Monday, February 28, 2011

The New "Plastics"

From all reports (I haven't yet seen it yet) The King's Speech is well-scripted, well-acted and deserving of its Best Picture Oscar. But I suspect that, like 1981 winner Chariots of Fire, The King's Speech years from now will be regarded as merely an interesting historical piece.

At the 1982 Academy Awards Chariots of Fire won over Raiders of the Lost Ark, which turned out to be one of the most popular movies of all time (admittedly, popularity doesn't necessarily mean quality) and a movie whose lines and scenes are much more familiar to today's audiences.

43 years ago In the Heat of the Night, a suspenseful police drama with a race-relations subtext, beat out The Graduate for the Oscar. The Graduate, with its iconic scenes and song, is now #17 on the American Film Institute's top-100 list of all-time movies, much higher in rank than In the Heat of the Night.

One of the memorable lines from the Graduate consists of one word, "plastics", the counsel that a middle-aged man gives to the young Ben Braddock played by Dustin Hoffman. "Plastics" has now entered the lexicon as a representation, with more than a hint of mockery, of our tendency to distill the future down to ten words or less (in this case it's just one word).

Perhaps coincidentally the latest most-brilliant-career that a young person could choose is represented by the title of another 2010 Best-Picture nominee, The Social Network. But the advice to go into "social networks" would appear to be wise, at least here in the Bay Area. Social-networking companies like Facebook and Zynga are writing salary-and-bonus offers of $100,000 to $150,000 a year for new college grads .

O, to be young with a double E degree from Stanford. The world would be my oyster.

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