important role in how the character of Benjamin Braddock—and the entire film—were conceived by Nichols—though this only became fully apparent to him after the film had been made.
But it works in the movie because even the character in the novel is alienated. Indeed, many leading characters in novels and movies are outsiders, eccentrics, oddballs, or mavericks. We find such characters more interesting. Even Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan is alienated from the System he works for. John Wayne's character in THE SEARCHERS is something of a misfit, at odds not only with Indians but with fellow whites. Marlon Brando and James Dean became famous as malcontents. Orson Welles said he cast homosexual Anthony Perkins because his closeted neurosis might add something to the character of Joseph K. in THE TRIAL, and it seems Nichols had something similar in mind in having a Jewish character play Ben. I think it works better than it would have with Robert Redford, though a younger Paul Newman, as half-Jew and half-Aryan, might have been even better. Redford, though a capable actor, was rather colorless and inexpressive. The movie wouldn't have been half-as-funny with Redford as Benjamin. Dustin Hoffman was an actor of limited range but fantastic at his best. His Ratso Rizzo in MIDNIGHT COWBOY is genius-acting.
Nichols cast Hoffman, “despite the fact that he was virtually unknown and looked nothing like the leading man described in the script, which called for a tall, blond track star, not a short, Jewish guy with a schnoz for the ages.”
But in the end, we must judge by results, and I think the success of THE GRADUATE is inseparable from Hoffman's shell game of drama and humor. While an actor like Redford or Ryan O'Neal might have been closer in looks to the character in the novel, Hoffman had that blend of straight man and clown that made the role so different and unique. Also, the final part of the movie when Ben is speeding back and forth from LA and Berkeley has something of the silent comedies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, the tales of underdogs who overcome all obstacles to end up with the girl. Robert Redford running off with the girl would seem less amazing and outrageous than Dustin Hoffman doing so. Buster Keaton was a short guy but one who out-maneuvered the competition and usually came out ahead. Same goes for Harold Lloyd, and especially as Nichols came from comedy background, he was looking for the most comic as well as dramatic actor, and he hit gold with Hoffman.
Now, take Jack Nicholson in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. The character in the novel is much stronger, a tough Irishman who takes on three Negroes in the shower and beats them all up. Nicholson's McMurphy is smaller and weaker and no match for the Negroes, but it's a masterly performance, and he came to own that role. Many, indeed most, movies deviate from the novel or the original screenplay, but at the end of the day, the only question that matters is "Does it work"? Hoffman made it work. But then, Victor Mature played Samson and Charlton Heston played Moses, and they made it work, at least as entertainment.
Hoffman’s anti-heroic character gave the green light for Hollywood to promote “the ethnic Jewish matinee idol and youth icon in the forms of George Segal, Elliot Gould, Richard Benjamin, Charles Grodin, and Gene Wilder.”[9] These Jewish romantic leads were invariably paired onscreen with beautiful non-Jewish actresses like Marsha Mason, Candice Bergen, and (in the case of Dustin Hoffman) blondes like Mia Farrow, Faye Dunaway, Susan George, and Meryl Streep.
It's been said that THE GRADUATE changed the rules of who can be a star in Hollywood, but this is a gross exaggeration. Hollywood always had lots of room for Jewish, ethnic, different, ugly, short, and weird actors, even among Wasps. Alan Ladd was a short guy. Humphrey Bogart, though Wasp, looked ethnic and could have passed for Italian, Greek, Spaniard, or Jew. But he was a big star. Short and funny-looking Mickey Rooney was one of the biggest stars of the 40s. James Cagney was no looker but a tremendous star. The Jewish Paul Muni was in many prestigious roles. Peter Lorre and Edward G. Robinson, both Jewish, became world famous. Short actors were nothing special in Hollywood. Many actors, if not downright short, were hardly tall. James Dean was 5'7. Marlon Brando was 5'9, not exactly short but far from tall. It could be that shorter men gravitate to acting because they have to be more expressive to gain the kind of attention that taller men usually get. How tall is Tom Cruise? Long before Dustin Hoffman became a household name, Frank Sinatra was a big movie star. He was only 5'7, had pocked face, and was Italian. And movie stardom was often less about looks than the hook. Certain actors and actresses, even if not handsome or pretty, had a certain screen presence, an allure. Take Charles Bronson who could even be said to be ugly. But he had a great movie face. Same was true of Telly Savalis and Anthony Quinn. Tony Curtis the Jew played a Norseman in THE VIKINGS and did a pretty good job.
