The Films of the Eighties: A Social History

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SIU 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

Contents

The Vietnam War as Film Text
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
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About the author (1995)

William J. Palmer, a professor of English at Purdue University, is also a novelist whose Highwayman and Mr. Dickens was an Alternate Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

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