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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... ultimately just the utter confusion of meaningless action is the fuel that fires the film . All that happens in Platoon leads to the ultimate symbol of nihilistic confusion , the Ur - firefight , chaos personified and extended . By the ...
... Ultimately , the real contextualized history of the Vietnam War is a perfect postmodernist text . Ultimately , the history of the Vietnam War is a holographic , multilayered history of nothingness , of an event that never had , ever ...
... ultimately exploitative and false - acting scenario . What is hardest for The Little Drummer Girl to recognize is the moral question involved in this Middle East war . “ The question is " Charlie spits at her Israeli interrogators ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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