As for George Segal, Elliot Gould, Richard Benjamin, Charles Grodin, and Gene Wilder, they usually starred in lesser or more 'independent' productions. Among the new batch of Jewish actors, the only one whose success matched that of Hoffman in the 70s and 80s was maybe Gene Hackman(though Henry Winkler hit pay dirt as the Fonz on HAPPY DAYS, but that was TV). Richard Dreyfus seemed to be on the up and up but soon faded. Of course, one could count Harrison Ford as Jewish, or half-Jewish. Woody Allen might qualify but he was appreciated more as 'auteur' than actor. (Correction. Gene Hackman doesn't seem to be Jewish.)
Hoffman won the role over Charles Grodin, another Jewish actor who was no model of conventional WASP good looks.
Grodin, though no heartthrob, had a certain goofy charm. And unlike in THE GRADUATE where everything is 'crypto', THE HEARTBREAK KID is very much a public airing of the Jewish Male obsession with the 'shikse'. It is in satirical than romantic mode(as in the case of THE GRADUATE) and, as such, cinematically less interesting but even more revealing of the Jewish sensibility. Hilarious stuff.
Such overt anti-Christian imagery jarred with the film’s first audiences—but was only the start of Hollywood’s disparagement of Christianity, and seems tame by today’s standards.
Maybe Jews are doing white people a favor by bashing Christianity, a religion that originated from renegade Jews. In a way, what is more 'crypto-Jewish' than Christianity? Though Christ is often depicted in Western Art as an Aryan-looking fellow, He was actually Jewish and probably looked more like Norman Finkelstein or Noam Chomsky. And speaking of neurosis, how about the story of a Man who claimed to be the Son of God and got Himself killed over it? Western Civilization is founded on Jewish Neurosis. So, even though Hoffman the Jew plays a Wasp in THE GRADUATE, white people over the eons have been worshiping a Jew with a big nose in the image of European whites. And look at the sculpture of David by Michelangelo. I'm thinking that David, being Jewish, looked more like Jerry Seinfeld or Sean Penn, but the statue resembles something out of Greco-Roman mythology.
By the way, thing in the church happens so fast that it hardly registers as an anti-Christian screed. And, whatever the significance of Ben wielding the cross as a weapon, it is funny as hell, and as the characters in THE WILD BUNCH say, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” The outrage element is part of the fun. A little irreverence never hurt anyone.
Also, just look at the church. Its design is so Californian, so modernist and soulless. It looks like a bleached shell devoid of spiritual meaning. A church as status-symbol of the affluent and modern. So, it’s less a Christian ceremony than a matter of custom. They get married in a church because it’s just what people do. And who are among the attendees? None other than Mrs. Robinson, hardly a virtuous character. And there’s Mr. Robinson who pressured his daughter into marrying Carl Smith out of his seething rage at Ben. We don’t know much about Smith the ‘make-out king’, but he doesn’t seem the spiritual type. So, even without Ben’s presence, the wedding is just an empty show, a ritual devoid of spiritual or even much moral meaning. Elaine is getting married to console her father. Her heart is really with Ben.
Ben’s wielding the cross as a weapon could be seen as a desecration of Christianity, but it could also mean he’s the christ-like figure for true love. He’s willing to sacrifice everything, even sanity and limb, for the girl he loves.
The problem with clinging to Christianity in our age is it no longer provides the answers. As such, people need to seek out new visions and find new directions. It’s like a horse. It is highly useful when strong and hardy. But what use is a dead horse? Christianity is now a dead horse. In Europe, it’s totally dead. They say America is still religious, but no one gets fired or blacklisted for insulting God, Jesus, or Paul. But you may be fired and blacklisted even at a so-called ‘conservative’ Christian institution if you criticize Fentanyl Floyd or Jewish promotion of globo-homo. For many Christians, even those on the ‘right’, the highest holies are Jews, Negroes, and Homos. Indeed, many churches would have us believe that god and jesus serve Jews, homos, and blacks than anything else.
