A closer look at US college life where the culture is dictated by loud heterosexuals and blurry eyed bullies I grew up in a permanent state of confused awe at the US education system, thanks to portrayals in films and on TV. Students were always played by adults and, since none wore uniforms, it was hard to tell them apart from the teachers. At my bog-standard comp, we were allowed to wear “our own clothes” on the last day of term, a thrill denied the kids at Jefferson High in Happy Days, where every day was a mufti day. The 70s frat-com National Lampoon’s Animal House further muddied my understanding: more grown men dressed in the varsity jackets of Yankademia, who threw toga parties in unisex boarding houses branded with Greek letters, doused each other with Bud and spied on girls. I’ve grown up since then, but US college life hasn’t, according to fly-on-the-keg documentary FRAT BOYS: INSIDE AMERICA’S FRATERNITIES (_Thursday, 9pm, BBC2_). Among the brayingly entitled half-jock, half-future-Congressman hybrids featured, baseball caps are still worn backwards and Miller Lite is drunk from a training shoe for a dare. Everybody is loudly heterosexual and one frat house features a fish tank built into its bar (as if in tribute to the one in Animal House) and a shelf of empty vodka bottles to “showcase what we drink”. Continue reading...
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