Animal House Turns 45: A Dartmouth Story, Part II

This is the second part of an article that appears as “Animal House Turns 45: A Dartmouth Story.”

In this column last week, this Reviewer wrote an article detailing Dartmouth’s influence on Animal House (1978), the impact that the film had on the College, and to what degree it reflects Dartmouth’s current culture. But that article was incomplete. Herein its writer engages in a deeper defense of the brotherhood that the film portrays.

While Animal House, scripted by Chris Miller ’63, is for many an exercise in gleeful nostalgia, for others it represents a part of American culture that society should leave in the dustbin of history. As mentioned in the preceding article, various members of the Dartmouth “community” called for an end to Greek Life in the immediate wake of the film’s release. Partially in reaction to the enthusiasm for the film, the Administration imposed yet more restrictions on the activities of Greek houses. 

Critics of fraternities often single out Animal House as representative of everything that they hate about the Greek system. This comes as little surprise: The film shows a group of young men disrespecting authority, disregarding rules, violating social norms, and ultimately doing far better than their straight-and-narrow foes. Ty Burr ’80, quoted in the previous article, represents this faction of Animal House viewers. He goes so far as to correlate the film with the rise of the Reagan era—an age of brash, young Republicans who reveled in skirting norms and codes of polite society. 

Today, a new wave of anti-Greek Life sentiment has taken root in parts of campus culture. The Dartmouth has run articles that call for enforced gender integration, and the Administration has issued a whole rash of fraternity suspensions. More broadly, the laissez-faire era of Reagan society has swung back towards enforced social codes and heightened sensitivity. Perhaps, then, it would be worthwhile to examine Animal House with a focus on fraternity culture, to see if its message is worth heeding or discarding.

First, to say that Animal House is a pro-fraternity film is not entirely accurate. In fact, the film presents two visions of fraternity culture. The film opens with the main characters, students at Faber College, visiting Omega House. This is any administration’s ideal fraternity—clean, proper, and generally “civilized.” Instead of standing in opposition to administrators, it actively supports Dean Wormer. Acting as the quislings of Greek Life, the Omegas run their fraternity as a de-facto arm of the college. Interestingly, they also care far more about social standing than they do each other. And, as the scene of its rather improper hazing ritual demonstrates, Omega’s obsession with social correctness is nothing more than a thin veneer hiding its members’ inner darkness. Despite Omega’s professed concern for safety, its members are the first to resort to true violence. Niedermeyer attempts to shoot a Delta brother during the finale, his face screwing into an image of pure psychopathy. 

It is this kind of fundamentally corrupt organization that thrives off of following the precise norms set down by Faber’s administration. While it follows these codes of conduct to the letter and excels at ingratiating itself within the rigid social system, Omega is morally bankrupt and spiritually stifling. Omega represents the worst kind of fraternity, a place where its members feel no connection, where all must emulate a universal standard, and which is merely an extension of the most demented aspects of status quo society.

In direct contrast to Omega’s outward perfection and internal corruption is Delta, the “Animal House” for which the film is named. Delta is in every respect a house that does not fit within the system. Its building is run-down and decrepit, with peeling paint and an interior that looks like a back-alley opium den. Its members are not from the cream of College society but are instead unique, and they fall somewhere on a spectrum from scoundrel to slob. They have poor, increasingly failing grades and spend more time playing various pranks on Omega and on the administration than they do studying. Yet, for all of its outward faults, Delta, at its core, is a true Brotherhood. 

Despite their outward rudeness, Delta’s brothers create a far healthier community than do the superficially polite but truly disturbed Omegas. Critics like Ty Burr claim that Delta’s brothers represent a brash new wave of hyper-individuals who have no concern for the feelings or well-being of others. Yet, the brothers of Delta are not self-centered or uncaring. In fact, they are the very opposite. Throughout the film, the brothers show an uncommon willingness to help one another, even at great risk to themselves. Their final act is one of collective protest, not individual spite. Animal House is an individualistic movie, yes, but one that shows how individualism can create healthy communities. Unlike the Omegas, the Deltas do not need to devote themselves to conforming but, rather, can remain free individuals within their collective brotherhood. 

