Two Movies: Fight Club and Goodfellas

What Fight Club is about: Fight Club is about a corporate cog struggling to find comfort in a mundane life that is excited by a new exciting “friend” in Tyler Durden.

What Goodfellas is about: Goodfellas is about the life of a gangster who lives lavishley but has to keep constantly committing crimes in order to keep others in line.

What my paper is: Doing an expository piece discussing the awesome production history of both movies and discussing the archetypes each fall into and how that potentially influenced what is on screen.

Questions: Not sure if the nationalist or archetypal thing is really part of this paper but is included because it was mentioned in class.

Annotated Bib

1. Halnon, Karen Bettez. Teaching Sociology, vol. 30, no. 4, 2002, pp. 503–506. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3211512.
   1. The source provides a summary of the plot and suggests themes and questions that the movie poses. These questions can be tied to production aspects present in other sources.
2. Raftery. Brian. BEST. MOVIE. YEAR. EVER.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen. Simon and Schuster. April 16, 2019.
   1. This gives information on what exactly Fincher went through to produce the movie and how the book eventually got in his hands. I will definitely use the quote “This is as serious about blowing up buildings as The Graduate is about fucking your mom’s friend”
3. Ratner, Brett, producer. “The Making Of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990)”.
   1. This documentary features interviews with actors as well as the director along with clips from the movie that they talk about. I will quote the actors talking about what the director wanted from each scene.
4. Sharf, Zack. “‘Fight Club’: David Fincher on Clashing With Ed Norton, Battling Fox Over Marketing, and Bad Box Office”
   1. Another article detailing background information about the director. It has a good section about a clash with Ed Norton that I will use.
5. Viano, Maurizio. Film Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 3, 1991, pp. 43–50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1212795.
   1. This is a piece discussing the plot of the movie along with a history of the movies that the director has produced. This will be used in the paper to talk about the directors history and how that has affected GoodFellas.

While there are many things to take away from a viewing of The Graduate, the use of archetypal thematic elements within the film work to portray a universal experience. Benjamin Braddock has just graduated from university, and he’s immediately thrust into the real world with no time to prepare. Braddock’s situation is a common one, experienced by each and every person at some point in their life. At some point, everyone must eventually make the transition into adulthood, and many are not prepared for such a harsh transition. I believe the film aims to deliver a message about human behavior during this time by using Braddock as an embodiment for the confusion and fear accompanying a new life experience. With little hesitation, Braddock engages in an affair with Mrs. Robinson, a middle-aged married woman whom he’s known since he was a child. The spontaneity of this decision showcases Braddock’s wild desire for some sort of stability, as he’s unsure of everything else in his life. Braddock never seems to know why he’s doing what he’s doing. He acts on impulse, grasping for anything that will make him feel safe in the insane world around him. Viewers who have experienced a transitional phase in their lives are thus able to see pieces of Braddock’s behavior within themselves. They can resonate with Braddock’s feelings of loneliness, confusion, and impulsiveness.

The Graduate also works to utilize elements from nationalist tradition in order to create a message about the true American experience. The film was released in 1967, during a rough time in American history. The nation was divided on issues regarding civil rights and the Vietnam War, causing the rise of the counterculture movement. The Graduate depicts the sentiments of the counterculture movement through the actions of both Benjamin Braddock and Elaine Robinson. Their refusal to follow the orders of their parents, for better or for worse, represents the American youth’s wide distrust of the national government. Braddock’s father wants him to go to graduate school, but he decides to do anything but that. He lays out in the pool every day, has sex with Mrs. Robinson every night, and eventually decides to throw his entire life away to run away with Elaine. Absolutely no motive is made apparent throughout the film as to why he chooses to do these things, other than the fact that he was told not to. Elaine behaves in a similar fashion, rebelling against her parent’s wishes to marry a typical fraternity boy. Instead, she abandons her wedding ceremony, discards her college education, and runs away with a man whom she previously thought raped her mother. The audience is left flabbergasted at the absurdity of Elaine and Braddock’s reckless behavior, as neither of them gain any true happiness from what they had done. They were rebelling due to a distrust of the authoritative figures in their lives. They stuck it to the man, like the members of the 1960s counterculture movement did with the United States government.

