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 66
... . 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 materialist emphasis , xii Preface.
... present . " 7 Essential to any study of these " texts " written by films over the course of the decade is the analysis of the rhetorics that these different " texts " employ . LaCapra comments upon this rhetorical necessity : One ...
... present history . Dominick LaCapra also lobbies polemically on the necessity and poten- tial for a new approach to history . In History and Criticism , LaCapra states ( in concert with White ) that " I continue to believe that ...
... present into a purely personal past , or a kind of cultural necrophile , that is , one who finds in the dead and dying a value he can never find in the living . " 20 How does the late - twentieth - century historian , infected with a ...
... present shakes out pretty well : I don't dislike movies now , they're just " normalized , " and with a lack of that sharp and heady generational , political tension that fired not just music but most culture and politics until the day ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Bibliographic information
| 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 |