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
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... Reagan administrations and their attendant personality cults notwithstanding , those two decades bear the burdens of quite similar social histories as well . Both had the previous decade's war to remember and get over . Except for brush ...
... Reagan's America , appeared , superficially , to be a safe place , especially in terms of economic stability . Like America in the fifties , eighties America was a " sure - thing society . " Taking its cue from Reaganomics , Hollywood ...
... Reagan , was a former film actor who repeatedly employed film images and references to advance his historical goals . In his farewell speech to the Republican National Convention in 1988 , for example , the president reprised his most ...
... Reagan . He was a master at using what Hollywood has always known : that the American people arc most comfortable in believing and understanding events that they can see . Film images verify and reveal history , and eighties society was ...
... Reagan government for farm aid in the public way that political films always have . The lead actresses in all three of these farm films were nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award that year . Nineteen eighty - seven was the Year ...
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 |