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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... violence . Big city violence is one thing , but big city violence in the midst of the Vietnam War is something altogether different . The world of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is the world of Off Limits , a world of " no restraint ...
... violence , succeeded by periods of almost catatonic depression , succeeded by more violence . . . The typical Vietnam vet turns cynical , bitter and angry ; he is surely suicidal , probably murderous . . . . Anyhow , that's the TV ...
... violence high . Most of the violent vets in eighties films are cops who replace their violent lives in the war with violence in peacetime . The police force is where that war violence can be legally duplicated . Stanley White is the ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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