Richard Dyer, lecturer in film for the universities of Keele and Birmingham in Britain, makes a case for entertainment as a utopian sensibility. He says:
'The notion of entertainment as in some sense utopian — expressing ideals about how human life could be organized and lived –is implicit in what the most widespread assumption about entertainment, namely, that it provides ‘escape.’
Richard Dyer states that people will respond to a media text if it offers them compensation for the inadequacies in their own lives. Through the media, audiences can vicariously live their lives and fulfill their wants and needs, leading them to strive to a utopian life.
Entertainment offers the image of ‘something better’ to set against the realities of day-to-day existence. - 3 reasons why audiences choose to consume media
2) inadequacy
3) absence
Dyer’s Utopian theory is linked with the Uses and Gratifications theory:
-audiences consume media products with a clear set of pleasures to draw from that experience
- Utopian theory—> gratification that allows people to escape from their real lives
-reality—> full of negatives and unfulfillment.
- the ‘mediated ‘ world represents an escape
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