Mike Frank comments: "what i find so interesting and troubling about the exchange is not that i don't believe in realtive readings but that don't think i'm prepared to believe in absolutely relative readings . . . that is to say, there must be something understood as being IN the text which works to contrain and delimit what we may say in response to it . . . otherwise all texts get reduced to the status of rohrschach blots and all responses are equally valid . . . what i was asking is whether the reproduction--either in films or for that matter in any other text-- of the trope called "pieta" carries with it an already present evaluative position, or whether the trope is, as it were, value neutral, and the claim that it is sexist is merely in the eye or the ideology of the beholder . . . and this still seems to me a crucial question" I think the distinctions between *types* of "meaning" raised by Bordwell and Thompson in FILM ART: AN INTRODUCTION (and further elaborated by Bordwell in MAKING MEANING) is useful here. B&T distinguish between Referential Meaning (the inevitable references to people, places, events, etc. that the audience is expected to pick up on); Explicit Meaning (meanings that are overtly stated by the text, usually through dialogue); Implicit Meaning (this one is the real kicker-- what we *think* the film implies); and Sympomatic Meaning (expressions of the film's and culture's ideological positions). These distinctions are not necessarily hard and fast. References may certainly carry various implications, and it's not always easy to decide when an Implication is really Explicit. All of these elements may certainly be Symptomatic as well. I don t recall which film prompted this thread, but to take a fairly obvious example of the Pieta motif, we can see Scorsese alluding to this in several shots in RAGING BULL. The setups of Jake LaMotta, being comforted sexually by his wife for instance, seems--to me--to play off the Pieta motif. I "read" this as referential but maybe it's only Implicit. At any rate, I think the Implication is strong enough (and in the context of the Catholic iconography of Scorsese's other films, reasonable enough) to assume that something is being "said" about LaMotta this way. On the other hand, the Pieta motif is a strong one in Western culture and deeply Symptomatic of ideological assumptions about gender. What can make discussion of this image in RAGING BULL is to question the degree to which Scorsese may seem to imply a critique of this very motif. And I don't think we'll get a single answer! Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN) ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]