Imperial Affects

JONNA EAGLE is an assistant professor of American studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.  

Introduction Making Sense: The Moral and Affective Appeals of Melodrama  
• The Felt Good of Melodrama  
• Affective Attunement and the Structuring of Feeling   
• Visceral Politics   
• Imperial Affects   

1. A Rough Ride: Cinema, War, and the Strenuous Life  
• Theodore Roosevelt and the Discourse of the Strenuous Life   
• Strenuous Spectacle in the Theater of War   
• Strenuous Spectatorship and the Early Cinema of Assaults   

2. Manifest Destiny in Action: Sensational Melodrama and the Advent of the Western  
• Sensational Melodrama and Western Attractions   
• The Visceral and Moral Thrills of Western Action   
• Moving Men: Heroic Action and the Morality of Motion   

3. Western Weepies: The Power of Pathos in the Cold War Western  
• Questioning Authority: Masculinity, Morality, and the Cold War Western    
• The White Man’s Indian: Race and Redemption in the Pro-Indian Cycle    
• “What am I supposed to do, cry  Feel sorry for him ”    
• Suffer and Be Hard: The Power of Pathos    

4. The Subject of Imperiled Privilege: Victimization and Violence in Late-Century Action Cinema  
• Spectacular Agonies, Sensational Redemptions: Rambo as Melodrama    
• Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, and the New Pleasures of Action    
• There’s No Place Like Home: Falling Down and the Subject of Imperiled Privilege    
• Beyond Forgiveness: Unforgiven and the Limitations of Critique    

Epilogue To Be Real: Virtual Violence in the Twenty-First Century  

Acknowledgments    
Notes    
Selected Bibliography    
Index