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
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... early in his " evil empire " rhetorical saber rattling . Ironically in the eighties , as America and Russia confronted each other and jockeyed for position , Japan moved in and claimed the spoils of victory . In the domestic arena ...
... early seventies on , businessmen have been in control . The period from 1975 ( immediately following the success of Jaws ) to the present has been a cycle in which the creative has been consistently overshadowed by the commercial . This ...
... History dealt with an era of social and film history that really began in the mid - sixties and actually lapped over into a few early eighties films . That precursor to this book denied the The Holograph of History □ 11.
... early as 1982 had also changed the very nature of Hollywood films . Marc Cooper , in an essay about the decline of drug use in eighties films , writes : " There is a different moral tenor now , a general conservatism in the culture ...
... early sixties to the idealistic anger of the late sixties to the embarrassment and paranoia of the seventies to the accommodation to chaos of the eighties . But these social and / or aesthetic changes have only altered the color of the ...
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 |
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| Title | The Films of the Eighties: A Social History |
| Author | William J. Palmer |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | SIU Press, 1995 |
| ISBN | 0809320290, 9780809320295 |
| Length | 335 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |