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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... seventies and of the eighties was their nostalgic attraction to fifties and sixties events , issues , and social mores . James Greenberg describes how in the Reaganite - yuppie eighties . " Hollywood went for the Fifties where kids only ...
... seventies , it remained so throughout the eighties . Or whereas a prominent chapter in its predecessor defined the major villain of seventies film as a corporate entity , in this eighties film history the ubiquitous villain is the ...
... seventies . They either grew in significance in the eighties as the society tried to resolve them ( such was the case with Vietnam and detente ) or were resurrected from previous decades out of a state of dormancy by the pressure of ...
... seventies - such as A Bridge Too Far ( 1977 ) or The Longest Day ( 1962 ) -and more concerned with interpreting history . Films in the seventies and eighties often portray the events of history as swirling around characters , burying ...
... Seventies : A Social 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 □ ...
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 |