The Eighties
Jump Cut, History of the American Cinema, Chicken Little, Stacey Peralta
In trying to uncover the causal forces that have affected us with co-branded advertising, I have encountered a variety of "The Eighties" narratives, as "The Eighties" pertains to the film industry, films and filmmakers, and film history generally. These narratives can by and large be divided into three distinct camps: (1) claiming films of "The Eighties" generally reflect the decade's ideology, as manifest in the Reagan presidency and correlative rise of the religious right, (2) claims that such ideological linkages are overstated, and that true change occurred not in the content of films, but in their means of production, distribution, etc., and (3) there were no significant changes.
The first group is best represented by journal articles published concurrent with "The Eighties" decade: articles critical of Indiana Jones or Star Wars, et al., appear most prominently online in the archives of the excellent journal of contemporary media studies, Jump Cut. These articles among others published in the decade attempted to establish a critical context for immediate reception of a film that then loomed incomparably large in whatever historico-cultural context the authors found themselves. As such, the tone of these articles sometimes approaches Chicken Little proportions, though actual "sky is falling" claims are few and far between, and the articles are basically on point.
With just a decade's distance from "The Eighties," historical counter-narratives have already begun to appear, most prominently in the form of Stephen Prince's recent contribution to the multi-volume History of the American Cinema edited by Charles Harpole. Prince's volume 10, A New Pot of Gold, takes issue with any conflation of "Reaganism" and Hollywood film. He even goes so far as to chastise those who would place the business of film in "The Eighties" under the long shadow cast by an undeniable dominance of Lucas-Spielberg narratives throughout the decade. This approach means questions of ideology, politics and the like inevitably take a back seat to the "true" driver of Hollywood's rocky road: expanding synergies of ancillary markets, studios' absorption into mass media conglomerates, a "radical" shift away from the theater and into the home.
The third approach, recognizing continuity throughout the history of film in lieu of "That Was The Day Everything Changed Forever" (i.e. Stacey Peralta) narration, is one I like, though I am not a huge fan of its biggest proponent, David Bordwell. Bordwell masterfully elucidates various continuities of narration in visual storytelling from the earliest studio practices to the present day; yet his adamant refusal to consider any interpretation more complex than a remedial analysis of plot and history means he glowingly endorses brilliant plot points from Die Hard to Jerry Maguire, without acknowledging the not-so-insignificant fact that nearly every one of these narratives centers on a heroic white male protagonist. The implications seem obvious, and well within the bounds of responsible interpretation.
Ultimately, then, I am finding that significantly more has been published on "The Eighties" than I had previously imagined. Film and media scholars seem all too eager to "narrativize" the decade, to such a degree that we already have coterminous, counter-, and counter-counter-narratives to choose from. This makes my task more difficult, and as well casts a pall over my entire project, which could not possibly be more contemporary.