Following on the rigor of The General, Keaton offered College to his many fans as a pure laugh-riot, and it is, the more so if you identify (as you must) with Buster's Little Man on Campus: an egghead freshman in an exclusively jock college who, unlike his monied classmates, has to work his way through school. A dreamlike proscenium arch opens onto Buster's field of nightmares as he gamely goes out for baseball, pole vaulting, discus, and crew, all of which will have their practical applications as the film vaults forward on the sheer physical elegance of its gags. Keaton holds no illusions about male bonding or male privilege (nor, we suspect, about that "happy ending"), and College remains as current* as the day it was made. *With one exception: Buster in blackface is hounded out of the cafeteria by the black kitchen staff, the point being that he is everywhere the outsider. The use or implication of blackface was an all-too-common holdover from vaudeville.