But such kind of hypocrisy is no longer tenable, especially as Jews gained power in the West and never lose sleep pointing out all the hypocrisies of the West. This shame has been internalized by most whites. This has led to whites either rejecting Christianity or trying to practice a Christianity that is closer to the spirit of Jesus’s teachings… which can only serve as a death/suicide cult. Worse, there are so many idiots or opportunists who seek to use the church as a club for other agendas, often satanic in nature, like globo-homo and worship of savage Negro as Magic Negro. And of course, many non-religious and anti-religious people are possessed of a zealotry derived from puritanical strains of Christianity. If the church in our times is an empty shell devoid of spiritual passion, post-Christian passion of radicals is like fanaticism without a meaningful vessel. Shell without flesh and flesh without shell are, of course, both doomed. Form without content and content without form are both ultimately useless. Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, is dead as a useful and virile creed. When the Vatican has Pope Francis as top leader, what does that say? What is Mainline church in the US but promotion of globo-homo and Magic Negro? What is Evangelicalism but about More Wars for ‘Muh Israel’? There is the Orthodox Church, but it has no meaning to most Greeks who are secular. And in Russia, it is a museum culture than a living one despite all the new cathedrals built.
In the first scene of the film, Benjamin rides to the left on an airport conveyor belt as everyone else accedes to the airport’s public announcement system’s request to “Please stay to the right.”
I think 'stay on the right' in that moment meant stay to the right on the conveyor belt or in walkways, which is conventional rule in all places. It's like people usually walk on the right side no matter which way they're going.
In One Dimensional Man, he argued that advanced industrial societies like the United States repress their populations by creating false needs via mass advertising, industrial management, and modes of thought which resulted in a “one dimensional” universe of thought and behavior which stifled people’s capacity for critical thought and oppositional behavior.
Even if we disagree with Herbert Marcuse's solutions, was he wrong in his critique of consumer-capitalism? Look all around today, and corporate-consumer-capitalism is a big part of the problem. The rise of Pop Culture as Main Culture has led to the one-dimensional idiot. And we need critical thought and oppositional thought more than ever.
In the end, the real problem of whites was not 'authoritarianism' but complacency. Post-war boom made white people lower their guard and care mostly about the good life. They became passionless with crass materialism. The boomer generation rebelled against such complacency with utopian dreams and commitment to authenticity, but they too came under the power of materialism as their main inspirations came from pop music and TV. Like Peter Fonda said in EASY RIDER, 'We blew it'. If the Greatest Generation drowned in alcohol, the boomers failed to find nirvana in pot smoke, which is now just more big business.
Reich claimed the role of traditional “repressive” Western sexual morality was “to produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order.” Marcuse agreed with Reich that the “liberation of sexuality and the creation of non-hierarchical democratic structures in the family, workplace and society at large would create personalities resistant to fascism.”
There is obviously some truth to their claims. Any form of repression, sexual or otherwise, is to create a more stable order of unity and consensus. And it is true that 'sexual liberation' will undermine fascism as each boy and girl will be more into hedonism and self-gratification than suppressing one's individual desires for the good of the whole, the volk. If German youths in the 1930s had mostly been into sex, drugs, and rock & roll, would they have paid any heed to Hitler? And same could be said for youths under communism, which is why communist nations did all they could to suppress individualism as expressions of capitalism.
More interesting is why Marcuse and others blamed capitalism for the repression when it was obviously the forces of capitalism that were leading to the triumph of hedonism, 'sexual liberation', individualism, and youth culture of impatience. Maybe, it was difficult to immediately abandon the ideology, Marxism, that had shaped them for so long. Consciously or subconsciously, maybe the Frankfurt School was seeking to serve as the bridge that would allow the left to go from communism to capitalism as the more useful ideology.
In a way, much of modern form of Jewish Alienation derived from acceptance by White Society. Jews were both ragging Wasps for not being sufficiently accepting of Jews AND fretting too much assimilation may lead to loss of Jewish identity.
