The supreme court nominee invoked frat-house movies at the Senate hearing as an example of ‘goofy’ behaviour. But these films were more like a manual for sexual assault
During his charged hearing last week, the supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s detailing of his teenage viewing habits was illuminating: Animal House, Caddyshack, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Kavanaugh invoked these 1980s teen movies as an excuse for the “goofy” things he was up to at the time, which certainly didn’t include blackout-level drinking or sexual assault – allegations that Kavanaugh has denied. But that’s pretty much what those movies served up. Looking back, those frat-house movies of the late 1970s/early 80s look less like a celebration of masculine “goofiness” and more a dodgy celebration of rape culture and male entitlement – if not a training manual.
National Lampoon’s Animal House went all-out to champion heavy drinking, inane pranking and broadly misogynist campus culture. Alpha-sleaze John Belushi would have felt right at home drinking in Kavanaugh’s 100 Kegs Or Bust club, but the movie’s abiding scene was when freshman Pinto’s prospective conquest passes out, drunk and topless, at a party. A comedy devil appears on his shoulder: “Fuck her! Fuck her brains out!... You know she wants it,” the devil urges. She is 13 years old. An angel appears on the other shoulder and implores Pinto to do the right thing. He decides to dump her outside her parents’ house in a shopping trolley.
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