The Graduate tells a story that plays on both archetypal and nationalist ideas.  On one level, Benjamin is the typical hero figure who must go on a quest to attain self knowledge.  The elements critical to such a story are all there, but subverted in some way. To begin, Benjamin is pestered by friends and family to pursue a future along various paths.  This is his “call to adventure” as described by the hero’s journey. However, Benjamin is clearly unready to accept this call, and has no interest in doing so. To make this dilemma more interesting, Benjamin encounters a mentor figure in the form of Mrs. Robinson.  Mrs. Robinson has already seen a lot of what adult life and possibilities have to offer, and prematurely tempts him into those experiences through sexual encounters. The rest of the movie portrays Benjamin teetering along the threshold of adulthood, more or less unable to make a single decision for himself.  He does not cross the threshold, and journey into a possible next phase of his life, until he decides to take Elaine away from her wedding and escape into the unknown.

 

The Graduate also plays off of nationalist ideas of the late 1960s.  For starters, this was a time of civil progress in America. The civil rights act, which was passed in 1964, made things like religious and sexual discrimination illegal.  These societal changes are reflected by specific scenes in the movie. For instance, the kind of manhandling that Benjamin performs on the cross at Elaine’s wedding would have been terribly culturally taboo in the years preceding this movie, and probably would have caused severe box office backlash.  Also, the sexual actions that Benjamin performs with Mrs. Robinson, a woman 20 years his elder, probably would have been viewed as pushing the envelope too far before the national relaxation over sexual taboo that occurred in the sixties.

The movie The Graduate works within the archetypal tradition by narrating the universal dilemmas of young people in their 20s – uncertainties about relationship and future. Even as the so called “successful graduate”, Ben is not exempt from the uncertainty about his future. Different voices revolves him, as everyone seems to know what is best for him except himself: his dad wants him to go to graduate school and some other person wants him to work in plastic industry. He himself, however, being puzzled by both his own confusions and the chaos outside voices, chooses to numb himself with sex and idleness: he sleeps with an older woman with the hope of breaking the current stalemate in life, and he floats in the pool for days and days due to a lack of motivation and as an evasion from reality.

The nationalist tradition underlies the movie by providing specific settings for the plot. A graduate from Williams college, Ben is placed on much hope and stress due to the reputation of the college, or more specifically, the possibilities that grows from people with a higher education degree in the most prestigious college. “Graduate school” or “plastic industry” are all illustrations of the American’s representation of success in that age. Either becoming successful in academics, or becoming the richest. Yet, in the 1960s, with the civil rights movement and Vietnam War raging, the college students, who were most exposed to debates about reality issues, were most prone to doubt, and Ben was one of them who lived under the double pressure of the elderly who firmly believed in the American dream and the self doubt that grew from his college experience.

The Graduate works within the archetypal tradition of rebelling against society.. The protagonist, Benjamin Braddock, was thriving: captain of the cross country team, head of the debating club, associate editor of the college newspaper, and college graduate. At least, he was thriving based on society’s definition. It is clear that these were mostly meaningless titles to Benjamin, who ran upstairs to avoid hearing them listed off, as if titles were all that defined him as a person. This shows that he was already against societal expectations. However, he throws the norms out the window by having an affair with his parents’ friend, a married lady 20 years older than him. Within the implicit rules of society, this is a major taboo. He did hesitate at first, but his decision to go ahead with it represents the beginning of his rebellion against society, a rebellion that later included lying on the pool every day instead of going to graduate school, as well as stealing Elaine during the wedding ceremony, further rebelling against God, symbolized by him using the cross as a weapon.

The film can also be seen as working within the nationalist tradition. During the mid-1960s (when the film was made), the US was amidst the Vietnam War and the Cold War in general. Arguably, young men were facing the prospect of being drafted and facing death in a foreign country. They didn’t think about their future as a when, but an if. Hence, the uncertainty Benjamin has about his future during the beginning is very representative of this mindset. Furthermore, his nonchalance towards his college achievements and graduate school – his future in general – further represent young Americans’ attitudes during the time. He seems to live for the present, content with relaxing in the pool and having meaningless sex. Most significantly, his wild and dedicated chase for Elaine ends with him winning her, but as they are driven off in the distance, a line in the frame separates the two main characters, and Benjamin has a look of unease or boredom. This shows his passion for experiencing the present – the chase for Elaine – as well as the apathetic views towards his future – actually settling down and living a married life.