So, even as Jews felt alienated from Wasps, they also felt increasing alienation from their own roots. The more they became modern and Western, the less they felt traditionally bound to Jewishness. It’s one reason why Jews cooked up ersatz-form of being Jewish, such as being fixated on the Holocaust or celebrating Globo-Homo. Barbra Streisand’s YENTL is both celebratory and critical of Jewish Tradition, and it features a woman posing as a man to be accepted into the world of Rabbis. Around the same time, Blake Edwards made VICTOR/VICTORIA and soon after, there was TOOTSIE where Hoffman plays a ‘woman’. And Woody Allen made ZELIG. Paradoxically, Allen’s film seems to imply that the thing that Jews most fear as being harmful to Jewishness, which is assimilation, is also what most defines Jewishness. In other words, Jews have developed remarkably adaptive strategies of assimilation. And yet, even as Jews morph and blend into goy societies, at the end of the day, they revert back to Jewishness; they don’t really transform into the other. It’s like an octopus can take on all sorts of shapes but returns to being an octopus. But if an octopus is so fluid and flexible in its shape and structure, is there a core structure to octopus-ness? Or is the essence of the octopus to have no definite form? It’s no wonder Jews are so into trans-business where there can be infinite number of ‘genders’. It’s like sexual Houdini-ism. ZELIG is almost like a satire of an intellectual Nazi movie about Jews.
More Notes:
Plenty of white goy novelists had written about vices. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books are about lost souls who indulge in all sorts of dubious behavior. SUN ALSO RISES is more ‘degenerate’ than THE GRADUATE, book or movie. THE GREAT GATSBY is a deeply disturbing novel, about both wasps and Jews. The anti-Semite Celine pioneered a new kind of writing, and his stories were filled with people of questionable character, to say the least.
Also, Jews at the time were making fun of themselves. Don Rickles roasted everyone. Woody Allen loved to crack jokes about Jews(as well as goyim). Mel Brooks made THE PRODUCERS in 1967. It mocks everyone, especially homos.
And if anyone subverted conventions of the movie Western(which owed a lot to Jewish Hollywood), it was the Catholic Italian Sergio Leone.
One notable advantage of Jews in arts & letters for the longest time was they had to grit their teeth and tolerate and even accept things they didn’t like. In other words, they couldn’t keep kosher in dealing with the wider world. There were too many goyim, and they were too goyish and too Christian and too powerful, as well as often anti-Jewish and willing to express such feelings. And yet, this made Jews stronger in a way. It may be that losers can’t be choosers, but those who are forced to choose everything can take ideas from all sides and can grow in empathy. Jews couldn’t cancel Celine, and so, he wrote and came to be a major influence on Jewish authors such as Philip Roth. Jews couldn’t cancel Richard Wagner(except in Israel), and so many Jewish composers drew inspiration from him. Jews couldn’t cancel Christianity, so they wrote some of the best Christmas songs. So, even as Jews felt resentment, they drew ideas and inspirations from the other side. They had no choice, but this made them stronger. If a vegan is forced to eat meat, he may resent it but he will grow stronger with extra protein. If anything, he will grow weaker if he has the power to ban meat and stops eating meat. Because Christians and whites could either ignore or suppress Jews in the past, they could keep only with what they liked. In contrast, because Jews had to deal with goy culture that was all around them, they came to learn a trick or two from what they didn’t like. Kubrick used Richard Strauss in 2001, but suppose Strauss had been canceled and banned because he worked in Nazi Germany.
In a way, it could be Jewish cultural power could now be waning precisely because they’ve gained the power to shut down things they don’t like. So, many interesting talents and thinkers are canceled and blacklisted. Jews may feel safer and more secure as the result, but they’re also creating a culture where everything must be Jew-friendly and suck up to Jews. We now live in a world when Jews can cancel people like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, TS Eliot, Richard Wagner, Celine, Gore Vidal, Knut Hamsun, and many others for their antisemitism, real or imagined(or exaggerated). By suppressing lively goy cuture, Jews have less inspirations to draw from the goy world. Indeed, just look at American Conservatism once it canceled people like Joseph Sobran. As the new rule revolved around ‘Is it good for Jews?’, conservatism turned into all-out cuckservatism.
