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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... death squad government terrorism . This speech confronts the rhetoric of confusion with a passionate directness that is equivalent in words to those shocking realist images of death squad terrorism that have given pattern , pace , and ...
... death squad terrorism . There are images of torture and death , but most of the film is talk . Only at the very end when Molina has been released and decides to become involved with Valentin's movement does the film break from its ...
... death squad terrorism in Indonesia reached genoci- dal proportions . The moral center of The Year of Living Dangerously is Billy Kwan . Early he tells Guy Hamilton , " I'll be your eyes . " They form a partnership in which Billy is ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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