Raunchiest, Highest-Rated Comedy on Netflix Proves How Painful Nostalgia Can Be
By Chris Snellgrove | Published
You know the most subtle thing about it Mad Men? The show goes to great lengths to show all the greed and cynicism at the heart of commercial advertising. Anyway, when Don Draper gives a big speech to customers, you still caught in the honey trap of his words. As propaganda, there is no it’s not immune to marketing, and Jon Hamm’s relentless sloganeering takes on a magical life of its own. My personal favorite moment is when he throws in Kodak and says, “In Greek, nostalgia literally means pain from an old wound. It’s a trigger in your heart that’s more powerful than memory alone.”
In our world of endless reboots, revivals, and retro Funko Pops, how can your nostalgia hurt? Simple: if it reminds you of something lost. This is all I could think of when I watched Animal House on Netflix. As an R-rated comedy, snobs vs. slobs boner, it’s the kind of movie Hollywood can’t make. That’s not the sad part, though. No, the real nostalgic sting comes from the fact that these types of students (slobs again snobs) really don’t exist anymore. We have destroyed education as students throw away their minds, creating campuses that are not as interesting as they originally thought.
Embracing Chaos
Looking back, the beauty of Animal House that it really isn’t be plot. Of course, we nominally follow the exploits of two college students (Larry Kroger and Kent Dorfman) as they commit to an abusive fraternity house. However, the story is just an excuse to have fun with frat bros misbehaving, whether that’s throwing toga parties, starting food fights, or creeping out the naughty sisters as they undress. Predictably, our frat-bound heroes are cheered on by snooty students and a grumpy professor who wants college to be fair and proper. Of course unexpectedlyOur characters crash the college fair, ensuring that chaos will always reign over order.
It’s a very unusual story that represents a sort of thesis statement from director John Landis. just as The National Lamp had taken the angst out of the college experience, Landis wanted to usher in a new genre of film: the dark, college-centered comedy. It worked well, with Animal House it serves as a touchstone for true creativity decades of “bad boy” movies. Although the film is as funny as it is sad, it can be painful to watch because this world is gone. The main reason for this is that today’s college students don’t have it joie de vivre of the film’s heroes and villains.
A New Kind of Student
When people talk Animal House reflecting a forgotten era, they often talk about its depiction of college as a place of endless parties and debauchery. The film’s success initially led to a revival of fraternity life, with real-life students attempting to emulate the outrageous antics they had seen on screen, complete with drinking and singing. In turn, university administrators spent years tightening their rules and doing everything in their power to kill campus clique culture before it took hold. While all of that is a feature, the real reason is that Animal House it is a product of the past that today’s students’ perception of college has changed completely for the worse.
Animal House it was made back when college was considered a time of personal growth. Not just through a liberal arts education (which is why you should learn at least a little about a lot outside of your major), but through the experience itself. In its own melancholy way, that’s something the film celebrates: that even as our audience takes the characters’ shoes, they struggle academically, form friendships, find love, and generally become fully grown young men. The show’s crash is the most extreme example of this: these two go from weak-hearted men to boys ready and willing to defy authority a lot and way more fun.
Surrender to Temptation
Unfortunately, today’s students see college as nothing more than a hopping trade school. They are not here to expand their horizons; they are here to get the necessary handout for any job they want. Algorithmic education, essentially: they chase jobs that are likely to pay well by getting the best degrees to get those jobs. Along the way, most will rely on AI to jump through all those awkward educational hoops. Making friends and joining organizations in the physical realm means nothing to today’s generation of students. If they’re not asking ChatGPT to create a few more fake quotes, these readers are just trading brainrot memes on their favorite Discord servers.
Obviously, these students are a product of their nature. The pandemic has made them accept the internet as their only source of social interaction, and the easy availability of productive AI has made them intellectually lazy. Meanwhile, poor job forecasts make every prospect of a college education feel like a gamble. Why spend four years skills in an industry that will be dead five years? Accordingly, these students are trapped in a kind of half-life, with one foot online and the other in the ever-uncertain real world. Is it any wonder that they have no real love for classroom lessons, campus parties, or even parties?
The Party’s Over
All of this is why I feel a little bitter when I watch it Animal House. Most modern students will not have the kinds of friendships depicted in this movie, nor will they have the R-rated campus shenanigans of the titular “animal house”. They won’t even have the same feeling as their heavy smokers trying to shut down the party a bit. All of that would require a genuine passion and intellectual curiosity that is completely absent from a generation raised on iPads and planning weddings with their AI girlfriends. It’s no longer slobs versus snobs, it’s just scumbags versus everyone else. And trust me, the screens are there to win.
So, if you are a little nostalgic again sadly, you might want to sit this one out. If not, you can stream now Animal House on Netflix. The antics of actors like John Belushi are as funny as you remember, and there’s something fun about going back to the flamboyant college comedy years of R. Also, the movie is full of lines that you can quote next a week. Don’t try any of those jokes on the Zoomers in your life; they will not laugh, but they the will make you a permanent punchline in group chat!