Maybe Jews realize the dangers of this development on some level. In the past when Jews were surrounded by plenty of goy culture and expressions that weren’t always Jew-friendly, they learned to adapt, learn, draw inspiration, and be vigilant. But in a Jew-power world that has made everything so kosher-friendly and Jew-secure, not only will Jews have less ideas to draw from the goy world(as Jew-friendly hacks are favored over controversial talent) but Jewish kids may grow up nonchalant, apathetic, and lazy. Why should the young ones worry when every goy is always praising Jews and when Jews can easily cancel anyone deemed ‘antisemitic'(or even ‘homophobic’ or whatever)? Jews will become like spoiled princeling brats. That may be why Jewish Power exaggerates the ‘antisemitic’ threat just when goyim are more slavish to Jews than ever. It could be that Jewish Power is nervous that Jewish young may become slack and take things for granted in an overly kosherized world. So, tell them there are nazis lurking everywhere because… uh… anyone Jews don’t like is a ‘nazi’. The more Jews gain nazi-like power for themselves, the more nazis they see everywhere.
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Ethnic actors were a big thing in Beach Party movies.
Frankie Avalon. And brunette Annette Funicello the cutie surrounded by blondes.
Lovely moment:
And a decade after THE GRADUATE, there was the musical GREASE where ‘greaseball’ Travolta hook up with blonde Olivia Newton-John.
Two kinds of youth movies: Ones made in the moment and ones that dwell on nostalgia or autobiography.
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, THE GRADUATE, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, BREAKING AWAY, and RISKY BUSINESS reflect the times in which they were made.
In contrast, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, FOUR FRIENDS, DAZED AND CONFUSED, and C.R.A.Z.Y revive bygone eras. The latter films have less chance of becoming dated because they were made after the fact with more perspective.
And then, there are movies made in the moment but reflecting an earlier era. Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS is set in the 70s, but he drew inspiration from his youth in the late 50s and 60s. As such, the character of Charlie seems somewhat obsessed with moral hangups of an earlier era. Something similar is afoot in SOCIAL NETWORK. Aaron Sorkin projected his generation’s Jewish neurosis onto Zuckerberg, a creature of the 2000s whose world was very different.
A precursor of THE GRADUATE was A MAN AND A WOMAN. It used the stylistics of the French New Wave in service of pop romantic fantasy, and it was a hit and won awards. But Lelouch’s technical mastery was questionable and he resorted to too many musical montages and visual trickery to compensate for weak plot and characterization. There is a lot for film-makers to learn from THE GRADUATE but not so much from MAN AND WOMAN, which only works in short bursts as proto-music-videos. Still, what a nostalgic journey to a France that is now lost to Diversity.
Another film that might have inspired Nichols may be IL SORPASSO(THE EASY LIFE), especially in its use of music.
While some white guys may not want to see blonde girls with Jews or Italians, it’s much worse now as the blondies are with the Negroes.
But then, white men pioneered this race-mixing business. They impregnated the browns of South America. They got black women pregnant in the South. There was the legend of Pocohontas. And plenty of white soldiers overseas had affairs or sex with women in Asia and South Pacific. There was SAYONARA before THE GRADUATE. Marlon Brando had a strange fetish for brown women.. and Robert DeNiro only seems to go for blacks. And James Bond got it on with women of all races.
Jewish Hoffman played a Wasp in THE GRADUATE, and David Lean chose Egyptian Omar Sharif to play a Russian in DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Sharif also played Genghis Khan, and so did John Wayne. Brando as Okinawan in TEA HOUSE OF AUGUST MOON was funny as hell, but Rooney as Japanese in BREAKFAST was even funnier. Anthony Quinn as Greek in ZORBA really did work.
Italians often got Anglo or Northern European actors to play Italians. They were into dubbing.
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THE GRADUATE has great film-making. As different as DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and THE GRADUATE are, they clicked with the audience. LOVE STORY also had memorable music(pretty good schlock), but the film-making was only adequate/good, nothing more. In contrast, THE GRADUATE really is a visual and rhythmic marvel with Nichols throwing so many tricks out of the left field and without being too showy about it. (Both DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and THE GRADUATE are about discovery and struggle of True Love amidst familial concerns, personal commitment, ideological struggles, and power manipulation. Zhivago truly loves Lara but is married to a nice girl. Lara truly loves Zhivago but is also married. She married her first boyfriend quickly as escape from the tormented affair with an older man. But if Zhivago ultimately doesn’t get Lara and had everyone weeping in the theater, Ben does get Elaine.)
