Richard Dyer

White people are not literally or symbolically white; nor are they uniquely virtuous and pure. Racial imagery and racial representation are central to the organisation of the contemporary world but, while there are many studies of images of black and Asian people, whiteness is an invisible racial position. At the level of racial representation, whites are not of a certain race. They are just the human race, a 'colour' against which other ethnicities are always examined. In White, Richard Dyer looks beyond the apparent unremarkability of whiteness and argues for the importance of analysing images of white people. Dyer traces the representation of whiteness by whites in Western visual culture, focusing on the mass media of photography, advertising, fine art, cinema and television. Dyer examines the representation of whiteness and the white body in the contexts of Christianity, 'race' and colonialism. In a series of absorbing case studies, he discusses the representations of whiteness in muscle-man action cinema, from Italian 'peplum' movies to the Tarzan and Rambo series; shows the construction of whiteness in photography and cinema in the lighting of white and black faces, and analyses the representation of white women in end-of-empire fictions such as The Jewel in the Crown, and traces the disturbing association of whiteness with death, in vampire narratives and dystopian films such as Blade Runner and the Aliens trilogy.

Essays on Race and Culture

White

Film Stars and Society

Heavenly Bodies

New Edition

Stars

Nino Rota wrote some of the most beloved  film music: for The Godfather, nearly all of Fellini, and more than 140 popular Italian movies. This book gives a detailed account of Rota's aesthetic, suggesting it as a new approach to how we understood both film music and feeling as well as film more broadly. In the process it also provides a first full account in English of his life and work.

music, film and feeling

Nino Rota

Sets out to examine lesbian and gay films and their historical contexts. Provides a record of these films up to 1980.

Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film

Now You See it

Anne Rice

Stephen King

Michel Foucault

Judith Halberstam

William Gibson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Andrew O'Hagan

Umberto Eco

Slavoj Žižek

Sigmund Freud

Jean Baudrillard

Mike Kelley

Beatriz Colomina

James Sampson Meyer

Mary Shelley

Patrick McGrath

Jeff Wall

Jacques Lacan

Marina Warner

Hal Foster

Jerry Saltz

Damien Hirst

Amelia Jones

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Nancy Spector

Julia Kristeva

Edmund Burke

Mark Edmundson

Bret Easton Ellis

Edgar Allan Poe

Richard Davenport-Hines

Douglas Crimp

Gianni Jetzer

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Carol J. Clover

Trevor J. Fairbrother

Anthony Vidler

Elisabeth Bronfen

Bruce Hainley

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Kate Ferguson Ellis

Kobena Mercer

Stan Douglas

Alex Farquharson

Jane D. Marsching

Mark Alice Durant

Nike Bätzner

Michael Cohen (kustos.)

Tacita Dean

Christoph Grünenberg

Jonathan Jones (likovni kritik.)

Shamim Momin

Andrew Ross (Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis.)

Jaques Derrida

Part of the acclaimed 'Documents of Contemporary Art' series of anthologies. This collection of writings examines the pervasive and influential role of the Gothic in contemporary art, providing the first comprehensive overview of its uses within contemporary visual culture. The Gothic includes artists' writings by Mike Kelley, Damien Hirst, Tacita Dean, Jonathan Meese and Catherine Sullivan, complemented by literary extracts from Horace Walpole, William Gibson, Bret Easton Ellis and Stephen King, and theoretical writings by such key thinkers as Carol Clover, Beatriz Colomina, Julia Kristeva, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Marina Warner and Slavoj Žižek. Artists surveyed include Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Tacita Dean, Sue de Beer, Janet Cardiff, Mark Dion, Stan Douglas, Robert Gober, Douglas Gordon, Dan Graham, Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Teresa Margolles, Jonathan Meese, Raymond Pettibon, Paul Pfeiffer, Gregor Schneider, Cindy Sherman, Catherine Sullivan, Andy Warhol, and Jane and Louise Wilson. Writers include Jean Baudrillard, Elizabeth Bronfen, Edmund Burke, Carol Clover, Beatriz Colomina, Douglas Crimp, Jacques Derrida, Richard Dyer, Umberto Eco, Bret Easton Ellis, Trevor Fairbrother, Alex Farquharson, Hal Foster, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, William Gibson, Christoph Grunenberg, Bruce Hainley, Judith Halberstam, Amelia Jones, Jonathan Jones, Mike Kelley, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Patrick McGrath, Kobena Mercer, James Meyer, Edgar Allan Poe, Andrew Ross, Jerry Saltz, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Mary Shelley, Nancy Spector, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Vidler, Jeff Wall, Horace Walpole, Marina Warner, Anne Williams and Slavoj Žižek.

