In an earlier post, I said that Philadelphia was merely an excuse to reinscribe the dominant fictions of American culture (ie, hetero- sexuality, the nuclear family, etc.) A memeber of the list took offence, pointing out that these cannot be classified as "fictions." True enough, is as much as they are realities for many people. I was using the term "dominant fiction" as Kaja Silverman defines it in Male Subjectivity: "The dominant fiction consists of the images and stories through which a society figures consensus; images and stories which cinema, fiction, popular culture, and other forms of mass representation presumably both draw upon and help to shape" (p. 30). I take the cue from Silverman to suggest that Philadelphia works to figure audience consensus about the virtues of heterosexuality and monogamy over and above homosexuality (despite it posturing as a "liberal" film).