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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... happening , when it is being pondered and intellectualized . This distinction is one reason why the mass culture of American society can learn so much about the Vietnam War from films . Motion pictures are always happening , just as a ...
... happened in Vietnam , why America lost , and the postwar situation of the Vietnam vet who has been made into a " stranger at home " by American society . In these analytic dialogue exchanges and extended polemic speeches , the comic ...
... happened at Three Mile Island in 1978. The earthquake that wracked Soviet Armenia in 1988 mirrored the devastation that Hurricane Hugo of the summer and the San Francisco earthquake of the fall would wreak in America in 1989. 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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