 

The movie The Graduate (1967) exhibits both archetypal and nationalist elements of storytelling. The first archetype we see is the element of awkwardness around the idea of Ben having sex for the first time. Mrs. Robinson mentions that it isn’t something to be embarrassed about because it’s a universal thing that everyone goes through. This adds an experience that mostly everyone in an audience can relate to assuming that most people will have sex for the first time at one point in their lives. Even in a broader sense, this scene can be symbolic for the nervousness present before doing something out of your comfort zone. Everyone can relate to being afraid to take a leap of faith, regardless of what the task is. Another archetype is the opening scene where everyone at Ben’s celebration keeps asking him what he has planned next. Ben has no idea what he wants to do with his future even though he is expected to have it all planned out. Young adults are put under a lot of pressure by older people to figure their lives out before they even get a chance to live them. This is something a lot of people can relate to: not knowing what’s in store for the future but instead figuring things out as they go along.

The story of The Graduate was written in the 1960’s which was when many anti-Vietnam protests were held on college campuses. Being a story about a college graduate, the story has a national aspect that represents the part of the nation that is going against the war efforts of the government. For instance, the majority of the movie consists of outside forces trying to keep Ben and Elaine away from each other but they fight to be together in the end because they believe in their love for each other. In the same way, liberal students who fought against the Vietnam war in the 60s were doing do because they strongly believed in peace. The movie creates unity between people of the time who want to go against what the greater part of society expects of them.

The Graduate’s final scene provides important insight into the overarching archetypal themes throughout the film; as Benjamin dramatically “rescues” Elaine from her own wedding, the film documents the two’s reactions as they contemplate their actions. At first, like other similar films about forbidden love, they beam at each other, content with their youthful passion and impulsive rejection of the status quo. Then, as the camera remains uncomfortably fixed on them well past where any other film would cut to credits, their smiles fade, and the passion of the moment disappears and is replaced by worry about the future. Throughout the film, Benjamin experiences the universally disappointing reality behind impulsive decisions. To reserve a hotel room for his affair, he must first awkwardly interact with a judgemental concierge. To take Elaine on a spur-of-the-moment date, he is forced to deal with rude customers blaring music. To dramatically interrupt Elaine’s wedding, he finally has to deal with the life after his hasty decision: a theme which is, by nature, is a universal human experience.

The opening of The Graduate demonstrates clearly the film’s nationalist storytelling approach,  demonstrating the terrifying uncertainty of the purposeless and directionless life of a 20th Century college graduate. As Benjamin stumbles aimlessly around his own graduation party, he repeatedly (and literally) bumps into vaguely introduced acquaintances, each of whom either question or insist his future plans as he is released into the world. Finally, however, a sense of overbearing freedom and equally overbearing expectations compels Benjamin to refuse any agency at all, instead passively accepting any direct, tangible opportunities presented to him. Here, the film presents Mrs. Robinson as Benjamin’s first tangible opportunity; as each of his guests offers an incredibly vague depiction of his future, Mrs. Robinson offers a direct opportunity for Benjamin as she attempts to seduce him. Later, Benjamin abandons Mrs. Robinson as he is handed another opportunity: this time to form a life with her daughter. Consistently, Benjamin rejects personal agency by accepting unsustainable lifestyle choices which lack any long-term planning or longevity.

The Graduate incorporates archetypal traditions in plot. One such archetypal tradition is the idea of the hero’s quest. Based on How to Read Literature Like a Professor, there are certain elements of a quest that is present throughout many stories and myths in history. In the case of our film, Ben’s call to action was Mr. Robinson telling him to take Elaine out. Like many hero’s Ben initially refuses the call but eventually realizes that he wants Elaine. He enters a new world of relationships and love, but he also encounters many obstacles such as the Robinsons and their decision to keep Elaine away from Ben. After Ben’s period of disarray, he makes up his mind that he wants to marry Elaine, and grows his character and skills until he is successful. Finally, he returns home (or somewhere) with Elaine, even if it means he returns to his unclear and worrisome future. Such a pattern of the hero’s quest is adaptable to many stories, and as such it carries on the archetypal tradition.

