HERE’S TO YOU , MRS. ROBINSON
Today’s ‘Plastics’: For the 50th anniversary of ‘The Graduate,’ PG readers provide 21st-century advice for college grads
After 50 years, “The Graduate” is back to seduce moviegoers and offer the cinema’s most famous one-word advice for 20somethings seeking their fortune: “Plastics.” The 1967 film that launched Dustin Hoffman’s career and spotlighted the materialism and disaffection of the 1960s is being celebrated with the cinematic release of a 4K digital restoration, in 700 theaters nationwide on April 23 and 26.
Critics and historians may argue about whether “The Graduate” is a movie that defined a generation, but there is no arguing about the film’s most quoted word. “Plastics” alone is No. 42 on the American Film Institute list of the 100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time comes from this conversation:
We asked readers via social media and at post-gazette.com to come up with a word for today’s college graduates that would replace “plastics” in this scene at a party, where a neighbor takes young Benjamin Braddock (Mr. Hoffman) aside to point him toward his future ...
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Plastics. Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it.
When the request first hit Twitter, Post-Gazette social media followers were not in an optimistic mood. Some initial responses were not advice, and not suitable for a family newspaper. Words such as
“Unemployed,” “Indebted” and “Apocalypse” showed up early on, and one reader repeated “Plastics.”
The most serious statements about the future included “Intersectionality” — often coupled with “Feminism,” it has been described as “multiple oppressions and/or discriminations and how they affect different people.” Another was “Automation.”
Other responses — besides the occasional LOL suggestions, such as “Xanax” — were: Water Solar AI (Artificial Intelligence) CRISPR (the acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, a genome) Robotics Natural Gas Pray