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 67
... facts . Conversely the New Historicism argues for a postmodernist recognition of the holographic truth of history . The New Historicism views itself as a computer - generated enhancement that can give new dimension and flexibility to ...
... fact derived from the critical sifting of sources . " Thus documentary historicism can only revise the historical record by unearthing new documents that contain " hitherto unknown information , " while the New Historicism is capable of ...
... facts about ' reality . ' " The documentary historian's conception of textuality has too often been an exploitative one that " often encouraged narrowly documentary read- ings in which the text becomes little more than a sign of the ...
... facts can only be interpreted by the examination of their relationship " to other events occurring in their circumambient historical space . " What contextualist history strives for is to define the " trends ' or general physiognomies ...
... fact that whether they like it or not , their job carries enormous responsibility . " 33 Puttnam goes further than Monaco when he asserts that film does not just diffuse the events , the facts , the threads of social history , but ...
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 |