Animal House
One of the things I love about the movies is how they encapsulate the turning points of people’s lives. There are movies about first loves, high school, war, first marriages, second marriages, fifteeth marriages1, what it’s like to become a parent, and what it’s like to lose a parent. There are also movies about finding out your parent wasn’t actually on a spice freighter and instead is the second in command to an evil dictator but with the power of love and the guidance of a hermit and green muppet you can redeem him after kissing your sister and cutting dad’s hand off.
And then there are college movies.
I have an interesting relationship with college. I never got the “college experience”—whatever that means. I wasn’t prepared to do well entering Murray State University in 1995 and I promptly flunked out. Twice. I never lived in the dorms, never pledged to a fraternity, never experienced the relationships both romantic and platonic that for many help to define the experience. I really missed out.
In a lot of ways, I started chasing that when I went back to school at Tallahassee Community College in 2008 and onward to Florida State before transferring to Wichita State and then doing my doctorate at Minnesota. Of course by then I was in my 30s with a wife and kids. There was no more college experience for me. Just the oddness of trying to force the square peg of myself into the round hole of life.
But I did get to witness it. God, I love being on a college campus, no matter where I am. There is a feeling that anything is possible. I don’t know anything like it. One of my favorite things to do on campus, especially when I was at Minnesota, was to watch the tour groups. Usually they are led by an upperclassman with anywhere from eight to fifteen people in tow. The groups are often made of families. Mom and Dad (often alumni) decked out in their university gear while their 16 year-old son or daughter looks around wondering what comes next. Sometimes little brother or sister is there too, taking it all in and thinking for themselves where they will be in a few years.
I get excited for these soon to be college freshmen. I know something they don’t: that their lives are about to change more in the next four or five years than they have up until now. And I am excited for them.
So it’s no surprise that college movies are an important genre in American film, with 1978’s Animal House being the king of them all. But just like high school films, there are college movies that belong to each generation. While the boomers get Animal House, and Revenge of the Nerds2, Gen X copied off their work and gave us PCU in 1994. Other defining films include Higher Learning, Van Wilder, and yes, Old School. There are others. We might even consider high school films themselves a subset of college movies, since so many of them deal with the angst of leaving high school relationships behind as friends head to campus.
So tonight we are watching and livetweeting Animal House at 8pm eastern, available on Netflix. It’ll be interesting to see how the film is reflected through so many of our lives since then. I hope you’ll join in.
But not so fast. There’s no way you’re getting out of here without homework. There’s an intense debate right now about the role of colleges in the intellectual and ideological development of students right now, with a conservative shouting point being that universities train young people to become liberal. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd says that’s bunk and actually points to the opposite. If you’re not following her, you absolutely should. She’s brilliant. You can find her on twitter at llassabe. She also wrote a tremendous new book conservative movements on campus. Here’s an Amazon preview below
Get it on Amazon, or follow the link here to UNC Press’ site, use the code 01HATM30 and get 30% off.3 (The code works for all UNC Press books so have a blast.)
You can also find Lauren talking about her work and the movie Old School in the pods below:
Alright, we’ve got a busy day today. I’ve got to finish watching Masters of the Air so we can record a pod this afternoon and I have to pack for Albuquerque, where I head for a week of work tomorrow. Hope to see you tonight.
PSST. I didn’t entirely miss all of college. I did get to do the Walt Disney World College Program, and yes, we had a toga party. There’s a kid who looks a lot like me below. Enjoy.
NEWT coming soon to your theaters.
Holy shit, this movie is trouble.
I don’t get anything from this, but Lauren might send me a fishing hat.
Just have to say that, as a Canadian (at least from western Canada - I understand the university experience may be different in eastern Canada), I always look at movies about the American university experience through a slightly obscure and cloudy lens. Recognizable? Yes, but still substantially different from my own experience and for that matter most of the people I know. The movies are fine to watch, but I am definitely missing some of the cultural connections. Keep up the good, and fun conversation.