"Excitement... and then disappointment"

I'm currently listening to an interview with Todd Phillips on 'Fresh Air'. He is one of the co-writers / producers of 'Road Trip', 'Starsky & Hutch', and 'Old School' but he's totally not how you would imagine him. The interviewer has been asking him questions such as how he came to focus on the issue of relationships between grown men, and what his childhood was like -- this is NPR, folks, even 'Old School' can be serious on NPR.

Todd went to NYU film school and actually obtained a lot of the story material for 'Old School' while producing a documentary for HBO called 'Frathouse'. The documentary never aired because several of the kids' parents wouldn't sign the releases necessary to broadcast the incriminating footage. But, as part of their research and shooting of 'Frathouse', Todd and his crew went through full-on fraternity rush "hazing". It was several of the grotesque activities they were forced to partake in during that experience that were ultimately incorporated into 'Old School', with a more humorous slant of course.

When he was discussing his personal journey, the path that brought him to a career producing embarrassingly-funny movies -- which have become part of the cinematic canon for my generation -- Todd admitted that he had never been part of a fraternity during college. In fact, at age 18, he was more confused by their immensely popular place in the college social scene. He said when his biggest fans meet him and find this out, he can seen the emotion in their faces go from excitement to extreme disappointment. It is something about his experience outside the world of fraternities, though, that allowed him to synthesize the truest and most humorous elements of this social phenomenon.

He was raised by a single mother who constantly encouraged her children to be individuals and to cultivate their own identities. He said he has found it fascinating that college, the first step in becoming an adult and an independent person, was the time that young gentlemen chose to align themselves fiercely with a group identity. So strong is the group allegience, that men are willing to do dangerous and painful things to belong. At just the moment when these kids first have the opportunity to discover who they are, 80% choose to align with a collective identity.

It is our natural instinct to want to belong. And when we face the most difficult stages in life -- such as that perpetual young adult question "who do I want to be?" -- it is easiest to seek comfort in something larger than one's self. Even if you have supportive adults who encourage you to find your own identity, its often easier to escape the perils of a personal journey in the comfort of a collective one. While Todd Phillips has been able to find the humor in the fraternity phenomenon, and help people laugh at themselves, which is always healthy, his general insight as a fraternity outsider translates significantly to the conflicts in our world today.

In political and personal realms, collective identity has become the norm in our society. The process of self-examination and questioning the status quo is generally discouraged. We are obliged to "stay the course", never flip-flop on tough decisions, and support the nation where we were born. We even do dangerous things to uphold the policies of the collective leadership; resistance and real intellectual evaluation of our policies is difficult to carry out, and young people so often burn out in their quest to answer these questions.

The fraternity mentality is present not only in college society. And while it is healthy to be able to laugh at the most blatantly disgusting examples, I think its important to distinguish between when we are laughing AT the system and when we are actually laughing WITH the system. The kids who met Todd Phillips were disappointed when they realized that he might actually be criticizing their human tendency to seek a group identity, that he is not so much re-living his glory days as he is questioning the silly behavior of a fraternity-based society. It is indeed a disappointing moment when we find that our laughter is at our own expense, but we do have to come to terms with the complexity of our conflicting identities. Kudos to Todd Phillips's mother. We could all learn a lot from her :)