The Films of the Eighties: A Social HistorySIU Press, 1995 - 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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 55
... Coming Home " Films 61 4 The Terrorism Film Texts 114 5 The Nuclear War Film Texts 179 6 From the " Evil Empire " to Glasnost 206 7 The Feminist Farm Crisis and Other Neoconservative Feminist Texts 246 8 The Yuppie Texts 280 9 Film in ...
... Coming Home , a character complains , " they tore down my past and built a shopping center . " Perhaps that irony best characterizes this subtext of cynicism that moves throughout both eighties social and film history . America in the ...
... Coming Home , The Deer Hunter , Go Tell the Spartans , and Apocalypse Now , served as barometers that measured the submerged public opinion toward that war and the soldiers who fought in that war . These movies indicated that beneath ...
... home- bound , yet Vietnam War sensitive , American , Australian , New Zealand . Korean , Vietnamese , Cambodian , Laotian , French populations who were effected by what the ... Coming Home , The Deer Hunter The Vietnam War as Film Text 17.
A Social History William J. Palmer. months , the films Coming Home , The Deer Hunter , and Apocalypse Now generated mass interest in the Vietnam War . These films served as the publicists of a Vietnam War consciousness that was abroad in ...
Contents
16 | |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
The Nuclear War Film Texts | 179 |
From the Evil Empire to Glasnost | 206 |
The Feminist Farm Crisis and Other Neoconservative | 246 |
The Yuppie Texts | 280 |
Film in the Holograph of New History | 308 |
Index | 325 |