The Big Chill

The Chilling Effect

Hollywood films have been an essential element of American culture throughout the twentieth century. The prevalence of the films produced by major studios makes them significant indicators of mainstream acceptance of various images on the screen as well as in the society; these films depict contemporary ideas and lifestyles of the era they attempt to mimic. Lawrence Kasdan's, The Big Chill, is the ultimate 1980s baby-boomer movie, presenting the definitive portrayal of the emerging yuppie archetype during a decade of greed. From running shoes, jogging, camcorders, and Motown, to self-analytical manipulation, and guilt-ridden upwardly mobile lifestyles, this film accurately depicts a time of money-hungry status seekers.

During the decade of the eighties, mega mergers spawned a new breed of billionaire, with Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and Ivan Boesky displaying the sudden rise and fall of the rich and the famous. Forbes Magazine's list of the top 500 companies was replaced with a growing listing of the 400 richest people to date. With a spending motto of "Shop till' you drop," binge buying and credit became a way of life. Designer labels were everything even for the youth of the nation. Video games, aerobics, minivans, and talk shows became part of American life. Double-digit inflation along with Reagan's war on drugs, accompanied the loss of many to AIDS while both hospital costs and unemployment were rapidly rising. The spendthrift eighties were a time of greed and narcissism in an attempt to climb the ladder to success. Families changed drastically during these years.Ð' The eighties continued the trends of previous decades with more divorces, more unmarried couples living together, and more single parent families.Ð' The two-earner family was even more common than in preceding decades, more women earned college and advanced degrees, married, and had fewer children. A study by UCLA indicated that college freshmen of the time were more interested in status, power, and money than at any time during the past 15 years. Image was becoming more important than reality, an attribute of the eighties that is still growing today.

No other film of the decade best depicts this era better than Lawrence Kasdan's, The Big Chill. As seven ex-student radicals descend on a big estate in South Carolina for a reflective reunion after one of their own kills himself, each dumps on one another with their problems. The sixties are over, the idealism is gone, and time has come for this cast to face life in "Yuppie-land". At the reunion, the entire group has taken on new lives and new obsessions since the old days. Sam Weber, who had been interested in making a difference in society, had become a TV star. Sarah Cooper was a medical doctor and mom, Harold Cooper was a family man, who ran a chain of shoe stores. Meg, who had started her career as a defense attorney, is now a real estate lawyer, who wants to have a child. Michael, who yearned to be an investigative reporter, was now a writer for People Magazine. Nick, who had been a psychology major, was currently dealing drugs for a living. Karen Bowe, who was a talented poet in college, was a mom, and married to an emotionally cold, controlling husband, Richard. Lastly, there is Chloe, who was in her early twenties, and was Alex's last girl friend that he was living with in the house he was renovating, on a big property owned by the Coopers. Chloe was the one who discovered Alex, dead in the bathtub, after cutting his wrists. Alex was brilliant and the best of them, who could've been an excellent research scientist, but he made another choice and never achieved much in his life, as he wandered from job to job. The film asks how friends might maintain or jump-start relationships when ideals fall by the edge of material security in the suburbs. And on yet another, it asks how anyone gets through the complications of intimacy, pretended or for-real.

The opening scene, with the