When we think of Hollywood--a term I use loosely to describe American movie production in general, not simply films made in Los

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问题    When we think of Hollywood--a term I use loosely to describe American movie production in general, not simply films made in Los Angeles--we think of films aimed at amusing audiences and making money for producers.
   During the early years of the new century, as workers won their demands for higher wages and a shorter working week, leisure assumed an increasingly important role in everyday life.  Amusement parks, professional baseball games, nickelodeons, and dance halls attracted a wide array of men and women anxious to spend their hard earned dollars in the pursuit of fun and relaxation. Yet of all these new cultural endeavors, films were the most important and widely attended source of amusement. For a mere five or ten cents, even the poorest worker could afford to take himself and his family to the local nickelodeon or storefront theatre. Taking root in urban working-class and immigrant neighborhoods, cinemas soon spread to middle-class districts of cities and into small communities throughout the nation.  "Every little town that has never been able to afford and maintain an opera house," observed one journalist in 1908, "now boasts one or two ’Bijou Dreams’." By 1910, the appeal of film was so great that nearly one-third of the nation flocked to the cinema each week; ten years later, weekly attendance equaled 50 per cent of the nation’s population.
   Early films were primarily aimed at entertaining audiences, but entertainment did not always come in the form of escapist fantasies.  Many of the issues that dominated progressive-era polities were also portrayed on the serene. "Between 1990 and 1917," observes Kevin Brownlow, "literally thousands of films dealt with the most pressing problems of the day--white slavery, political corruptions, gangsterism, loansharking: slum landlords, capital vs. labor, racial prejudice, etc." While most of these films were produced by studios and independent companies, a significant nmnber were made by what we might call today "special interest groups". As films quickly emerged as the nation’s most popular form of mass entertainment, they attracted the attention of a wide range organizations that recognized the medium’s enormous potential for disseminating propaganda to millions of viewers.
"Bijou Dreams" in the 2nd paragraph probably refers to ______.

选项 A、cinemas
B、dance halls
C、theatres
D、amusement parks

答案A

解析 第2段提到“1908年一位记者报导说任何一个不能afford and maintain an opera house的小镇now boasts one or two ’Bijou Dreams’”,可判断Bijou Dreams是与 opera house相对的事物,因此C项“剧院”不符合。而后文又讲到了电影的上映等,据此可判断Bijou Dreams指的是相对比较便宜的电影院,故选项A正确。
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