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. |
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... exploitation of historical fact and realism , Hollywood ( a generic term for the film industry ) is usually quite reactive and timely in its handling of social history . Since the New Historicists have presented their arguments that ...
... exploit . Conversely Hollywood has courted social credibility and even political power by supporting projects that portray , interpret , and , in some cases , even push debate upon major " trends " or " threads " of sociocultural ...
... exploit history but enlarge the historical textuality : In past times , the monks had the pens and the paper and were literate and they wrote down , " this is what happened . " This became " history . " In a sense , we as filmmakers are ...
... exploited all through the eighties . In fact , the Vietnam War became a whole series of texts . The textuality issue as a starting point in turn involves two other essential issues : ( 1 ) what and where that text is ; ( 2 ) how to ...
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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 |