All Is (Boomer) Vanity – The American Conservative

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite albums was my fathers copy of the soundtrack from the 1983 movie The Big Chill. Booming from my fathers cassette player came Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Temptations, the Rascals, the Steve Miller Band, the Spencer Davis Group, Aretha Franklin, and Creedence Clearwater Revivala veritable battery of the best of rock, Motown, and R&B from the 60s and 70s. I so adored Percy Sledges rendition of When a Man Loves a Woman that my wife and I danced to it at our wedding.

Growing up in the 1990s, the photo on the soundtrack intrigued me: I recognized Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, William Hurt, Tom Berenger, and, of course, Jeff Goldblum of Jurassic Park fame. Some of the other actors, such as Mary Kay Place and JoBeth Williams, saw their stars dim in the years after the film. Kevin Costner was supposed to have a small role, but his scenes were deleted. I remember asking my father what the movie was about. He shrugged. A bunch of former hippies get together for a weekend after one of their old college friends kills himself. Its a midlife crisis movie.

That seemed to me, even as an adolescent, a bit out of sync: Some of the best music of a generation, and the storyline is just a bunch of people of my fathers age hanging out? When I watched the movie many years later, I saw that my fathers description was not far off. Fifteen years removed from their graduation from the University of Michigan, four men and three women plus the deceaseds young ballerina girlfriend spend a weekend in South Carolina, drinking, doing drugs, watching college football, and struggling to reconcile their bourgeoisand in the case of Berrengers Hollywood actor character, celebritylifestyles with their now distant youthful idealism.

Its about as vapid and exculpatory as it sounds. In its narcissism, hedonism, and skepticism towards the American culture and economy its characters hypocritically enjoy, The Big Chill is the last word on the course of a generation and its incoherent mores. Its too bad Lawrence Kasdan, the writer and director, didnt realize that he was making a condemnation.

Christianity, unsurprisingly, is viewed as dull, irrelevant, and erroneous. Perhaps to emphasize this opinionthough it makes little narrative sensethe friends funeral is held at a rural Baptist church. The pastors eulogy is so stultifyingly formulaic that one of the female characters silently (and obviously skeptically) mouths the predictable words as he preaches them. In a not-so-subtle rejection of the doctrine of sin, Klines character ascends to the podium and declares the deceased, Alex, was too good for this world. Jo Beth Williams character concludes the ceremony by playing not a traditional hymn, but Alexs favorite song: the Rolling Stones You Cant Always Get What You Want. Foreshadowing trends Tara Isabella Burton explores in her book Strange Rites, in the absence of objective religious convictions, the characters mimic transcendent experiences through self-exploration.

And what better way for boomers to explore spirituality and meaning than via the Kerouacian consumption of various narcotics, which begins, at least in one case, on the car ride from the funeral to the cemetery. After the burial, the troupe makes their way to the married Kline and Closes characters charming Southern home for a weekend together. An atmosphere of nostalgia and a reimagined youth reign supremenot so different from the Villagesas the characters play pickup football in the yard, dance to the Oldies, and, of course, smoke copious amounts of weed.

Yet, a mood of melancholy hangs over the attendees, not only because of the loss of their friend, but what his tempestuous, supposedly ideologically pure life (and death) say about them. During a walk in the woods Kline and Goldblums character's recall their college days as two revolutionaries, when they believed property was a crime. But Kline is now a successful businessman and property owner, while Goldblum is a writer of trivial fluff pieces for People magazine. Was it all just fashion? asks Goldblum, channeling the self-doubts of a generation.

Exemplifying a clinical lack of self-awareness, the friends complain about how the real world is a cynical place full of manipulative and opportunistic people. William Hurts character was made impotent by a wound suffered during the Vietnam War; he is now a drug addict and pusher. Berengers character is divorced, with a daughter he rarely seeshe tired of marriage with its monotonous obligations. Williams character gave up a promising career as a writer to have a family and is now beholden to her thoroughly square husbands superficial life, as she calls it. Places character is a successful real estate attorney who jettisoned her idealistic, Huey P. Newtoninspired desire to be a public defender because a lot of her clients were (surprise!) contemptible criminals. But at least these friends have each other.

That theme is most fully realized in the most controversial storyline in The Big Chill. Places character has had trouble finding a man, frustrating her ticking biological clock. Over the weekend, she propositions Berengers and Hurts characters to father her childthey have good genesbut is rebuffed by both men. Thats where Closes character comes to the rescue. She persuades her husband, Klines character (the quintessential Southern gentleman), to sleep with her best friend. It is, were exhorted to believe, a supreme act of love and sacrifice that exemplifies what true friendship is all about: sex.

Nor is that the only redemptive sexual encounter that final evening in the house. Berenger and Williams characters, frustrated by their lives but feeling mutually understood, rekindle (albeit briefly) an old flame. The aggrieved and adrift Vietnam vet and the young ballerina do something physicalits not entirely clear what given hes supposed to impotentbut the result is that both feel a new sense of companionship and hope.

As far as the Boomer worldview goes, its a fitting denouement to the weekend. Free love, the hippie generation told themselves, can solve everything. Yet all the awkward questions stemming from fleeting sexual encounters remain unanswered. Williams character will have to go back to her now cuckolded husbanddoes she feel remorse? Will she leave him and the kids? Places character, even if she does get pregnant by her friends husband, will raise a child on her own. Will she tell the child that he or she is the result of a brief fling with an old friend who was gracious enough to impregnate her? Will that friend send birthday gifts? Will there be regular visits? In a style representative of the sexual revolution, the unsatisfying and disturbing effects of free lovewhich is never truly freeare quietly avoided.

Of course, modern science has made such scenarios less personal, if no less ethically fraught. If youre having trouble conceiving, you can have your spouse, a friend, or even a complete stranger provide the necessary biological goods via in vitro fertilizationearlier this year a Dutch sperm donor who sired more than 500 children was ordered by a court to stop his generosity. What in the 1980s era of The Big Chill required an act of misconceived sacrifice is now thoroughly commodified, as is much else about sex. Indeed, even the movies talk of good genes intimates that an instrumentalist, utilitarian view of sex was already implicitly present in the Boomer imagination. To the degree that sex involves the creation of children, it regards them as bespoke, quasi-technological eugenic products; otherwise, far from serving to renew the bond of marriage (how dull and constricting, especially when your spouse is such a square!), its simply there to make us feel good.

But do we? I havent met many happy people in my life. How do they act? asks the ballerina, in perhaps the most honest moment of the film. For all the Boomers altruistic aspirations and youthful vigor, they rebelled against their own rich cultural inheritanceHurts character at one point declares, No one had a cushier birth than us! That rebellion, in turn, precluded the now deracinated Boomers from possessing the spiritual and intellectual resources required to secure true happiness. Indeed, The Big Chill shows how many hippies ended up becoming the very thing they despised: self-aggrandizing, materialistic bourgeois professionals. Hence the deep dissatisfactionat least their parents believed in the American dream.

The great mystery of The Big Chill is why Alex killed himself. Its never resolved. As far as the viewer can tell, Alexs death, like his hedonistic life, was more or less meaningless: the last of a series of emotive, pseudo-intellectual choices that emulate, and eventually realize self-immolation. Perhaps thats a fitting description of the counterculture generation and the cultural inheritance bequeathed to their descendants, who are even more skeptical of America and its traditions.

But hey, at least the music was good.

View post:

All Is (Boomer) Vanity - The American Conservative