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When "Animal House" was released 40 years ago on July 28, 1978, the tale of low-budget, guerrilla-style campus anarchy hit the public, becoming the most lucrative comedy of the day. Hollywood history and exercising a powerful power. influence on culture. Mostly remembered is his comedy, "Animal House" is also a political satire in the tradition of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut and "The Simpsons", and his raucous and episodic narrative puts a finger in the eye of the artist. 39, self-image of America.
The most visible and immediate influence of Animal House has been the development of an entire sub-genre of mature films, imitators of first generation such as "Porky's", "Police Academy" and "Revenge of the Nerds". "at second generation iterations such as" American Pie "," Old School "and" Van Wilder. "All these films echo the situations and characters of" Animal House ", but, more fundamentally, they tend to imitate the Party spirit at the heart of "Animal House."
Offscreen, the iconic images from the film In Progress have provided a pattern of social behavior for generations of young men. did not invent the party culture on campus, it helped to codify and elevate it in a way of life.The epidemic of binge drinking and rape culture on campus is an indicator from the social impact of the film.
The meta-gag at the heart of "Animal House" is that the members of Delta House are so different – the woman's Otter, the romantic Boone missed, the Hoover politician, the black hole of Bluto Blutarsky's man – they are all united by a unique philosophy according to which The fundamental purpose of human life is to engage more often and with the greatest obstinacy possible the most immediate gratification currently available. The characters who share this consensus are the crowd of the film, the ones who get it, and the villains of the movie are the characters who sublimate their biological urges in sado-masochistic order diets, such as the Omega fraternity. elite, or in the maintenance of their own power, as Dean Wormer, or in the militaristic discipline of the ROTC squadron of Niedermeyer. Throughout the film, the Deltas lead a sustained terrorist campaign against these forces of regimentation ("every spring, the trees are filled with toilet paper, every autumn, the toilets are exploding"), a campaign that culminates with the Assault on the Faber College parade. at the climax of the film. In this context, the Delta parties themselves are political expressions of resistance to the dehumanizing expectations of American adulthood.
At the same time, the Deltas' resistance campaign is resolutely apolitical. They engage in anarchism with the same hedonistic abandonment with which they throw parties – for the thrill of the difficulty of making an end in themselves. Otter rallies his fraternal brothers to perpetuate their disruption of the parade back by invoking their sense of transcendental uselessness: "I really think that this situation requires that a really stupid and futile act be done by somebody." One! "
released in 1978, Animal House bypbades the campus activism of the late '60s and early' 70s, relying on the turbulent energies that shook the campuses during the middle years but by publishing their political idealism and ridding them of their ideological content. The rejection of the 60s is emblematic during the toga party when Bluto, annoyed by the seriousness of a folk singer, abruptly snatches the man's acoustic guitar and shatters it against a wall. Bluto's violent response to the folk singer expresses a visceral disregard for the idealism of a utopian counterculture, while Bluto himself, an inarticulate link of blind appetites, represents a more fundamental rejection social values.
Liberal utopianism is depicted in the film's climax, which depicts a reenactment (or pre-enactment, since "Animal House" takes place in 1962) of Kennedy's badbadination with the Deltas in the role of Lee Harvey Oswald, derailment of the Camelot procession with the nihilistic energies of their custom-made Deathmobile. The sequence ends with torn Kennedy's head, ragged hands of interracial harmony, figures of authority in the air and devoid of any foundation and ascendant chaos: a perfect representation of the postmodern and post-utopian condition of the late 1970s.
In the absence of a deeper political ideology, members of the Delta brothers fall back on the inherent tribal values in the idea of a fraternal organization as a source of social cohesion. The deltas are described as more democratic than the elite Omegas since they invite the losers Pinto and Flounder to engage, but their fraternity excludes the same "other" individuals – the marginalized with brown skin and handicapped – who were put away feast. Although the Deltas are enthusiastic fans of black music – Otis Day and the Knights are bringing home the house when they play at the Deltas togata party – the film depicts an impbadable gap between the fraternal brothers and the real blacks when Otter, Boone, Pinto and Flounder find themselves in a roadhouse where racial stereotypes about African-American men are laughing.
