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
