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 66
... present America . American films define the temper of American society in the time of their time . There is no better example of this manipulation of message by means of the meticulous choice of strategies of discourse than Alan ...
... present action . In the eighties , history is being used to substantiate both the most important and the most trivial aspects of American culture . While the history of the Vietnam War constantly comments upon Reagan - era for- eign ...
... - ness of both past history and past films . American society in the eighties consistently employed an intertextuality with the past as a means of understanding and dealing with the issues of its present . 12 The Films of the Eighties.
... present . It resurrected issues from the fifties , the nuclear threat and detente , to deal with the new cold war of the eighties . It consistently alluded to the history of the sixties and the seventies , principally the Vietnam War ...
... presents its own concept of " story " that is different from the concept of " story " presented in literature . Platoon is an example of an excellent film's failure in the attempt to present both a literary story and a postmodernist ...
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 |