In American culture and history, a feeling of national identity and belonging have often derived from a sense of injury, vulnerability, and loss. Jonna Eagle turns to the workings of American cinema to understand the power and persistence of these conjunctions, tracing the shifting dynamics of action and pathos as they structure representations of imperialist motion and violence across the twentieth century.

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