The Gothic

This new edition of Dyer's text on entertainment and the pleasures of popular culture features a revised introduction and five new chapters on topics from serial killer movies to Elizabeth Taylor.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

Paul McDonald

This revised edition of Richard Dyer's bestselling text traces the developments in the study of Stars since the book's first appearance.

In the second edition of this classic book, Dyer analyses culture from royalty to serial killers, political correctnesss and films.

Essays on Representations

The Matter of Images

Brief Encounter (1945), adapted from Noel Coward's play Still Life, is a classic of British cinema – a tale of impossible love between a married woman and a man she meets while waiting for a train. Though it's a film made by men, it is the woman's voice we hear recounting the story of a small-town love affair and her renunciation of it. In his lucid analysis of the film, Richard Dyer explores how its depiction of powerful feelings kept under wraps is a definitive example of a particularly English style of emotional restraint, but also how it spoke to a gay audience for whom this subject – forbidden love between ordinary people – had a special resonance. This reissued edition features original cover artwork by Rania Moudaress and a substantial new foreword that revisits the film and recent readings of it, covering its enduring legacy and adaptation for theatre and television.

Brief Encounter

Galleria Ceribelli Albini (Milan)

memograph

Glenys Johnson

Peter Wollen

Jean Fisher

Tina Keane

Tina Keane first came to prominence in the late 1970s with her performance work and involvement in setting up London feminist film collective Circles. Since then she has become an internationally acclaimed artist working in a wide variety of media, including video, neon sculpture and installation. "Electronic Shadows is the first study of her work, bringing together her diverse career and oeuvre in the context of a wider history of the visual arts. During the 1980s and 90s Tina Keane developed her video work, incorporating a strong decorative aesthetic with personal narratives, building on her experimental film, video and performance from the 1970s and early 80s. "Electronic Shadows explores the diversity of Keane's practice, considering her relationship to and influence on contemporary video art, and situating her films within a broader context of artist's film from the late 70s onwards. With extensive illustrations this volume documents Keane's work and her wide influence on contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin, Tim Noble and Sue Webster.

The Art of Tina Keane

Electronic Shadows

Fellini's La dolce vita has been a phenomenon since before it was made, a scandal in the making and on release in 1960 and a reference point ever since. Much of what made it notorious was its incorporation of real people, events and lifestyles, making it a documentation of its time. It uses performance, camera movement, editing and music to produce a striking aesthetic mix of energy and listlessness, of exuberance and despair. Richard Dyer's study considers each of these aspects of the film – phenomenon, document, aesthetic – and argues that they are connected. Beginning with the inspirations and ideas that were subsequently turned into La dolce vita, Dyer then explores the making of the film, the film itself and finally its critical reception, providing engaging new insights into this mesmerising piece of cinema.

La dolce vita

"Published to accompany the exhibition Gay Icons held at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 2 July to 18 October 2009"--T.p. verso.

Gay Icons

Julianne Pidduck

This study of films by and about lesbians and gay men has been revised for a second edition and features an introduction outlining developments in lesbian and gay cinema since 1990.

Studies in Lesbian and Gay Film

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.

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.

Richard Dyer

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