Richard Dyer – författare

Writing with his customary wit and style, Richard Dyer argues that while pastiche can be used to describe works which contain montage or collage, it can also be used to describe works which are a kind of imitation of previous works.

Investigating a wide range of cultural texts drawn from films, videos, novels, poetry, rap tracks, music and painting, Richard Dyer explores issues of text, genre, and the use of pastiche as a resource within a work. The final chapter draws together the underlying concern of the book with affect and poetics and discusses the politics of pastiche.

Writing with his customary wit and style, Richard Dyer argues that while pastiche can be used to describe works which contain montage or collage, it can also be used to describe works which are a kind of imitation of previous works.

Investigating a wide range of cultural texts drawn from films, videos, novels, poetry, rap tracks, music and painting, Richard Dyer explores issues of text, genre, and the use of pastiche as a resource within a work. The final chapter draws together the underlying concern of the book with affect and poetics and discusses the politics of pastiche.

Only Entertainment explores entertainment as entertainment, asking how and whether an emphasis on the primacy of pleasure sets it apart from other forms of art.Dyer focuses on the genres most associated with entertainment, from musicals to action movies, disco to porn. He examines the nature of entertainment in movies such as The Sound of Music and Speed, and argues that entertainment is part of a ''common sense'' which is always historically and culturally constructed.This new edition of Only Entertainment features a revised introduction and five new chapters on topics from serial killer movies to Elizabeth Taylor. In the final chapter Dyer asks whether entertainment as we know it is on the wane.

Only Entertainment explores entertainment as entertainment, asking how and whether an emphasis on the primacy of pleasure sets it apart from other forms of art.Dyer focuses on the genres most associated with entertainment, from musicals to action movies, disco to porn. He examines the nature of entertainment in movies such as The Sound of Music and Speed, and argues that entertainment is part of a ''common sense'' which is always historically and culturally constructed.This new edition of Only Entertainment features a revised introduction and five new chapters on topics from serial killer movies to Elizabeth Taylor. In the final chapter Dyer asks whether entertainment as we know it is on the wane.

For around a hundred years up to the Stonewall riots, the word used for gay men was ''queers''. In The Culture of Queers, Richard Dyer traces the contours of queer culture, examining the differences and continuities with the gay culture which succeeded it.

Opening with a discussion of the very concept of ''queers'', Dyer asks what it means to speak of a sexual grouping having a culture, and addresses issues such as gay attitudes to women and the notion of camp. From screaming queens to sensitive vampires and sad young men, and from pulp novels to pornography to the films of Fassbinder, The Culture of Queers explores the history of queer arts and media.

For around a hundred years up to the Stonewall riots, the word used for gay men was ''queers''. In The Culture of Queers, Richard Dyer traces the contours of queer culture, examining the differences and continuities with the gay culture which succeeded it.

Opening with a discussion of the very concept of ''queers'', Dyer asks what it means to speak of a sexual grouping having a culture, and addresses issues such as gay attitudes to women and the notion of camp. From screaming queens to sensitive vampires and sad young men, and from pulp novels to pornography to the films of Fassbinder, The Culture of Queers explores the history of queer arts and media.

Now twenty years since its initial release, Richard Dyer’s classic text White remains a groundbreaking and insightful study of the representation of whiteness in Western visual culture.

White explores how, while racial representation is central to the organisation of the contemporary world, white people have remained a largely unexamined category in sharp contrast to the many studies of images of black and Asian peoples. Looking beyond the apparent unremarkability of whiteness, Dyer demonstrates the importance of analysing images of white people.

Dyer places this representation within the contexts of Christianity, ‘race’ and colonialism. In a series of absorbing case studies, he shows the construction of whiteness in the technology of photography and film as part of a wider ‘culture of light’; discusses heroic white masculinity in muscle-man action cinema, from Tarzan and Hercules to Conan and Rambo; analyses the stifling role of white women in end-of-empire fictions like Jewel in the Crown and traces the associations of whiteness with death in Falling Down, horror movies and cult dystopian films such as Blade Runner and the Aliens trilogy.

This twentieth anniversary edition includes a new introductory chapter by Maxime Cervulle entitled ‘Looking into the light: Whiteness, racism and regimes of representation’. This new introduction illuminates how Dyer has made a major contribution to the study of contemporary regimes of representation by unveiling the cultural mechanisms that have formed and reinforced white hegemony, mechanisms under which white people have come to represent what is ordinary, neutral, even universal.

Now twenty years since its initial release, Richard Dyer’s classic text White remains a groundbreaking and insightful study of the representation of whiteness in Western visual culture.

White explores how, while racial representation is central to the organisation of the contemporary world, white people have remained a largely unexamined category in sharp contrast to the many studies of images of black and Asian peoples. Looking beyond the apparent unremarkability of whiteness, Dyer demonstrates the importance of analysing images of white people.

Dyer places this representation within the contexts of Christianity, ‘race’ and colonialism. In a series of absorbing case studies, he shows the construction of whiteness in the technology of photography and film as part of a wider ‘culture of light’; discusses heroic white masculinity in muscle-man action cinema, from Tarzan and Hercules to Conan and Rambo; analyses the stifling role of white women in end-of-empire fictions like Jewel in the Crown and traces the associations of whiteness with death in Falling Down, horror movies and cult dystopian films such as Blade Runner and the Aliens trilogy.

This twentieth anniversary edition includes a new introductory chapter by Maxime Cervulle entitled ‘Looking into the light: Whiteness, racism and regimes of representation’. This new introduction illuminates how Dyer has made a major contribution to the study of contemporary regimes of representation by unveiling the cultural mechanisms that have formed and reinforced white hegemony, mechanisms under which white people have come to represent what is ordinary, neutral, even universal.

Now published in a revised second edition, The Matter of Images searches through the resonances of the term ‘representation’, analysing images in terms of why they matter, what they are made of, and the material realities they refer to. Richard Dyer’s analyses consider representations of ‘out’ groups and traditionally dominant groups alike, and encompass the eclectic texts of contemporary culture, from queers to straights, political correctness, representations of Empire and films including Gilda, Papillon and The Night of the Living Dead. Essays new to the second edition discuss Lillian Gish as the ultimate white movie star, the representation of whiteness in the South in Birth of a Nation, and society’s fascination with serial killers.

The Matter of Images is distinctive in its commitment to writing politically about contemporary culture, while insisting on the importance of understanding the formal qualities and complexity of the images it investigates.