Following WWII, the economy grew slowly in the 50s until the massive boom in the 60s. The generation of youth was the most affluent in U.S. history. The youth counterculture encompassed separation from mainstream politics and a sexual revolution. The film represents the nationalist tradition of the time through the perspective of Ben. While he was not a straight up hippie, his outlook on his future resembled that of the counterculture. Coming from a well-off family and with a disillusionment of conservative society, Ben was lost in planning for the future for he had no immediate need to work or be a “contributing” member of society. In addition he experimented sexually in ways that are taboo, indicative of the sexual revolution of the time.  Another nationalist tradition represented in the movie is the idea of a loveless marriage. In the 50s and 60s, divorce was highly frowned and an illegitimate child would apply pressure of a pair of individuals to stay together to avoid the social stigmas. This is exactly the reason that Mrs. Robinson stays married despite her lack of affection. She can avoid social scrutinization of being a single working mother and continue to care for her daughter as long as she stays married.

In The Graduate, the symbols of water and glass work within the archetypal tradition of a Bildungsroman. The Graduate displays Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate, with no well-defined aim in life, which makes him feel uneasy. Water played a major role throughout the whole movie. At the beginning, we see Benjamin staring into his fish tank in his room. Later, we see Benjamin sink to the bottom of his family’s pool in a scuba costume. Additionally, Benjamin is seen floating around in the pool during his affair with Mrs. Robinson. The water symbolizes Benjamin’s bewildered status in life, present in scenes where he is unsure about the decisions that he has made. Similarly, glass symbolizes Benjamin’s relationship with the world. Benjamin is always seen looking through glass: his fish tank, the scuba mask, the phone booth at Mrs. Robinson, and the church window while Elaine is getting married. The glass separates him from the world, cutting Benjamin’s feelings from himself. However, Benjamin breaks through into adulthood by coming out from behind the glass to take initiative of something that he values in life.

The Graduate also embodies a nationalist tradition—Americanism to be exact. Benjamin symbolizes many youths in America who recently graduate college. They are uncertain about their future, making it seen as though they are going through an existential crisis. His parents through a grand party for his graduation despite Benjamin’s wishes, a way for the upper class to show off superficial accomplishments. As well as being praised by his father, Benjamin is also pressured by him to either go to graduate school or find a job after weeks of staying at home and lounging on the pool. Benjamin’s father expects his son to fulfill his perception of the American dream, making it big in the plastic industry.

From the perspective of an archetypical tradition, The Graduate is evidently an archetypical coming of age story. It is the story of a young man, Benjamin Braddock who is immature and  uncertain about his future. Throughout the beginning of the story he shows a constant desire, if not need, to be given directions as to the course he needs to take. He retreats into the embrace of Mrs. Robinson, serving as symbolism for an almost Oedipal urge for Benjamin to look towards a matronly figure who will give him direction, or at the very least, pleasure. The conflict arises when Benjamin makes the decision to move away from this maternal influence when he meets Elaine, who he is able to connect with on a more equal level. Where Mrs. Robinson is a figure representing comfort in control, Elaine represents freedom in risk. In order to win her over, Benjamin must take embrace the uncertain nature of the future, representing a departure from childhood immaturity and a transition into a life wherein he must make decisions for himself, without older figures telling him what he can and cannot do.

From a nationalistic perspective, The Graduate can be seen as a reaction against the societal pressure towards tradition. Benjamin’s sense of ennui results from his all too comfortable middle-class life. He has great expectations thrust upon him, but he has no idea as to how he will meet those expectations. Those who surround him are more than eager to dispense advice on how to achieve success, but very few are able to tell him how to achieve happiness. Mrs. Robinson, for example, represents comfort and empty pleasure– but ultimately interactions with her leave him unfulfilled, no matter how much he may try. His pursuit of Elaine– despite others prohibiting him from doing so– represents an American individualistic ideal. To pursue Elaine is to take a risk. But it is in going against the grain that Benjamin has a chance of finding true joy. In order to achieve true fulfillment, Benjamin must embrace the American ideal of taking risks over accepting empty comforts based upon what others want of him.