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Roadhouse scene puts the emphasis on the fact that the makers of "Animal House" are aware of the whiteness of the Delta brothers, and the scene oscillates between the satire of exposed racist stereotypes and their approval. The scales are firmly geared towards promoting racist stereotypes in one of the filthiest gags in the film. When one of the women who accompanied the Deltas to the "roadhouse" claims that she specializes in "primitive cultures," the scene falls on Otis Day. flamboyantly singing meaningless syllables in a way that suggests the racist insinuation that African Americans are representatives of a primitive culture. In another scene, we see that a Confederate flag hangs in the bedroom of Hoover, the president of the Delta House. The disunity of the hands of interracial harmony at the end of the film only literalizes the entrenched segregationism at the heart of the film's ethos.
Sexism and homophobia also play a central role as ingredients in the social cement that unites the Delta. the fraternal bonds of the brothers. With the exception of Boone's girlfriend, who is herself a stereotype of the long-suffering girlfriend, the female characters of "Animal House" are divided into two sorority heads: Babs and Mandy's 39, one side and caricature proto-feminists from Dickinson College on the other. Much like the portrayal of African-Americans in the film, women's film portrayals straddle the border between ironic satire and cynical exploitation. When Bluto climbs a ladder to watch bedtime at the sorority, the semi-bare pillow battle he's witnessing is funny because of the way he's lecturing male fantasies about what the kids do. when they are alone, but also invites the viewer to share the voyeuristic fantasy, as Bluto explicitly does by breaking the fourth wall and arching a lascivious eyebrow at the audience. The frequent use of the word "homo" as an insult also serves to control the badual identity of the fraternal brothers. For the post-utopian nihilists of "Animal House", the objectification of women and the denigration of homobaduals fulfill a social function similar to the promotion of racist discrimination, providing a common language to unify a community of men heterobadual whites
. "Animal House" is primarily known as a comedy on college, the movie's satire penetrates beyond the refined campus environment to target American culture more generally. National Lampon writers who collaborated on the script indicate as much when Otter protests to Dean Wormer that "if the entire fraternity system is guilty, then is not it an indictment of our educational system in general? I told you Greg – is not it an indictment against all of our American society? "The Otter mix with the Delta House inspires his brother brothers to spontaneously humiliate the star-spangled banner, suggesting that racism, badism and homophobia of the Deltas, as well as their hedonistic interest and anarchist nihilism, are deeply rooted in the American character.The enduring popularity of "Animal House" reflects the extent to which viewers react viscerally to the funk-mirror representation of postmodern American virility.
From our point of view 40 years later, it is easy to see that the film "national lampoon" of Le White male tribalism taking indistinctly to the pillars of the social order remains relevant. In the 1980s, the gloomy amorousness represented by Otter would become a signature posture among the Yuppiist avatars like Alex P. Keaton, Patrick Bateman and Donald Trump, characters for whom the ethics of "The" personal interest would fill the void left by the collapse of all other shared cultural values. Supporters of Donald Trump would be delighted to imagine the 45th president as the driver of the Deathmobile, dizzying ramming in the parade of liberal progress personified by President Kennedy, derailing the course of interracial reconciliation and basking in the ensuing chaos .
The final laugh, however, is upon us, the public inheriting the world that is left behind in the wake of the Deltas onslaught on the post-war progress procession. "Animal House" ends with a series of legends revealing what happened to the characters of the film between 1962 and 1978, and the fates of the characters are intertwined with the social upheavals of the time: Niedermeyer is killed in Vietnam, Marmalard is arrested for his participation in the White House Nixon, Katie and Boone divorced and, as a satire coronation, Bluto becomes Senator Blutarsky. The Deltas terrorist campaign against progress, authority and reason itself succeeded and we remained among the ruins. Despite its many imitators, "Animal House" remains unmatched in the infinite cynicism with which the failure of the American post-war project is pronounced. What remains to be done but to laugh?
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