Come on guys, Animal House was so successful because, while it was a send-up of the times and the institutions, it touched the nerve of reality. For a lampoon to be effective it has to be close enough to the truth to make it both recognizable and funny. Talking to older alums, and to my Dad and Uncles, it was a pretty accurate picture of the early 1960s Greek experience (Tom Earp, please comment on this) and it was very recognizable in the mid to late 1990s during my undergraduate years (and still is now that I'm back in a University setting for Law School). No one house fully fit the DTXs or the Omegas but I could put a face on every character in the film from among the guys I knew from all the fraternities on campus. I'm sure this is the norm and not the exception at most universities with Greek systems. In all honesty, can't you put the face of someone you know on just about every character in the film?
|