The Films of the Eighties: A Social HistorySouthern Illinois University Press, 1993 - 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. |
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... Rambo with a whole history of American outcasts , from the hobos of the Great Depression to the beats of Jack Kerouac's On the Road to the wandering youth of the sixties . " Who is he ? " the image asks . It turns out he is a Vietnam ...
... Rambo II is the American government bureaucracy that has lost those possibly existent MIAS in its fog of red tape . Rambo characterizes this betrayal of Vietnam veterans by their country as another kind of war : RAMBO : When I came back ...
... Rambo is assured " besides the monitoring devices you see here , you'll be issued every ultramodern piece of equipment we have to ensure your safety . Rambo , you can feel totally safe because we have the most advanced weapons in the ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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