I agree the Simon and Garfunkel songs are great. Minus the music, the movie would seen more satirical, sardonic, and biting. It’s the music that softens the edges and provides a romantic mood, sentimental shading.
When the image and sound really click together, it makes no sense to discuss them apart. It’s like the alchemy of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann, Hiroshi Teshigahara and Toru Takemitsu. Nichols and Simon hit it off like Ben and Elaine. Nichols and Simon clicked not so much because they saw eye-to-eye but because the music served as counterpoint as much as padding. “Sounds of Silence”, “Scarborough Fair”, and “April Comes She Will” add something missing in Nichols' comic-cynical style. The song with which the two sensibilities finally converge is “Mrs. Robinson”, a tongue-in-cheek rendition of Middle Class Americana comparable to Rolling Stone’s “Mother’s Little Helper”.
I can understand why many people are put off by Hoffman’s presence or personality, but it is brilliant acting. Also, his voice, being both throaty and nasal, perfectly convey’s Ben state of mind and stage in life. He’s both man surging with testosterone and boy who wants to run back home. And, his deadpan demeanor mixed with shaky nerves is for the ages. With Anne Bancroft, he’s like a shy dog being played by an experienced feline. It’s both cartoony enough for laughs and human enough for tension.
Genuine mood is really hard to do. There are cheap ways to create mood with filters and lighting, but Nichols sustains a consistent mood throughout the film, through light and dark scenes.
And the camerawork is purposeful and edgy, making it both classic and radical. It seems perfectly perched between the rule-book and burn-the-book. The tricks of timing Nichols honed in comedy and sense of staging he got from theater did wonders. Welles also specialized in Audio Entertainment(radio) and theater before entering cinema. Nichols borrowed various styles but matched them seamlessly. The hand-held camera is reminiscent of Cassavates and Godard but pieced subliminally with other styles.
And he went for unconventional perspectives. For instance, when Ben is walking to the right through the guests at the graduation party to head for the stairs, the camera faces away from the stairway leading opposite to Ben's direction. As such, Nichols has to ‘awkwardly’ jerk the camera leftward to show the stairway except it’s done so deftly that this breaking of rules seems natural than false or gratuitous.
Later, when Ben and Elaine are running from the church, can anyone think of a better way to show the bus than by tilting the camera from top to bottom, creating an impression of a bus dropped from the sky, manna from heaven? And the cut from a telephoto shot of Ben and Elaine running from the church that grows blurry to a long shot conveys the sudden shifts in mood and momentum in that charged instant. Nichols was so attuned to every moment, something generally missing in Old Hollywood and even most European cinema, albeit exceptions like JULES AND JIM, a work that is both classic and experimental.
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TIGER MAKES OUT, also released in 1967, was Hoffman’s first film. A small role. He shows up at 5:20 in the video below. The movie seems a more raw expression of Jewish hang-ups.
PRESIDENT’S ANALYST, also a 1967 movie, pushed the satirical tone of THE GRADUATE to the hilt. THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST was prescient about the future of technology and mankind. Big Tech taking over everything.
It was both written and directed by Theodore Flicker, Jewish. As such, it is a more personal work than THE GRADUATE. The Liberal father is the guy who played Ben’s father. (He also played a Liberal parent in TWO FOR THE ROAD, another 1967 movie that was hip to new trends. Written by Frederic Raphael, a Jew with massive chip on his shoulder.)
Robert Redford did take on a romantic comedy role in another 1967 movie BAREFOOT IN THE PARK. 1967 was quite a year.
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Some other interesting ethno-swapping.
The TV movie GETTING MARRIED has an ending not unlike that of THE GRADUATE. In it, Richard Thomas plays an Italian-American.
