Dan Gribbin writes: "To sum up, several SCREEN-L correspondents have pointed out the existence of admittedly trivial background references, but it seems important to be mindful of the less obvious referencing to previous works, myths, and archetypes that customarily feeds our art." Your point is well taken. Without giving too much to T.S. Eliot, we can acknowledge that all art steals from/builds on/reacts to other works of art more or less overtly. There is often, if not always, also a range of built-in references to "real life," whether in the form of historical/ political backgrounds or the social contexts that are simply taken for granted by artist and audience alike. In general, this is what Bordwell and Thompson call "referential meaning" (distinct from but overlapping with implicit meaning, explicit meaning and symptomatic [ideological] meaning." It is always present, but sometimes more important as part of the film's overall structure than others. As a couple of examples, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN might be viewed strictly as a fictional work by people who are completely ignorant about Watergate and Nixon, but those political events are part of the film's structure. WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN both can hold their own for someone innocent of any film history but they are filmed with allusions that make the films more enjoyable to those who get the references. My initial question, though, was prompted by LETHAL WEAPON III and the background references to animal rights that are completely extraneous to the plot (except, perhaps, as an ironic commentary on the foregrounded human violence). Outside of deliberate spoof films, like the Crosby-Hope ROAD TO films and the Zucker-Abraham films, it's hard to think of films that use such off-the-wall referentiality. A related point is the question of reception. If a reference is made and no one has the models to decode or access the reference, then is the reference a part of the film's structure? --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN