This past Thanksgiving was a particularly exciting time for fans of the show Gilmore Girls. Ten years after the series finale, devotees of this saga were blessed with the ability to revisit the town of Stars Hollow and the simultaneously cheeky and heartwarming characters in a miniseries premiering November 25. I am among those who were tremendously excited for this, and while my opinions on the conclusion of the series are mixed, this event did give me the opportunity to return to the show which charmed and befuddled me endlessly. This miniseries, along with a well-timed Christmas gift, reminded me of one of my favorite episodes.
In the episode titled “You Jump, I Jump, Jack”, Rory Gilmore is introduced, through a bit of curious finagling on her part, to a secret society of Yale University, who call themselves ‘The Life and Death Brigade’. Rewatching this episode, I did a quick Google search, and while this is not a real secret society at Yale, it was inspired by a few very real ones, and over the years they have pulled some legendary stunts.
The first, while not technically a “secret” society, has revolutionized daring as we know it today. The Dangerous Sports Club of Oxford University is responsible for some of the most outrageous feats known to man. To begin, these students are to be thanked for the invention of the sport which we today know as bungee jumping. They have performed such deeds as hang gliding off a volcano, BASE jumping, and one man crossed in English Channel in a kangaroo-shaped balloon (he was later prosecuted for flying without a pilot’s license). One of the most famous events hosted by the Dangerous Sports Club was “surrealist skiing”. This involved taking as many skis as needed and fashioning them to the bottom of some sort of vehicle, which would then be sent sailing down the slopes. Some of the most entertaining vessels involved grand pianos, an eight-man boat, and even an actual missile. The stranger the vehicle, and the more spectacular the crash, the more esteem the inventors gained. This club is believed to have influenced the stunts which are pulled by The Life and Death Brigade in Gilmore Girls.
The second society believed to have inspired this idea is “Skull and Bones”, a senior secret society at Yale University. While the Dangerous Sports Club is very open about their activities, Skull and Bones is much more covert. They have made exceptional efforts to keep their codes and habits hidden from the public eye. Their alumni include not one but three presidents, William Howard Taft, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Their meeting place is officially called the “Tomb”, and the society owns an island for retreats on the St. Lawrence River. They are even rumored to own the missing skulls of both Pancho Villa and Martin Van Buren.
So what inspires the creation of societies like this? To me, the signs point to a desire for escape, to feel separate and elevated from the mundane world. The Dangerous Sports Club had been said to don Victorian garb, tailcoats and top hats, to distinguish themselves from others. Skull and Bones selects their new members from those they see as the most “elite” of the incoming freshman class, talented athletes, leaders, and personalities. They are also said tell time by a clock which differs by five minutes from normal time, the latter being referred to as “barbarian time”. Belonging to societies like this allows members to distance themselves from all others, to place a sharp divide between those who are “in-the-know” and those who are not. Everyone has a desire to feel special, and societies like these afford just this opportunity, but only to those they deem worthy. In Gilmore Girls, the motto for The Life and Death Brigade is In Omnia Paratus, meaning “ready for anything”. Perhaps, in joining these societies, members are able to feel like, unlike everyone else, they are just this.
