Kevin writes: "Also, even when there seems to be only "shock value" at stake, isn't there always necessarily something more going on?? That is, aren't there necessarily additional "implications" at stake when one finds something "shocking" (e.g., there must be powerful social boundaries being transgressed or negotiated, powerful social meanings at stake, etc.--and how could that be considered insignificant?)" I'd agree absolutely. (I have to, as a devotee of Thomas Pynchon). But there's a difference between "implications" that are a fruitful part of the overall structure of the work in question and those that are a result of the social/ideological context that is articulated within the work (not that you can always--or even often--separate the two easily). As a case in point, X-FILES is often compared to THE TWILIGHT ZONE, yet the two shows deal with the fantastic and paranormal in rather different ways, the most obvious being Serling's sometimes heavy-handed moralizing. I think, though, that for younger viewers of my generation, that moralizing made all the differences. One fabled episode that we discussed on the grade school playground was the one where astronauts are abducted and put into what is finally revealed to be an alien zoo. As facile as the story is, I think it raised issues about difference and Otherness that could only be read in the context of the conformity of the 1950s and perhaps the civil rights movement. I know that it made me think about what it meant to be an Other-- to be viewed, separated and categorized as something and not somebody. On the other hand, what does a mutated parasite in the sewers of New York say that isn't said by the urban legend of giant albino alligators and nuclear fears expressed in GODZILLA and so on? It's simply there. Pynchon mocked and made use of such folkore in his novels, but I don't see X-FILES *going* anywhere with this, beyond getting us to distrust the government. Paranoia can be a spur to action, but taken on its own, it simply leads to paralysis (that's another lesson from Pynchon). So enjoy THE X-FILES for whatever reason, if you will, but for a "progressive" view of the kinds of issues you see at work, I'll stick with the various STAR TRECK spinoffs, which throw in a little shock from time to time but always in the context of larger questions (again, as juvenile as its expression may sometimes--but not often--be). Live long and prosper, --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN Neither a Trekker nor a Trekkie, but a fan of good tv :->