Only Entertainment can be Utopian
In “Entertainment and Utopia,” the fifth chapter of Only Entertainment, Richard Dyer argues that musicals—both stage and screen—represent a form of entertainment that he calls “pure entertainment.”1 Dyer states that he wants to specifically emphasize the concept of “entertainment as entertainment” in reference to the musical as a form of “pure entertainment” often produced by the most entertainment-oriented of all the entertainment industries—“showbiz.”2 He explains that the historical specificity of entertainment is important to keep in mind while analyzing “showbiz” as the product of professional entertainers, who produce performances for profit with the sole intent of manifesting pleasure for the audience.3 He asserts that the types of performance created within tribal, feudal, or even socialist societies serve other agendas than that of pure entertainment; accordingly, myth, art, instruction, dream, and ritual may be important as entertainment, but they can never be used to define it.4 For Dyer, they exist outside of what he considers to be a utopian understanding of show business, which effectively places the ancient shamanic and oral story-telling traditions of pre-literate societies in such a position that they cannot be called upon to help define what entertainment is. If entertainment, as defined by Dyer, is the business of producing forms, not things, by professionals, then entertainment is a specific product of modernity.5 As such, the musical as a form of pure entertainment is designed to deliver utopian wish-fulfillment. However, Dyer stresses that entertainment does not produce models of utopia, or even utopian worlds, rather this utopianism is “contained in the feelings it embodies.”6 In effect, this is why the musical, with its non-representational signs—identified by Dyer as colour, texture, movement, rhythm, melody, and camera work—works well to provide audiences with an embodied experience of utopianism.7 Dyer insists that the specificities of entertainment need to be examined as a sensibility that continues the utopian traditions of Western thought.8