side probe #2

ON THE RETRIBALISATION OF OUR YOUNG.

At a recent showing, the film The Graduate was preceeded, with serendipitous appropriateness, by a trailer ad for Oedipus the King.

The Graduate is Oedipus in Reverse.

Oedipus was tribal man's struggle to disengage himself from the incestuous kinship bonds of any tribal society.

Ben, the Oedipus of The Graduate, is propelled in the opposite direction.

His struggle, or tragic "agon", involves him in re-making the tribal image for himself, just as Oedipus was involved in the struggle of making a private or individual image.

Ben is seduced by his own "mother" (Mrs. Robinson, queen of the jet-set of consumer values) and violently elopes with his own "sister", Elaine.

Mrs. Robinson has enough civilisation left in her private make-up to fear this elopement as a final betrayal of all her values.

Ben's father and Robinson Sr. are business partners, underlining the kinship bonds of the society.