IMO, the movie "The Graduate" was the turning point and the beginning of the gloryification

[CK_John]

of the 1% investor class.

It was end of Hollywood love affair with the people Ed would say takes a shower after work. The blue collar middle class that survived the depression, won WWII and were rebuilding Europe.

It was the turning away from the doers to the plastic investors.

[KittyWampus]

1. Was Anna Karenina a glorfication of sexist double standards?

Edit- I'd say The Graduate was an exemplar of the Zeitgeist. I don't see it as enforcing or glorifying it.

Like Carnal Knowledge didn't glorify misogyny or womanizing jerks.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Was Forrest Gump the glorification of stupidity? nt

[KittyWampus]

3. Was Forrest Gump stupid? In some ways, the crowd & people around him seemed stupid.

[FrodosPet]

27. This is correct

In a similar vein, the Beverly Hillbillies was not a takedown of the Clampetts. It was a takedown of the Drysdales and the plastic phoniness of Beverly Hills.

[pinboy3niner]

4. Was Silence of the Lambs the glorification of fava beans?

[KingCharlemagne]

7. Thread winner! I salute you! (And Happy New Year!) - nt

[pinboy3niner]

10. Happy New Year, KC!

And your take on the film is spot on.

[KingCharlemagne]

12. Given a few more responses like yours, this thread has the potential to

become 'epic,' as the kids say these days.

I'm so thinking "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" epic!

[pinboy3niner]

13. Fava beans--they're growing places!

[greatauntoftriplets]

37. Or a nice Chianti?

[NuclearDem]

6. Well, given the movie is about how a man who just does what he's told

ends up rich, successful and happy and the free spirit gets AIDS and dies, I'd say there's some hidden message in there.

[FrodosPet]

23. Wow! Some people just can't grasp the true message

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6028989

[FrodosPet]

21. Absolutely not!

It was a glorification of love, adventure and common sense over arrogance.

The character Forrest was smart to those of us who realize there is more than one kind of intelligence. He survived and thrived and fulfilled promises and took care of people.

If all you saw was "Forrest Gump, dumb guy movie" then I suspect that you never really paid attention to it.

I love that movie.

[KingCharlemagne]

5. Don't quit your day job. Siskel and Ebert, you ain't. "The Graduate" is a

satirical take-down of that very investor class. While Benjamin's and Elaine's futures may be decentered as the film concludes, they have decisively rejected a life of 'plastics' for a future as yet uncertain but one that they and they alone will fashion.

BTW: This is one of the few instances I can think of where the film version drastically improves upon the novel on which it is based.

[lame54]

52. others...

Terms of Endearment
Forrest Gump
Trainspotting

[KittyWampus]

8. Krugman & others have pointed at pro-athelete salaries as a precursor

to the rise of the Investor/CEO's bloated and inexcusable salaries.

[tularetom]

9. LOL - "plastic" investors.

Actually, I think the 1% came off looking pretty superficial and self absorbed in that movie.

[KingCharlemagne]

14. Thanks so much for posting that clip. One of the film's timeless

iconic moments that will ensure Nichols' place in the pantheon for eternity, imo.

[QuestionableC]

11. Everything is a circle

[pinboy3niner]

29. You might remember the popular saying...

"What goes around comes around."

Welcome to DU, questionable.

[MineralMan]

15. Was the movie "Harry Potter" the turning point and the gloryification {sic} of

sorcery and magic?

Movies are fiction. They are not real, and do not form the beginning of anything at all.

"The Graduate" did no such thing as you describe. In fact, it was definitely on the other side. You have either not seen it or did not understand it.

[cilla4progress]

17. Oh, I don't know about that, MM --

I think films can change the zeitgeist, as well as reflect it. Weave into it, in other words.

For example: Was Black Beauty the glorification of humane treatment of sentient beings? Did Elephant Man bring awareness to treatment of the disabled? And on and on ...

[Cosmic Kitten]

56. Really?

Movies are fiction eh?
They are not real, and do not form the beginning of anything at all?

Ever hear of Sergey M. Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin?
How about D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation?

They didn't start or change anything at all?

BTW, Potter was about coming of age,
examining society cynically, facing death, and more.

[MineralMan]

16. IMO, "Cool Hand Luke" was the turning point, and the gloryification of

Southern work camp prison life. Now we have prisons everywhere. Oh, wait...never mind.

[pinboy3niner]

20. There may be an argument that Cool Hand Luke 'gloryfied' plastic Jesuses

They seem to be everywhere now!

[cherokeeprogressive]

43. I can't keep this stuff straight. I thought Cool Hand Luke demonized parking meters. n/t

[MineralMan]

48. Eggs! I have it now! It glorifies eating hard-boiled eggs.

It's all clear to me now (burp).

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

18. Didn't the hero reject the advice to go into "plastics"?

"The Graduate" was anti-plastics investors, FFS.

[cherokeeprogressive]

19. You're nuts. It was a movie about one of the most beautiful women who ever lived... Mrs. Robinson.

[KingCharlemagne]

25. My nominee for co-winner of this thread. Actually Katharine Ross ain't

none too shabby either in my humble opinion. But I remember her from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid too, a film that began the gloryification (sic) of raindrops falling on your head.

Please allow me simply to say, you have exquisite taste!

[Raine1967]

35. That song was the one I picked to dance with my dad at my wedding.

It was lovingly satirical, TBH..

