Investigating a wide range of cultural texts drawn from films, videos, novels, poetry, rap tracks, music and painting, the book explores issues of text, genre, and the use of pastiche as a resource within a work

Writing with his customary wit and style, Richard Dyer argues that while pastiche can be used to describe works which contain montage or collage, it can also be used to describe works which are a kind of imitation of previous works. Investigating a wide range of cultural texts drawn from films, videos, novels, poetry, rap tracks, music and painting, Richard Dyer explores issues of text, genre, and the use of pastiche as a resource within a work. The final chapter draws together the underlying concern of the book with affect and poetics and discusses the politics of pastiche.

"A significant corrective to our understanding of this new ubiquitous term... a major contribution to the understanding of this much-mentioned, but little-theorized mode." --The Times Literary Supplement "In this study, Richard Dyer turns the tables on dismissive critics, identifying their condemnations as part of a long-standing tradition of patriarchal discomfort with intimacy and affect." --Cineaste Magazine