Imperial Affects

Sensational Melodrama and the Attractions of American Cinema

By Jonna Eagle

SERIES: War Culture

Rutgers University Press

Imperial Affects is the first sustained account of American action-based cinema as melodrama. From the earliest war films through the Hollywood Western and the late-century action cinema, imperialist violence and mobility have been produced as sites of both visceral pleasure and moral virtue. Suffering and omnipotence operate as twinned affects in this context, inviting identification with an American national subject constituted as both victimized and invincible—a powerful and persistent conjunction traced here across a century of cinema.

Eagle skillfully juggles debates around the meaning and cultural relevance of melodrama, the relationship between sensationalism and modernity, and the cultural work done by the Western. This is a first-rate book that makes important contributions to film studies, American studies, and cultural studies more broadly. Sarah Hagelin, author of Reel Vulnerability

Rich in historical and critical insights, Eagle vividly demonstrates why the intimate connection between melodrama and action/violence matters so profoundly for our thinking about the cinema, gender, race and nationalism. Yvonne Tasker, author of Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema

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

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