Dear Jane, here is my second posting: I'm not sure why you dismiss Perry's comments on viewers as being an "easy" explanation from "reception theory." Much of what I've read on the subject discusses issues of spectatorship as being important in the creation of meaning, and it seems your own examples bear some of this out. But perhaps I misunderstand your point. I guess I'm not sure what you mean by comprehensibility. I'm assuming to understand the plot, but you admit it happens sometimes after a repeated viewing. And that it doesn't affect your pleasure if you don't "get" it. And what does it mean to understand anyway? My students have grown up with MTV, video games, and other non?linear "texts" and thus claim to understand quite convoluted storylines, as well as the more popular Hollywood product that sacrifices coherence to special effects. Wouldn't this suggest that some type of background experiences do play a part in viewing (as you note with genre)? Such understanding may also have to do with a certain type of visual experience (if not a type of "literacy"). Personally, I'm hesistant to privilege the text for meaning I do think "the text" works in a complicated (instead of simplistic) manner with the audience in the construction of understanding and meaning. For example, I had no problem whatsover in understanding many of the films you named, especially Hollywood products like "The Matrix," "Se7en," "The Usual Suspects," etc. (surrealist films like "Un Chien Andalou" belong in a different category, I think). In the case of "The Matrix," this may very well be because I do research on and teach about science?fiction & fantasy films. I appreciated as well much of the allusions (filmic, literary, and philosophical) in "The Matrix" (references deliberately put in by the directors, quite possibly as a type of "riff" like in improvisational jazz, for their own pleasure rather than the mass audience). I "got it" on first viewing, but subsequent viewings have certainly enriched my understanding of the film. Barbara L. Baker Professor of Communication CMSU Warrensburg, MO. (USA) 64093 [log in to unmask] >>> [log in to unmask] 03/14/02 08:03AM >>> drew perry writes, in part: >>We keep getting told that today's >>generation of non-readers (a generalisation, >>I know, but strikes me as a plausible >>characterisation) are just literate in a new >>way - they're visually literate. >>But then you keep hearing about how >>film or television texts that stretch >>the conventions one iota (convoluted >>narrative styles, profound existential >>subtext, allusive or open closures, symbolic >>imagery etc) are incomprehensible, unfathomable. >>That The Matrix (for e.g.) is just sill sci-fi stuff >>that 'makes no sense' ... just get into the special effects. and though i quite agree with him i think it might be worth making an additonal distinction . . . if visual literacy is the ability to decode the conventional [but rapidly evolving] codes and languages of cinema, then they are indeed very literate . . . . . . but . . . if by visual literacy we mean the ability to move from those codes to a different set of codes that drew names as "convoluted narrative styles, profound existential subtext, allusive or open closures, symbolic imagery etc" in other words conceptual codes that are not specifically cinematic but that we take as a central part of the western intellectual tradition, then they are almost totally illiterate . . . and i take it that one of the main objections in some parts of our culture to this new literacy is precsiely that it seems to interfre with the development of literacy of the more traditional kind -- which had little to do with simnply deciphering words and more to do with being able to frame the results conceptually m ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite