The Films of the Eighties: A Social History

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SIU Press, 1995 - 335 pages
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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

 
Page 3
This type of a " metahistory , " always aware of itself as text and of the interrelation between its texts , subtexts , contexts , intertexts , can elevate the past into the participatory position of being a layer in the holograph of ...
Page 4
LaCapra echoes White in arguing that postmodernist historians , unlike the historians of the past who sought " to find order in seeming chaos , " 14 have realized that the " dream of a ' total history corroborating the historian's own ...
Page 5
... anyone who studies the past as an end in itself must appear to be either an antiquarian , fleeing from the problems of the present into a purely personal past , or a kind of cultural necrophile , that is , one who finds in the dead ...
Page 6
The " historical imagination , " for White , attempts " to explain the past by ' finding , ' ' identifying , ' or ' uncovering ' the ' stories ' that lie buried in chronicles . " The problem is , however , that after " a given set of ...
Page 7
Film director and cinematographer Haskell Wexler senses how the mechanisms of diffusion not only exploit history but enlarge the historical textuality : In past times , the monks had the pens and the paper and ...

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Selected pages

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
Copyright

Other editions - View all

The Films of the Eighties: A Social History
William J. Palmer
Snippet view - 1993
The Films of the Eighties: A Social History
William J. Palmer
Snippet view - 1993

Common terms and phrases

action actually American society asks attempt become begins bomb called central characters City cold comic book confusion critical deal death death squad decade early eighties exploitation fact farm feminist fight film's final Fire girl give guilt happened Hill Hollywood human images involved ironic issue John Kerr-McGee kill later lives look major meaning metaphor military moral mother movie never nuclear Oliver Stone opening past Perhaps Platoon play political present problems Rambo Reagan reality represented rhetoric Russian says scene seems seventies social history soldiers speech story Street Stunt symbolic tells terrorism terrorist theme things trying turns ultimately Vietnam veteran Vietnam War Vietnam War films Vietnamese violence White whole wife woman women writes York young yuppie

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.

Bibliographic information

QR code for The Films of the Eighties
TitleThe Films of the Eighties: A Social History
AuthorWilliam J. Palmer
Editionillustrated, reprint
PublisherSIU Press, 1995
ISBN0809320290, 9780809320295
Length335 pages
  
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