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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 86
... characters , burying characters in complexities , utterly confusing characters , often leaving characters sus- pended in a nihilistic void in which history either has no meaning or has too many meanings to comprehend . Film diffuses the ...
A Social History William J. Palmer. for Joker and a minor character named Cowboy , the characters are new and as disposable as the characters in the Parris Island half of the film . Yet despite this vast difference in setting and characters ...
... characters , Charlie and Gadi , seek to legitimize the characters they assume in the metatheater of the real . The irony of this metatheatrical acting subtext in The Little Drummer Girl lies in the fact that the characters that Charlie ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown