The author has changed the focus, and the title, of the videographic essay in the revised submission, concentrating less on the visual construction of the "enemy" in the Hollywood action film over a 30 plus year period, and more on Roger Stahl's idea of the "weaponized gaze" as a conduit of visual pleasure.   The author illustrates this idea by focusing on a genre -- the American action film -- that has long been associated with American national identity and with aggrandized spectacles of military power.  The videographic essay, "Shoot to Kill," seeks to underline the complicity of Hollywood with what Stahl elsewhere calls "militainment," and provides many examples of action film conventions of killing and destruction in exotic, foreign settings, always directed against an enemy "other."  Here, we are reminded that the action genre is at its core an unabashed celebration of violence, an example of what the literary theorist Sarah Cole calls "enchanted violence," as we witness a catalogue of mayhem ranging from everything from simple hand to hand struggle, to various machine gun attacks, to an explosive arrow that, fired by Sylvester Stallone, ignites a conflagration, to the "kill chain" of drone command and control.  Interspersed among the scenes of violence are older television ads for various American consumer items, featuring mainly children and young women. The essay is divided into several chapters, with chapter titles that serve to underline the different facets of the genre that the author wishes to emphasize. 

For me, the videographic essay is much better in this revised version, both in terms of flow and clarity.  However, it is still stronger in conception than in execution.  Section titles like "What does the action hero see?"  And "What does the action hero want to see?" provide perhaps the most direct way to connect the weaponized gaze of the genre with the scopic pleasure of the spectator, as it seems that what the action hero wants to see and what the spectator wants to see are the same.  However, this idea is never really brought home, and perhaps it would be difficult to do so.  Also, some of the pictured violence has an almost comic feel to it, as figures are flung into the air in a kind of slapstick performance -- scenes that are repeated in the essay twice.  Several times, the essay juxtaposes emotional tones in a way that is difficult to process, ranging from near comic acrobatics, to sinister threat, to the graphic ugliness of waterboarding, to a closing shot of Sylvester Stallone that seems almost like self-parody.  This range of stylistic tones may be part of the genre's language, and if so, the author has captured this well in the essay.  But the idea of the "weaponized gaze" tends to move into the background with these juxtapositions.

The theme the essay wishes to explore is interesting and solid, and the action genre is a good place to bring this critical paradigm into view.  The essay seems still to be a work in progress, however.  In my view, the essay could be made stronger by focusing more fully on the two questions that the author asks toward the beginning of the essay concerning what the action hero sees, and what the action hero wishes to see.  To my mind, this is the most successful segment of the essay.

I am happy to see the essay published in its current form, as I feel that the videographic essay along with the abstract the author has provided, including the critical analyses of the two reviewers, make this a worthwhile excavation of a genre that continues to exert a hold on the American popular imagination.