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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... guys have guns , but everybody else is unarmed . In Off Limits , literally everybody has a gun , good guys , bad guys , innocent bystanders and children . The vio- lence has escalated to the point where the buddy - chase genre movie is ...
... Guy Hamilton ( Mel Gibson ) , a journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Service , and Billy Kwan ( Linda Hunt ) , a Malaysian dwarf free - lance photographer , have the same relationship as Schanberg and Dith Pran in The Killing ...
... Guy into greater involvement in life . Sukarno loses out to the generals when the PKL peoples ' revolt is defeated by the military and the army carries out large - scale executions of PKL sympathizers that esti- mates place in a range ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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