> It doesn't take a Marxist to see Poltergeist and notice that the film
> attributes the cause of ghostly disturbance to the desecration of
> Indian burial grounds, because it's explicitly discussed in the
> dialogue at length (rather than fleetingly hinted at by images). Some
> viewers may still choose to ignore inconvenient or unpleasant
> interpretive cues -- even if they were declared in CAPITAL LETTERS as
> intertitles -- but that doesn't make moot the distinction between a
> text that provides such cues or clues (Poltergeist) and a text that
> does not (Jaws).
My point is this: is does not matter how "obvious" or "blatant" the meaning is to you; the signficance of the art is a social product, based on the varied interpretation, debate, and negotiation of the people who witness the art. The artist--or a specific interpreter--cannot "force" the art to have a specific meaning, no matter how obvious the meaning may seem to the artist.
--Example: the popularity of "Every breath you take" at weddings. Sting meant this to be a creepy song about a stalker, but it is interpreted and used as a love song by many people in our society. Sure, that's not the artist's intent, but the meaning and importance of a work of art in a society has little to do with the artist's intent.
So if everybody in our society decided that "Jaws" was a symbolic representation of the horrors of capitalism, then yes, regardless of Spielberg's intentions, in our society Jaws would be a movie with an anti-capitalist message.
Miles