In BREAKING AWAY, some guy in Indiana pretends to be an Italian-American, as if that will make him appear more romantic and exotic to an All-American Girl. Oddly enough, its snobby Waspy character was actually played by Jewish Hart Bochner. And Robert Redford was one of the leading contenders for the role of Michael Corleone.
Maybe the most vicious and disturbing scene about Wasp-Ethnic tension is the wedding scene in FOUR FRIENDS, written by the guy who wrote BREAKING AWAY and directed by Arthur Penn of BONNIE & CLYDE fame.
THE GRADUATE seems to draw certain strains from THE GREAT GATSBY via CATCHER IN THE RYE. Later, when movies like BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY came around, they seem to be riffing GATSBY and GRADUATE, both of which have come to shape American cultural consciousness and love and class. (Michael J. Fox, another shorty, like Davey Jones of THE MONKEES, which also had half-Italian Mickey Dolenz who looked racially so ambiguous. I wonder if Charles Webb was influenced by Kingsley Amis’ LUCKY JIM.)
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/07/oaf-magnificat-kingsley-amis-lucky-jim-thomas-banks.html
Despite THE GRADUATE looking very mod, I wonder if young people today can relate to technological limitations of the period. If the story were to take place today, Ben would be looking on the internet to find information about where Elaine is getting married than driving back and forth between L.A. and Berkeley. And the dial-up phone at the gas station, what an ancient artifact. They still had those back then. Now, even poor people have handy cellphones, even ‘smart phones’, something unimaginable even to billionaires in the 80s, even the 90s. Many young people could relate to BOURNE movies because the guy was so ‘wired’ techno-psychologically. Very tech-savvy young man outwitting all the institutions that made him what he is.
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Too many people ignore everything but the plot and characters. They respond as if they’re reading some second-rate novel. It’s like judging a song by its meaning. Most songs are trite or banal in what they have to 'say'. It’s the same old story about love, heartache, and etc. Beatles' “Yesterday” offers no greater meaning about love or sadness than a million other songs. Then, why is it special? The words, even if banal, are just right. And the melody and delivery create a unique mood. (Same goes for John Lennon's “Norwegian Wood” and Brian Wilsons' “God Only Knows”.) So, we don’t listen to a song mainly for meaning but feeling and mood. Take “Drive” by the Cars and “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. In terms of meaning, we’ve heard countless songs about broken hearts and romantic obsession. But the style and expressions of those songs are so original and overwhelming that they make conventional or ‘tired’ themes exciting and edgy again. Take the song “Brandy” by Looking Glass, a one-hit-wonder band. The story it tells is one found in a thousand dime store novels, but the melody is infectious, the rhythm soulful, and the performance inspired. As such, it is a one-of-a-kind song, as is “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot.
The fact that some people just see the themes or spot-the-Jew in THE GRADUATE means they are cine-illiterate. It’s like reading poetry as if it is prose and focusing mainly on meaning. Anyone can make pizza. The basic ingredients are well-known. In basic ingredients, great pizzas are 95% like all the other pizzas, even frozen ones, but they have something extra, subtle but crucial that differentiates greatness from mere goodness or acceptableness. TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA has many of the elements of countless other action movies, but why does it tower over the rest? William Friedkin was on fire, got hold of promising material and fine talent, and everything just clicked. Same goes for MIDNIGHT RUN. Everything came together beautifully.
Nichols got just the right ingredients, and the preparation, timing, and delivery were near-flawless in the balance of comedy, drama, romance, and near-tragedy. It made a difference upon release because it was the bridge between Art Film and Hollywood, between Old and Young, and between Sunlight and Rain. There’s a scene in THE WILD BUNCH where the Gorch brothers look across the river at Mexico and says, “It looks like more of Texas as far as I’m concerned”, and Angel says, “Ah, you have no eyes.” Many people have no eyes. For the blind, there is no difference between Orson Welles' tremendous MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and the lame one directed by Alfonso Arau. After all, they tell the same story with the same characters. But comparing those two movies illustrates what a difference a directorial vision can make.
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Anne Bancroft looks like Maria Callas, lending a classic greco motif to the story. Oedipus had sex with his mother, and there is a sub-oedipal underpinning to THE GRADUATE. THE GRADUATE is like an experiment of what-if Greek comedy was blended with Greek tragedy.
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