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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... writes , " is a social practice for its makers and its audience ; in its narratives and meanings we can locate evidence of the ways in which our culture makes sense of itself . " 3 The Films of the Eighties : A Social History , as did ...
... writes , " the tendency to ignore the deeper , disquieting elements within the mythic history they write ; and the likelihood of finding an enthusiastic mass audience for the finished texts . " 5 What the films of the eighties managed ...
... writes , " the worth of history would not have to be defended in the timid and ambivalent ways that are now used . " One conservative historian answers White with scorn by characterizing all attempts to vitalize dry - as - dust history ...
... postmodernist tensions and seeming oppositions . White writes : " The tropological theory of discourse gives us understanding of the existential continuity between error and truth , ignorance and under- 4 The Films of the Eighties.
... writes that intellec- tual history " shares with disciplines such as literary criticism and the history of philosophy , however , an initial focus upon complex written texts and a need to formulate as a problem what is often taken ...
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 |