The Chilling Effect In Lawrence Kasdan's 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.
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
As the bickering group of seven congregate to discuss how Alex embodied their best hopes and dreams, they easily come to conclude that because the era of peace and justice had vanished, there was no choice but to become a guilty corporate liar, a coke dealer, or a suicide. The group reminisces about the lost ideals of a lost generation. Sarah is close to tears, wondering if her political zeal had ever been real: "I hate to think it was all just fashion," she laments. The decade is again portrayed through Harold's athletic-shoe company, called "Running Dog," seemingly a parallel on the phrase "imperialist running dog" fabricated by a guilt-stricken capitalist of the time. Harold is also depicting the era of the eighties while tugging on his well-starched white shirt, then his expensive suit jacket, in an attempt to cover an array of faded and nasty-looking black tattoos, displaying the former countercultural obscuring his