It's A Little Secret

We watched The Graduate last weekend, the first time I've seen it for many years- it's still a brilliant film I think but it made for discomforting viewing in ways it didn't when I first watched it in the late 80s. Seen through 2021 eyes (and a fifty one year old eyes as well) the seducing of Ben by Mrs Robinson at a party to celebrate him graduating is less seduction and more grooming. Ben's post- college malaise, aimlessness and fear of adulthood was very familiar to me when I first saw the film but his behaviour becomes increasingly extreme as the film goes on and his treatment of Elaine, the Robinson's daughter seems much crueler now. His later and sudden obsession with her also seems much odder now than it did then- Ben's descent coming across more and more like a breakdown, mental health issues surfacing rather than the whims of a young man. At the centre of the film is the empty lie at the heart of the suburban American dream, the existential crisis of people who have it all but have nothing. Mrs Robinson is bored, listless, trapped by manners and society in a marriage she never wanted but ended up in because of a teenage pregnancy. Ben is adrift, literally for much of film, floating round his parents' pool on a lilo. The only place he seems content is at the bottom of the pool in the scuba diving gear, well away from his parents, their friends and an endless round of congratulatory parties. Mr Robinson plays golf and drinks. Ben and Mrs Robinson's relationship (if that's what it is, regular sex in a hotel filling the hole in both their lives) is destroyed when Ben says he wants to talk before they have sex. The conversation throws it wide open and leads to Ben telling Elaine and everything unravelling. When the action shifts to Berkeley and Ben pursues Elaine the film becomes increasingly dark. It's difficult to have much sympathy for Ben at this point- in 1989 I'm sure it was Ben I was supposed to identify with but it's not easy to sympathise or empathise with him very much now. Dustin Hoffman makes him become pretty unlikeable in ways I hadn't really noticed before. Mrs Robinson, crushed by the affair becoming common knowledge, becomes less sympathetic too. Elaine is the most sympathetic character, about to married to a college boyfriend solely to keep her away from Ben. The closing shot of them on the bus chased by Elaine's family is superb, the sinking realisation on both their faces that what they've just done might not be the answer to either of their problems. 

The Graduate was released in 1967, the central year of the 60s, and is at least partly about a generation gap- Ben's behaviour and attitudes and those of his parents in stark contrast. Ben and Elaine question their parent's values -get married, get a good job, settle down, get a car and a house. Mrs Robinson is questioning those values too. Conformity and acquisition lead to deadening boredom. The youth feel confused and lost. These aren't specific to the 60s, they're universal (at least in the modern world). Ben's generation are now in their seventies, the Boomers, many of them comfortable and well off in their retirement. It's a clever and witty film, sly in places and seems to be about a rite of passage, but some of it's central themes came through quite differently watched in 2021. 

It was well worth watching again. The cinematography is brilliant, suburban California captured in mid- 60s technicolour, the enormous houses and swimming pools, the blues really blue and the greens really green. The soundtrack is, it goes without saying, superb. It's a record that has been part of my life since childhood. My mum had a copy and its cover, Ben in the hotel room and Mrs Robinson's stockinged foot sticking out provocatively, was always near the front of her records. Simon and Garfunkel's songs are not just playing with the film, they are woven into it, as central to it as any of the cast. The Sound Of Silence is as bleak as any folk music made during the 60s, the harmonies and reverb unable to distract from the 1960s- the problems caused by lack of communication, the apathy generated by consumer society, neon gods and darkness. Strawberry Fair/ Canticle is another song that's always been there, not least because in the late 80s The Stone Roses turned into a song about getting rid of the Queen. And then there's Mrs Robinson...

Mrs Robinson

Mrs Robinson was re- written for the film after Simon presented it to director Mike Nichols but began life as Mrs Roosevelt, a former First Lady who worked tirelessly for others and rarely did anything for herself. The famous Joe DiMaggio line appeared out of nowhere according to Paul Simon, a moment of inspiration. 

The Lemonheads cover version from 1992 is an oddity, a minor hit that sounds like the band tossed it off in an afternoon, a punk- ish cover that the record company hoped would recoup some money/ smash the charts. Evan Dando reportedly hates it- so apparently does Paul Simon. 

I'm Aching And Empty And I Don't Know Why

In the eleven and a half years I've been writing about music here I've never once written about or even mentioned Simon and Garfunkel or Paul Simon- which is a little bit strange as they are one of my earliest musical memories. All of the following started to run through my head a week or two ago when a Simon and Garfunkel concert was showing on one of the cable channels, a re- union concert with thousands of cheering New Yorkers and a stage full of musicians. 

Back in the late 70s my Mum bought us a compilation album of hits of the 60s, cover versions by session musicians paid by the hour, knocking 'em out in London recording studios. The Top Of The Pops series are well known- this wasn't one of those but an even more budget album. It had Harlem Shuffle, Windmills Of My Mind and Get Back on it and Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer. There must have been six or seven other songs but those four are the ones I remember. The Boxer made a big impression on me, Paul Simon's lyrics showing a young me, nine or ten years old, something about the power of words and phrasing and what happens when an artist marries them to a good tune. A decade later, in the summer of 1988 I remember watching The Graduate and then rifling through my mum's singles collection for her 7" of The Sound Of Silence. A few years later on I bought Simon And Garfunkel's Greatest Hits, one of those albums that sold in the millions and could be picked up in second hand or charity shops for pennies. This song is seared into me...

America

Based around a road trip Simon took in 1964 with his girlfriend Kathy, America is as good as any song of its kind. The opening line, 'let us be lovers/ we'll marry our fortunes together', jumps out of the speakers followed by Simon's beautifully painted details of the couple's bus trip. The search for 'America', literal America and metaphorical America, ties the song straight into all those giants of American culture, Kerouac's road, the pioneers of the 18th and 19th centuries and Walt Whitman. The search in the vast continent of North America that is really a search for self and for meaning. The last verse is a killer, capable of moving the hardest of hearts- '' 'Kathy I'm lost' I said, though I knew she was sleeping/ 'I'm aching and empty and I don't know why/ Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike/ They've all come to look for America'. I've never been to New York and I'm sure the New Jersey Turnpike is just a motorway junction but it holds a special place in my personal mythology. 

By 1987 Paul Simon had recorded the album Gracelands. The single You Can Call Me Al,  with Chevy Chase starring in the video, was inescapable. Paul Simon had broken the cultural boycott of South Africa's government and the apartheid system. As a card carrying socialist and supporter of the African National Congress  in 1987/8 the words of Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and Jerry Dammers carried more weight with me than Paul Simon's songs so Gracelands was verboten (although Joe Strummer was a massive fan of the album). Plus it seemed to be very much a yuppie/ compact disc album back then, not the sort of thing to be caught listening to. I still don't own a copy but it would take a churl to deny the power of the songs, not least this one which is the very essence of life affirming pop coupled with African music. Simon travelled to South Africa and met and played with a number of musicians. This song was written with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, singing in Zulu, and with Youssou N'Dour on percussion. 

Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes

This dub/ remix by Scandi- house producer Todd Terje is a joy too, a smart example of the art of the re- edit and how to push a song back onto the dancefloor several decades after it was recorded.