The affects of animosity : action cinema, enemy making, and moral indignation as film mood

This article offers a critical analysis of enemy making and the emotional structures of animosity in relation to the action film genre. Firstly, a theoretical framework is developed that highlights the centrality of negative emotions and antipathic forms of character engagement to the rhetorical powers of fiction film. In line with this theoretical contribution, the concept of moral indignation is introduced and defined as a film mood that helps sustain the pleasures that action films generally attempt to provide, while offering an affectively charged orientation of film violence. Using the case study of Jack Reacher (2012) the article then elucidates how moral indignation allows for heroic violence to be understood as morally legitimate and contributes to the ideological framing of the lives of villains as ungrievable