2. 外语
  3. Time was — 20 or 30 years ago — when Mom and kids would go to a studio and sit, and the idealized result would be framed and giv

Time was — 20 or 30 years ago — when Mom and kids would go to a studio and sit, and the idealized result would be framed and giv

admin2012-03-21  31
问题     Time was — 20 or 30 years ago — when Mom and kids would go to a studio and sit, and the idealized result would be framed and given to Dad, who would take it to the office and display it for visitors to admire. Often, I’m sure, it is said photo really did enable the working man to contemplate his loved ones between appointments, but it served other purposes as well. The photo was an emblem, an asset, a hanging prize. Behold, it said; I am not only a lawyer or corporate titian, I am a husband and father. It clarified that work and family occupied two distinct realms, and testified that the owner had achieved success in both.
    Now the opposite is true. Today’s photos are an expression of the conflicted feelings of the modern office worker. Rather than relegating the family to a different realm, they are an attempt to bring the two realms closer, to admit family into the office. They are attempts to make us feel that we are not separate from our kids; that we are still with them, and they with us, vivid, changeable, in the flesh. They are expressions of pride, yes, and love, yes, but also of guilt and longing. So powerful are the emotions roused that a friend of mine, upon returning to work after having her first child, found that she couldn’t bring any photos; they made the absence from her son too painful.
    Not everything has changed. Formal photos still hang in uneasy coexistence with informal ones, in women’s offices and in men’s. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild noted that it was the lower-ranking women who peppered their desks with intimate family snapshots. For these women, she posits, the photos sent a message: I may not be powerful here, but there’s a place, home, where I am. The more high-up the woman, the less she indulged in these snapshots, as if they might call her commitment into question. Instead, executive women resorted to the traditional framed trophy photo. I don’t entirely buy this distinction — in my workplace, women at all levels do the montage thing, as do men — but I do remember being in the office of a busy lawyer and seeing a framed photo of her and her kids on the beach, and it was facing me, not her, and I wonder, a little, if it was saying: I don’t work as much as it seems!
    At the same time that family photos testify to what we have, they also testify to what we don’t. What we don’t have, while we’re working, is the very thing they display: the spontaneous moments, the golden unlimited hours. In keeping these snapshots at our desk we are like pets, really, that in their master’s absence seek out his sweater to lie upon. Absent from our family, the best we can do is to bask in its representation, create the illusion that we can sense our kids, feel them, hear their laughter.
According to the passage, today’s office photos differ from office photos of 20 or 30 years ago in that
选项 A、they are more formal
B、they help relieve the stress of workplace
C、they bridge work and family
D、they mainly serve a decorative purpose
答案C
解析 细节理解题。从文中第二段的前三句可知道答案。
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