The Films of the Eighties: A Social HistorySouthern Illinois University Press, 1993 - 335 pages In this remarkable sequel to his Films of the Seventies: A Social History, William J. Palmer examines more than three hundred films as texts that represent, revise, parody, comment upon, and generate discussion about major events, issues, and social trends of the eighties. Palmer defines the dialectic between film art and social history, taking as his theoretical model the "holograph of history" that originated from the New Historicist theories of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra. Combining the interests and methodologies of social history and film criticism, Palmer contends that film is a socially conscious interpreter and commentator upon the issues of contemporary social history. In the eighties, such issues included the war in Vietnam, the preservation of the American farm, terrorism, nuclear holocaust, changes in Soviet-American relations, neoconservative feminism, and yuppies. Among the films Palmer examines are Platoon, The Killing Fields, The River, Out of Africa, Little Drummer Girl, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, Silkwood, The Day After, Red Dawn, Moscow on the Hudson, Troop Beverly Hills, and Fatal Attraction. Utilizing the principles of New Historicism, Palmer demonstrates that film can analyze and critique history as well as present it. |
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... York to To Hell and Back to The Sands of Iwo Jima to Darby's Rangers to The Devil's Brigade to The Dirty Dozen to The Big Red One of the same type made about earlier wars . It is no coincidence that two of the earliest and most powerful ...
... York . A similar outcry had been raised in 1978 about Cimino's brutally negative portrayal of the Vietnamese in The ... York's Chinatown . Rambo as Sergeant Rock is transformed into the ironically named Stanley White ( Mickey Rourke ) ...
... York , 21 Sexual Perversity in Chicago , 301 Seybold , Donald , 321n Shakedown , 67 Sharky's Machine , 256 She - Devil , 273 , 295 Shelton , Mike , 167 She's Gotta Have It , 273 , 274 She's Having A Baby , 305 Shining , The , 37 ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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