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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... bomb attacks of the seventies against international airports were , in the eighties , superseded by airliner hijackings . In June 1985 , TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome was hijacked . The terrorists took 39 hostages and killed 1 ...
... bomb in a shopping mall , wire up with explosives a church where the community has gathered to pray for deliverance from terror- ism , open fire on a supermarket , and place a time bomb on a school bus full of children who are ...
... bomb on an American NATO airbase in England . In Russia , a power - hungry KGB bureaucrat unilaterally sends his best covert operations field agent , Petrofsky ( Pierce Brosnan ) , to England to build and detonate the bomb . In England ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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