Pleasure | Obvious | Queer: A conversation with Richard Dyer

Abstract

On April 13, 2016, Catherine Grant and Jaap Kooijman held a conversation with film scholar Richard Dyer in front of a live audience. The conversation consists of three parts, each based on one particular theme that runs through Dyer’s work: pleasure, obvious, and queer. Each theme is introduced by a short video made especially for this occasion, in which quotations taken from Dyer’s work are combined with fragments of case studies Dyer has done over the years. Part one addresses the significance of pleasure in entertainment as well in the way academic scholars select their objects of study. Part two addresses both the respecting and questioning of the obvious when studying culture, including the persisting need for textual analysis and the role of stereotypes. The third part addresses notions of queerness before and after the Gay Liberation Movement of the 1970s. Moreover, the conversation questions to what extent these themes remain relevant in film and media studies today.