Edward O'Neill writes: "Is this radically different from previous modes of cinema viewing? After all, looking at joke-y references would seem to pull the spectator outside the empathic identification with the characters and the forward-moving aspect of the narrative. Have action-adventure films become so relentlessly violent and spectacular to compensate for an ironic attitude in the viewers, in which deaths don't matter and characters are nothing but a collection of one-liners to be ironically appreciated by a distanced audience?" Good point! Of course, the motivations may differ wildly. In one respect, this sounds like the best version of Brecht's "alienation effect." In another regard, it sounds like Walter Benjamin commenting on the "false aura" of the star system--except now money has replaced the aura of the star. Neither of the Bs would probably be terribly surprised by the triumph of the cash nexus. All this calls into question (as other netters have done before) about the effects of any attempt to modernize and thus politicize a viewing population. Case in point: I haven't watched THE SIMPSONS much until recently, but find it interestingly crammed with off-the-wall allusions that are quite critical of mass culture. (Last night's show featured a birthday party where the family could think of no songs except from commercials, and they all started dancing to "I feel like chicken tonight!" The show ended with a senior citizen parody of THE GRADUATE). This is very funny stuff, but even for those who get it, does it do anything other than reinforce their contempt for mass culture? For those who don't get it, is it anything more than stuff that gets in the way of Bart's one-liners? 20 years ago, Pauline Kael complained that the new generation of film-school grads who were starting to direct might make movies that were about nothing more than their experience of other movies. I've had lots of quarrels with Kael over the years, but on this point she seems prophetic! (And then there's the early French New Wave. Truffaut and Godard were cross-referencing like mad. How, if at all, is that different? What's their influence on all those film-school grads?) More grist for the net, I hope. --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN