The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
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Possibly more than any other film, The China Syndrome's popularity benefited from a chance occurrence. The China Syndrome showed many Americans their worst vision of technology gone wrong, but it proved entirely too close to reality when its release coincided with a near meltdown at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. In the film, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas play the television news team who, while researching the newly perfected nuclear technology, capture on film an accident resulting in a near meltdown of the power plant. Fonda and Douglas's characters find themselves trapped between the public's right to know and the industry's desire to bury the incident. The nuclear accident depicted by the film became the platform for "NIMBY" culture, in which expectations of comfort and a high standard of safety compelled middle-class Americans to proclaim "Not in my backyard!" Together, these incidents—one fictional and another all too real—aroused enough concern among Americans to prohibit nuclear energy from ever becoming a considerable source of power for the nation.