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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... symbolic nihilist phase . What is important about this symbolic nihilist third phase of Vietnam War films is that , except for Gardens of Stone , all of the films are set in Vietnam , in the war . The consensus that all of these films ...
... symbolic irony as the young grunts realize that they are pulling everybody else in America's shit . This simultaneously realistic and symbolic “ naming of parts " continues in the next scene in the Heads Bunker as Elias teaches Chris ...
... symbolic images capture visually the " survivor guilt syndrome " in Uncommon Valor . Those images are introduced in the open- ing scene before the credits . Set in a firefight in the past in Vietnam , the image of a soldier carrying his ...
Contents
The Vietnam War as Film Text | 16 |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
Copyright | |
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