The Films of the Eighties: A Social HistorySIU Press, 1995 - 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. |
From inside the book
Results 6-10 of 46
... films that have their heads stuck in the sand . " 30 Hollywood has always been criticized as escapist , nostalgic , senti- mental , historically inaccurate , and socially unresponsive . Hollywood's The Holograph of History □ 7.
... Hollywood's tendency to duck social , political , and historical issues in deference to a box - office censorship that stresses caution has been a film criticism cliche for seventy years . Actor Peter Boyle supports the Hollywood - as ...
... Hollywood modes of discourse infiltrate the good political instincts of writers and directors . To make a film about racism , Hollywood uses the buddy movie genre . " 35 In defending himself against naysayers like Gavin Smith , Parker ...
... Hollywood films . Marc Cooper , in an essay about the decline of drug use in eighties films , writes : " There is a different moral tenor now , a general conservatism in the culture , and that's why movies have shifted to the right in ...
... Hollywood , had refused to consider the war retrospectively just as the movie industry ( with the ludicrous exception of John Wayne's Green Berets ) had refused to portray the war in films while the war was going on . The American ...
Contents
16 | |
The Coming Home Films | 61 |
The Terrorism Film Texts | 114 |
The Nuclear War Film Texts | 179 |
From the Evil Empire to Glasnost | 206 |
The Feminist Farm Crisis and Other Neoconservative | 246 |
The Yuppie Texts | 280 |
Film in the Holograph of New History | 308 |
Index | 325 |