Lessons from the movie “The Graduate” for the WOKE

One of the most iconic and beautiful scenes in a movie is the very end of The Graduate. The entire movie is a Romeo and Juliet type fight for love between characters played by Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross. They fight with their respective family and friends. Even a wedding between Katharine and her fiancé, not Dustin, is crashed by… you guessed it, Mr. Dustin who used a huge Christian cross to fight off the crowd. As they whisk away leaving behind an angry and confused wedding party they get on a bus and take a seat all the way in the back and at first have smiles full of relief that they can finally be together. However, both of their smiles slowly turn sour with the realization of something negative. This scene is strange for an American comedy which usually ends on a good note. While this end is up to interpretation, I believe it is pretty clear what the writer of the movie was implying with the story and the plot twist at the very end.

Many times we fight for things in life; however, it doesn’t always result in a positive experience at the very end. In The Graduate example, the couple spent so much time fighting for their relationship that they really didn’t have a relationship to fight for at the end of the day. I will now try to parlay this example to the woke movement which fights for everything under the sun including LGBTQ rights, equal pay, climate change, police brutality, and abortion rights and are very angry and passionate about all the above. However, these social justice warriors do all of this without a very deep understanding about said ideas. For instance, in regards to transgender rights, they don’t really think about how this affects women’s rights. Lia Thomas, a UPenn transgender swimmer, is a great example of transgender rights infringing on women’s rights as women who trained their entire lives are being destroyed by a biological male. Many transgender people themselves, including Caitlyn Jenner, have come out against allowing these things from happening as it is bad for the transgender movement. I’m not arguing for or against transgender rights but rather saying that this movement has consequences that are very different from the LGB part of LGBT.

Now, let’s move on to equal pay which is the idea that women should get as much money as men. This is not a research paper, however, I can say I have done a considerable amount of research on this topic as the gender pay gap appears to be very unfair to women. According to a Harvard study in 2018 titled “Why Do Women Earn Less Than Men?”, one of the biggest reasons for this gap is not what you would expect. Men and women value different things in life especially when it comes to childcare and parent care. Men are much less willing to take a pay cut to take care of their children and especially their parents. Most men can hardly remember to call their parents — forget leaving work to take care of their parents’ grocery shopping. This disparity of values is one of the biggest reasons men make more money. Women being caring, loving and selfless compared to men causes women to experience career interruptions or demotions which obviously has a detrimental effect on their income. As a man I decided to take one day off per week as family leave to have more time with my newborn daughter. I remember my employer, family and friends being in shock that I’m making this sacrifice.

Last point I will make is about police brutality and the entire “defund the police” movement. Defunding the police, in my eyes, is as bad as the war on drugs as it makes the same group of people very happy: the drug cartels! Is their police brutality and horrible treatment of people of color in the US? Absolutely, and it needs to stop yesterday. Is having less police going to fix this problem? Hell no. In fact, it is the opposite because less police means gangs that recruit mostly people of color to have more power to get another generation of fathers into crime and eventually prison. Another example of the woke movement having great intentions but devastating solutions. There needs to be consequences for the bad apples in the police. All the people in prison for drug possession need to be let out of jail and given first dibs on marijuana dispensary licenses like they are doing in New York. These former drug dealers obviously know the business so let’s give them a chance to make a business out of it and make money that not only generates taxes but creates a generation of successful people of color. Let’s NOT defund the police and make the gangs happy.

It reminds me of the song “Because I got high” by Afroman which brings up example after example of horrible decisions while being high on marijuana. I feel like the woke movement is a huge group of potheads that is very angry and trying to solve all the world’s problems with half-baked solutions. However at the end of the day they are a group of highly stressed and socially deprived individuals raised by iPads, video games and parents who had no time to raise them because they were ALSO highly stressed and overworked. At the end of the day our society has created at least two generations of people that are very unfulfilled in life and need Adderall, Xanax and Lexapro to get through the day. They are a group of people very similar to the characters in The Graduate who have spent the majority of their time fighting things and have forgotten how to live and enjoy life. If all the woke issues were to be magically be achieved there would be a huge cheer followed by a quick realization of “crap I have to go to work” and “crap I have to interact with my family and friends.” How about we learn to love our family, friends and work and THEN solve all the world’s problems?