age of aquarius

"Just one word --
plastics."

I recalled that scene from the movie The Graduate when considering nutrition choices.  When hungry between meals, will choose rice cakes (!) instead of small bag of chips from vend. machine.  Health expert at work says some of those delicious, salty snacks make us more hungry -- more hungry for more of the same type of stuff, and I think there's something in that.  And I remembered rice cakes -- !  They look like styrofoam and taste like air; they're great -- now if really hungry, will choose a rice cake.  Am -- armed -- with rice cakes.

And kept thinking, "rice cakes; rice cakes; rice cakes," then
"plastics, plastics, plastics."

But in the movie the word is not repeated over and over again.
It's just one famous scene where, as Stephen Holden wrote in the NY Times in 1997,

... in which a smug Los Angeles businessman takes aside the baby-faced Dustin Hoffman and declares, "I just want to say one word to you -- just one word -- plastics."

("I just want to say one word to you -- just one -- "
No,
"I just want to say two words to you -- just two words -- rice cakes.")

I was too young to see The Graduate when it came out.  I remember the ad for it in our local paper, with somebody's leg.... When I saw the movie years later during college, I didn't not-like it, but I had the feeling like, Gee it didn't epitomize the 1960s like I thought it was going to.  At least not my feeling of the 60s. 

If I was going to recommend a movie for people to see to get a feeling of the 60s, I would give them Woodstock.

I remember even in grade school, noticing a Big Difference between the world and our country and the events out in reality vs. what we saw on TV shows and in movies.  I used to think, Why do the TV producers have the people in these shows doing these dances that are not what I see in real life, and wearing these clothes that are not what I saw, and not seeming to be up to date, or "with it"? 

And -- why are they saying the word "discoteque"...?
It was like -- these people don't "get it."

Guess I could have been looking at evidence of the so-called "generation gap" right there....the folks running Hollywood and the entertainment business then were over a certain age and they didn't really have a sense of things...and didn't want to.  Like my dad, they were probably all, "That's not music -- that's just noise."  ("Don't trust anyone over 30!"  LOL)

And now discovering The Graduate was based on a novel written in the early 60s, which were really more like the 1950s.

Stephen Holden, in his 1997 NYTms article, refers to Benjamin's parents' contemporaries as "the cocktail generation."  O-kay.

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And here's to you, Mrs Robinson


Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)

God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson

Heaven holds a place for those who pray

(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)



Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon

Going to the candidates’ debate

Laugh about it, shout about it

When you've got to choose

Ev'ry way you look at it, you lose



Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo, woo, woo)

What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson

Joltin' Joe has left and gone away

(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)

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{"Mrs. Robinson," written / Paul Simon.  April 1968
released as single.}

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