I had learned that entertainment forms used certain signals and symbols to make a person think or laugh along with an inside joke, but the signals of escapism itself never really crossed my mind as a consumer. His focus on the aspects, or sensibilities, of utopia and how they are not only portrayed in entertainment mediums, but also used as solutions to life's vicissitudes within that medium, were something I had never considered before. The concepts of representational and non-representational signs, especially, threw me at first, though Dyer's meaning quickly became clear with context. (224-225) He further underscores this utopian characteristic with the observation that 'the categories of the utopian sensibility are related to specific inadequacies in society.' (227) The audience is paying to see the inadequacies of their lives solved in ephemera, to see their lives made simpler for a few hours, and the entertainment industry delivers on that demand in order to generate a profit.ĭyer's article, a dense read, only unfolded for me more fully after the class discussion and a more focused objective to the reading. (222-223) In Dyer's article, he focuses on the tonal Utopia of that escape, using five 'Utopian Sensibilities', abundance, intensity, transparency, community, and energy, to illustrate the point that, in order to offer an audience a glimpse of the utopian escape desired by a paying audience, most, if not all elements of the entertainment form must cycle back to one or more of these sensibilities.

Dyer stresses the use of overt and more subtle techniques, 'representational and non-representational signs' to transport the audience into the world created by a given entertainment form for the span of that entertainment, the use of color, melody, texture, and camera work building on the more obvious elements of characters, plot, and setting to convey their intended escape to the audience. Richard Dyer, in his article 'Entertainment and Utopia,' puts forth the argument that entertainment, the musical in particular for the focus of his essay, is engineered to offer the emotive feel of utopia to the public for a short time, offering them an escape from reality for a price, and that the supply of entertainment is both a product of capitalism and a demand of a capitalist society.

Now You See It by Richard Dyer