1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910819710403321

Autore

Eagle Jonna

Titolo

Imperial Affects : Sensational Melodrama and the Attractions of American Cinema / / Jonna Eagle

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Brunswick, NJ : , : Rutgers University Press, , [2017]

©2017

ISBN

0-8135-8304-7

0-8135-8305-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (276 pages) : illustrations

Collana

War Culture

Disciplina

791.436582

Soggetti

Action and adventure films - United States - History and criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. Making Sense: Th e Moral and Aff ective Appeals of Melodrama -- 1. A Rough Ride: Cinema, War, and the Strenuous Life -- 2. Manifest Destiny in Action: Sensational Melodrama and the Advent of the Western -- 3. Western Weepies: The Power of Pathos in the Cold War Western -- 4. The Subject of Imperiled Privilege: Victimization and Violence in Late-Century Action Cinema -- Epilogue. To Be Real: Virtual Violence in the Twenty-First Century -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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.