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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... early 1989 in San Diego , California , a pipe bomb blew up the car of Sharon Rogers , wife of the commanding officer of the USS Vincennes that had shot down an Iranian airliner a year earlier . Also in early 1989 proof was presented ...
... early eighties , the world audience shifted its allegiance to the gradual rise to stardom of the Russian personality cult of Gorbachev in the late eighties . The bureaucrat took a lesson in imagemaking from the movie star and became a ...
... early scenes of Country was quickly submerged in that film's polemic . The River early embraced an unrelievedly grim tone . But The Milagro Bean Field War chronicles the bumbling , comic , flawed natures of these farmers trying to make ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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