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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... happened after the historical fact , but in some instances film takes up direct simultaneous participation in the texts of social history and even predicts the directions that social history will ultimately take . If anyone ever had any ...
... happened to a soldier in - country Vietnam - drew pockets of concentrated focus at cir- cumscribed points in the decade . The eighties in film history actually began with a British invasion . Epic inspirational films - first Chariots of ...
... happened . " This became " history . " In a sense , we as filmmakers are contemporary historians . The system - basically the networks - writes history . They tell you what's important , what exists . As filmmakers we have the ...
... happened in Vietnam as a means of possibly understanding . Another tunneltext , the literary text , was an existential text focusing upon the individual in the war . Call it the " grunt " text . The racial text , one of the most ...
... happening , when it is being pondered and intellectualized . This distinction is one reason why the mass culture of American society can learn so much about the Vietnam War from films . Motion pictures are always happening , just as a ...
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 |