Well done. Those couplings are the only ones we know of, or that we're supposed to know of.
It may seem a tad hedonistic and all 'free love'/'sexual revolution' for some, but from my perspective, it's not all that unusual in a little collective of guys & girls. During my own student days (late 80's, university in South Africa), I was fortunate enough to be in a group of tight friends of about the same size as in The Big Chill, and we've had maybe even more changing and exchanging of partners going on over the years. It didn't break any friendships, and today it feels as if was never anything less than natural. I ended up being the one that never married and never settled down, though I did hook up with a couple of the girls at one stage or another. I'm not aware of any bitterness and definitely no-one became 'damaged goods'. The sixties is seen today as the "free for all" age - though that's due to the emergence of the pill more than a new-found psychology - but in my opinion that decade was more of a turning point, rather than a once-off. I've spent a few more years on a campus recently, and in my estimation the culture of bed-hopping amongst students is as strong as ever. I believe too that it hasn't really changed over the many centuries before either - it was just hushed and hardly incorporated into the 'pop culture' of times before. (Technically, with more making out sessions rather than fornication, sans contraceptive aids.) Young adults have always been a horny bunch, as they naturally ought to be.
I'd be surprised therefore if Kasdan and Benedek didn't labour that point a bit in their script. The pimpage of the single woman (Meg) to a married man within the group (Harold) is rather out of the ordinary, however - albeit with a 'ticking clock' and a desire to become a mother factored in. It was a risky move including that into the script, though without it, the narrative impact may have been much weaker and The Big Chill may well have become buried in the mountain of celluloid output. Anyway, the consequence of such an act would surely cause a high drama of its own, and perhaps weaken the group cohesion. I can hardly imagine any other outcome!
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snepts (11123)
6 years ago
Lucky you. I don't know why, but not only was I very jealous when I was younger, but for some reason, physical intimacy scared the hell outta me. I'd get SO nervous when I thought about being with a woman.
I remember slow dancing with a 8th grader when I was in the 7th, and when we finished she laughed out loud and said, "your heart is beating so hard !"
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