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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... Lives ( 1989 ) . The McGuffin of this slapstick detective movie turns out to be a radiation- contaminated Southern - fried plantation that stands at the center of a huge real estate fraud being perpetrated by a crooked politician and a ...
... lives to literally trade future years of health for a present living . The lack of concern for the lives of its workers by the Kerr- McGee Corporation as portrayed in Silkwood is numbing . ... Angela the beautician , a sort of realist ...
... lives , our future , our climate , our food supply , what it really threatens is our humanity . Testament begins ironically as if it were another Steven Spielberg paeon to suburbia . The first sound is an aerobics class on the radio ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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