I'll never stop the Raine by complaining

Loved that soundtrack, my parents played it on the 8 track player on road trips when I was a kid. Dad and I butted heads a lot growing up and believe it or not, it was a perfect song to dance with him at my reception!

[KingCharlemagne]

38. For anyone tempted to dismiss Burt Bacharach's song-writing mojo, that

song should for all time refute the nonsense. (Bacharach co-wrote with Hal David.)

Bacharach, Gordon Lightfoot and Carole King are 3 vastly underappreciated songwriters, imo. At the same level as Stephen Foster and Cole Porter, imo.

[Raine1967]

40. I completely agree.

I don;t know if I could add anything more.

I have always loved that song (among many others of course) but that song was just a really good composition.

[waddirum]

45. I agree on all three nt

[cherokeeprogressive]

39. Katherine Ross is no slouch. My favorite Stepford Wife. Besides Paula Prentiss of course.

And for those who don't know, The Stepford Wives was the film that began the demonization of irises.

[KingCharlemagne]

41. This thread has made my New Year's Day, in more ways thay one. This is

an awesome comment you have just posted, a propos of nothing but my and other DUers' amusement, for which no words can express my gratitude.

[cherokeeprogressive]

42. Happy New Year KC.

I'll spend the rest of it thinking about Anne, Katherine, and Paula (not necessarily in that order). Well, at least until this afternoon's bowl (playoff) games.

[KingCharlemagne]

44. LOL. Methinks more than a few will be re-watching the film(s) later today. I'm not a big

football fan, so don't have that to distract me from the really important stuff!

Happy New Year to you also!

[jberryhill]

46. You are trying to seduce me, aren't you?

Best line ever.

[MineralMan]

47. Coo-coo-ca-choo!

[Blue_In_AK]

53. Oh, yes, she has always been a favorite of mine.

Absolutely gorgeous in all her roles.

[Paladin]

22. Wrong. (nt)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. IMO, the movie "The Lord of the Rings" was the turning point and the beginning of the gloryification

of orcs. Damn things are all over the place now; you can't get rid of them without calling an exterminator.

[KingCharlemagne]

28. Coffee, meet monitor! :) - nt

[Fla_Democrat]

57. For the Horde

[Bluenorthwest]

26. Good lord, you have it upside backwards. Benjamin and Elaine reject the plastic world of the 1%

class with it's duplicity and betrayal and escape together from Pasadena by bus. They left the money for love and uncertainty. Wallet forgotten, heart followed.

[Raine1967]

30. Thank you!

I was seriously having a head scratch moment with this OP.

Now I want to watch the movie again. I love this movie!

[KingCharlemagne]

34. I think I'm going to have to also, if only to see the scene where Hoffman

puts on the scuba suit and heads to the pool (one of my favorite all-time movie scenes ever).

[Raine1967]

36. YES! I have to wait until the Winter Classic is over.

It's the Caps, and we have one TV.

After that, I think this is going to be watched today! Happy New Year!

[KingCharlemagne]

32. I've had this debate many a time with fellow film buffs. The wry look on Hoffman's and Ross's

faces as the film concludes admits of ambiguous and mutually contradictory interpretations, one of which is an "Oh, shit, what do we do now?" interpretation. I go back and forth on that ending. It is a Rorschach test, I suppose, or a cinematic validation of reader-response theory perhaps.

[Raine1967]

33. IMO the movie "The Turning Point" was the turning point and the beginning of

...wait.

I Am duzy. I mean dizzy.

ETA: Anne Bancroft was amazing in both films…

[onenote]

50. Thread ender.

[BainsBane]

49. Most of the movies of the thirties and forties featured high-society people

Think of all the movies during the Great Depression, which no sign of poverty or hardship. Nick and Nora, of the Thin Man, did their gallivanting while people were living in Hoovervilles and waiting in bread lines. It was really in the 70s when movies began to take a somewhat (in Hollywood terms) more realistic look at America.

[MineralMan]

51. No, that was "Zabriskie Point."

I'm sure of that...

[Warpy]

54. Ha! They weren't the 1% in that movie

They were college educated people (the men on the GI Bill) who had lucked into middle to upper executive level jobs where they were paid well but without a license to steal. Those were the people I knew at the country club, barely upper middle class and completely self congratulatory that they'd done it all on their own.

"Plastics!" wasn't investment advice, it was career advice.

It was the funniest line in the movie because it was hippie code for sellouts who lived their lives to accumulate things and seemed to have no other dimension, their children being possessions to be shown off and then put away until the next time.

And that, Virginia, is why we all turned to drugs in the 60s.

However, it did mark the death of the Capra everyman and shove him up a career notch where everybody was too rich and too thin.

I could never watch "Friends." Were they all drug dealers? They'd have to be to afford that kind of lifestyle in NYC. My own friends never got to live like that. They lived with bathtubs in the living room in the East Village or in two tiny, sordid rooms they shared in the upper 90s.

[edhopper]

55. You apparently

did not understand anything about the movie.

I will give you a hint. The "plastics" line was meant as satire.


It actually was a turning point in showing the affluent, suburban lifestyle was full of empty, unhappy, unfullfilled people.

[Tom Ripley]

58. Angst of the privileged class

[alphafemale]

59. Do you also think American Beauty is a glorification....

Do you also think American Beauty is a glorification of the middle upper class lives?

Both movies showed how lives could be rotting from within inside the borders of those pretty manicured lawns.

And they aren't 1% btw

You may need a yearly income of about a quarter mil to live in a gated community, but that is nowhere near the billions in wealth needed to be in the 1%.