Animal House is not an attack on morality but an attack on a system that demands hyper fixation on inane codes and rules. Fraternities, being somewhat isolated from the authority of the administration, have the potential to subvert these norms. Delta House, as the ideal fraternity, presents an alternative to the top-down social order imposed by the administration. Miller’s Animal House discounts the idea that there should be only one uniform community, enforced from above, in which one’s value is determined by one’s ability to follow rules. 

In light of Animal House’s emphasis on individualism, its screenwriter Chris Miller’s extensive defense of the tasks dispensed during “new member education” in a 1989 Dartmouth Alumni Magazine op-ed may seem incongruous. Aren’t such tasks meant to bully new fraternity pledges into submission so that sadistic older brothers can revel in their superiority? Miller argues, in fact, that these activities are more about personal growth and in a roundabout way are an act of revolt. Miller argues that many of these rituals are meant to test one’s limits. Like any trial, the completion of “new member education” entails progress. Completing its challenges grants a sense of accomplishment and, in Miller’s narrative, is extremely fun. 

Of course, in order for these rituals to have the effect Miller describes, they must be voluntary. Further, these initiation rituals are entirely unlike any previous experience and so present an opportunity that one has never had before. In our modern world, in which safety is enforced and everything from driving to breathing is a matter of public concern and regulation, a little bit of uncomfortable risk can be truly fulfilling. Miller believes that this idea explains the debauchery of fraternity life in general. College life is a four-year period between the parent-enforced safety of childhood and the self-enforced conformity of adulthood. In this gap, students have a unique opportunity to act out, to break social norms, and to be independent. Animal House is the story of an oppressive authority, Dean Wormer, trying to take this one bit of freedom away from the Delta protagonists. When one understands these stakes, the Deltas’ decision to sabotage the homecoming parade in a custom-made deathmobile no longer seems too drastic. 

Of course, many aspects of Greek Life can be improved and have been improved since Animal House first premiered. The film itself has several scenes that play on then-common stereotypes and exhibit flawed attitudes on everything from race to consent. Yet, in his Alumni Magazine article, Miller himself writes of how fraternities progressed from his time at Dartmouth in the 1960s to his return to Alpha Delta to write the piece in 1989. By then, all new member education programs were voluntary, and fraternities themselves had become more respectful of women. 

In the thirty-four years since then, Dartmouth Greek Life has progressed even further, to the point that any administrative measures to fundamentally its structure are extremely unpopular among students. Yet Greek Life still comes under fire. The standard attacks on “hazing” are omnipresent. But what’s more, critics attack Greek houses as bastions of that very toxic individualism that Ty Burr associates with Ronald Reagan and Animal House. Burr even calls out our very own paper by name, explaining that we at The Review have historically identified with the brash individualism expressed in the film. Is this disregard for social correctness really such a bad thing? 

Animal House was indeed a reaction against the socially stifling period of the 1960s. Today, while Dartmouth’s administration does not often police speech, students report feeling unable to express their personal views for fear of social retribution. The problem of self-enforced social conformity has grown so pervasive in recent years that President Beilock has pushed the creation of “brave spaces” to promote and protect free expression. Greek houses are communities within Dartmouth, and in their semi-isolation they allow members to escape a campus attitude of conformity. Moreover, because there are so many Greek houses, students can choose which social space best fits their individual personalities. 

Despite top-down measures at creating new communities, particularly under President Hanlon’s administration, Greek Life remains the strongest bastion of community on campus and the primary venue for social life. Animal House’s critics misinterpret its message. It was not a reaction against community or altruism but rather against social conformity and pervasive judgment. Today, all too often we fail to make this distinction.

This is the second part of an article that appears as “Animal House Turns 45: A Dartmouth Story.”