I’ve been sick with RSV. Feeling
better now but still a little woozy after sundown. This virus sure knows how to LINGER! At my most febrile (two weeks ago) I dug up my ANIMAL HOUSE video to cheer myself up and bring my temp down. I watched ANIMAL HOUSE that day. Three times. In a row. Back to back to back Belushi. Heaven. No popcorn needed. No ginormous, wide-screen TV required. The perfection that is ANIMAL HOUSE needs nothing superfluous to prop it up - it stands tall and radiates its own bawdy, ball-buster beauty. That's how funny and fun this movie is! - a film I first saw at the movie theater when I was in high school. It was GREAT IN 1978 AND IT'S GREAT IN 2024!
This viewing I realized what an emotional touchstone ANIMAL HOUSE was for me and my peers. It encapsulated the vibe of the late 1970s, embodied the world view of lots of us kids at the time. Yes, our big brothers and sisters idolized Dylan and Peter Fonda, and they wanted to change the world. But we younger kids were different in 1978 - most of us just wanted to chill out ... have fun, drink and wallow in great music and casual sex. Not necessarily in that order. Toga parties. Food fights. Frat house hijinks. JOHN BELUSHI. ANIMAL HOUSE birthed it all. A loosey goosey sensibility - so needed during the Nixon and Kissinger reign of terror. The administration's endless lies to Americans, the massacres in Vietnam, the executions ... . Animal House was the antidote to the Nixon pornography-poison.
So Delta House, home to Bluto (Belushi) and his beer guzzling compatriots, Otter, Flounder, Pinto, Boone, Hoover and one Gonzo 40-year-old dude, is the worst frat house at Faber College: .02 GPA averages for some of the guys. They cheat on their final exam but steal the wrong answer sheets. They strike out with the ladies, but they seduce the dean's sexy wife. They're fat. They're skinny. They're pimply. They take road trips to women's colleges to pick up the girlfriend of a student who has just DIED at his college. With obit in hand, these punks head out hoping to "score."
The opposite frat house...the perfect one ... is filled with guys who are handsome but morally terrifying. Most are ROTC verging on white supremacy. But they kiss the dean's a*s and wear suit jackets to class. They are also nasty, violent and vindictive - DANGEROUS...JUST PLAIN MEAN.
So when Dean Wormer visits Delta House and tells them their grades and hisses: "YOU'RE ALL ON DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!!!" the guys know he wants them ALL out of his college. Expelled forever. Wormer enlists some of the sadists from the other frat house to help him bring down Delta. For good. This game plan turns out to be their death knell because Delta House rebels to the 'nth degree - not buckling down to get good grades and become less animal but ABSOLUTELY GOING WILD! Toga parties that bring the town to its knees! Sex with the dean's wife. Dragging the ROTC guy's white steed to the president's office. Yes, the gun had blanks in it, but the poor horse still had a heart attack and died on Dean Wormer's desk.
But no matter how gross and repulsive these guys get, you still like them. They're just a bunch of crazy kids who are having fun. Sort of. They get a kick out of Bluto's warped call to arms - he's got his World War II history backwards! They work together to create chaos at the homecoming parade and destroy the downtown ... but you admire their wild cohesiveness. And Katie and Boone really do love each other. Their stoned singing of "Hey, hey, Paula, you gonna marry me?" is sweet and you sigh at "YOUNG LOVE." Hoover, the president of Delta House, is earnest and a hand holder and tries to make things better.
But there are so many girls to screw! So many bottles of beers to guzzle! So many drunken road trips to nowhere.
When they're finally expelled, Belushi (Bluto) is crestfallen: "Seven years of college down the drain!" he says. "I may as well join the fuc*ing Peace Corps!"
I always loved Bluto's "COLLEGE" sweatshirt. Iconic. No special university or school name emblazoned on that smelly swatch of cotton. Just: "COLLEGE." Perfect.
The moral of the movie: There will always be the phonies with all their plastic beauty and clout. They will always want to oppress the average or below-average - us "losers." But we losers are fun, funny, wily and crave justice. We will rebel! We will fight back! We may not have the brawn or the brains - BUT WE HAVE THE SPIRIT!!
SPIRIT ALWAYS WINS!
I am going to try to make my own "COLLEGE" tee shirt this winter. I've got my degree, after all. I've earned it.