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Article: The molding of the world.
- Article from:
- U.S. News & World Report
- Article date:
- June 25, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 All rights reserved. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Everybody gets the joke when the tacky party guest in the classic film The Graduate makes young Ben promise to consider a career in, of all things, plastics. Since 1967, the scene has endured as a symbol of the dehumanizing superficiality of modern life, and the word "plastic" has morphed into an insult, connoting things fake, meaningless, cheap.
Yet, if Ben had ventured into the world of plastics, he would have discovered endeavors worthy of humanity's loftiest ideals. Not only does The Graduate itself owe its existence to the plastic film it is recorded on, but by the time the scene was shot, plastics were already reshaping history. Sophisticated new materials ...