We have been arguing (a) the violent act or episode in a Western cannot signify in isolation, outside the structured field of meanings which is the film or program; (b) it signifies only in relation to the other elements, and in terms of the rules and conventions which govern their combination. We must now add (c) that the meaning of such a violent act or episode cannot be fixed, single, and unalterable but must be capable of signifying different values depending on how and with what it is articulated. As the signifying element, among other elements, in a discourse, it remains polysemic. Indeed, the way it is structured in its combination with other elements serves to delimit its meanings within that specified field, and effects a “closure,” so that a preferred meaning is suggested. There can never be only one, single, univocal, and determined meaning for such a lexical item, but, depending on how its integration within the code has been accomplished, its possible meanings will be organized within a scale which runs from dominant to subordinate. And this of course has consequences for the other, the reception end of the communicative chain: there can be no law to ensure that the receiver will take the preferred or dominant meaning of an episode of violence in precisely the way in which it has been encoded by the producer.