首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Why does the Western movie especially have such a hold on our imagination? Chiefly, I think, because it offers serious insights
Why does the Western movie especially have such a hold on our imagination? Chiefly, I think, because it offers serious insights
admin
2012-01-21
111
问题
Why does the Western movie especially have such a hold on our imagination? Chiefly, I think, because it offers serious insights into the problem of violence such as can be found almost nowhere in our culture. One of the well-known peculiarities of modern civilized opinion is its refusal to acknowledge the value of violence. This refusal is virtue, but like many virtues it involves a certain willful blindness and it encourages hypocrisy. We train ourselves to be shocked or bored by cultural images of violence, and our very concept of heroism tends to be a passive one: we are less drawn to the brave young men who kill large numbers of our enemies than to the heroic prisoners who endure torture without capitulating. And in the criticism of popular culture, the presence of images of violence is often assumed to be in itself a sufficient ground for condemnation.
These attitudes, however, have not reduced the element of violence in our culture but have helped to free it from moral control by letting it take on the aura of "emancipation". The celebration of acts of violence is left more and more to the irresponsible. The gangster movie, with its numerous variations, belongs to a cultural "underground" which glamorizes violence and sets it against all our higher social attitudes. It is more "modern" genre than the Western movie, perhaps even more profound, because it confronts industrial society on its own ground — the city — and because, like much of our advanced art, it gains its effects by a gross insistence on its own narrow logic. But it is anti-social, resting on fantasies of irresponsible freedom. If we are brought finally to acquiesce in the denial of these fantasies, it is only because they have been shown to be dangerous, not because they have given way to higher values of behavior.
In war movies, to be sure. it is possible to present violence within a framework of responsibility. But there is the disadvantage that modern war is a co-operative enterprise in which violence is largely impersonal and heroism belongs to the group more than to the individual. The hero of a war movie is most often simply a leader, and his superiority is likely to be expressed in a denial of the heroic: you are not supposed to be brave, you are supposed to get the job done and stay alive (this too, of course, is a kind of heroic posture, but a new and "practical" one). At its best, the war movie may represent a more civilized point of view than the Western, and if it was not continually marred by ideological sentimentality we might hope to find it developing into a higher form of dry. But it cannot supply the values we seek in the Western movies.
These values are in the image of a single man who wears a gun on his thigh. The gun tells us that he lives in a world of violence, and even that he "believes in violence". But the drama is one of self restraint: the moment of violence must come in its own time and according to its special laws, or else, it is valueless. He is there to remind us of the possibility of style in an age which has put on itself the burden of pretending that style has no meaning, and, in the midst of our anxieties over the problem of violence, to suggest that even in killing or being killed we are not freed from the necessity of establishing satisfactory models of behavior.
The word "acquiesce" (Line 10, Para. 2) is closest in meaning to ______.
选项
A、acceptance
B、refusal
C、devotion
D、giving up
答案
A
解析
这个词所处的句子是一个条件关系的复合句。后面给出可能的原因(暴力的 危险性以及被更高的价值所取代),所造成的合乎情理的结果可能是对暴力的否定,所以对 于the denial of these fantasies的态度应该是认同或者接受。而acceptance符合文章中人们对 否定暴力的总体态度。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/MFXd777K
本试题收录于:
公共英语五级笔试题库公共英语(PETS)分类
0
公共英语五级笔试
公共英语(PETS)
相关试题推荐
WhySoManyChildren?InmanyofthedevelopingcountriesinAfricaandAsia,thepopulationisgrowingfast.Thereasonfor
Theproposalwasendorsedbythemajorityofmembers.
OnceDailyPillCouldSimplifyHIVTreatmentBristol-MyersSquibbandGileadScienceshavecombinedmanyHIVdrugsintoasi
EnglishandEnglishCommunity1.ThereisnodoubtthatEnglishisausefullanguage.ThepeoplewhospeakEnglishtodaymak
ComputerVirusThecomputervirusisanoutcomeofthecomputerovergrowthinthe1980s.Thecauseoftheterm"computervir
OlderVolcanicEruptionsVolcanoesweremoredestructiveinancienthistory,notbecausetheywerebigger,butbecausethec
GorillasHaveaWordforitKokoisthefirstgorillatohavebeentaughtsignlanguage.Withavocabularyofmorethan1,00
USBlacksHard-hitbyCancerDeathratesforcancerarefallingforallAmericans,butblackAmericansarestillmorelikely
Examiner:Now,inthispartofthetestI’mgoingtogiveeachofyoualistofthreedifferenttopics.I’dlikeyoutoselecto
ProfessorWangwentonalecturetourtoEdinburgh.
随机试题
LC用于
对目前正处于滑动阶段的土坡,其滑动带的土为黏性土,对这种土进行剪切试验时宜采用下列()种方法。
自然保护区的内部未进行分区的,依照《自然保护区条例》应按有关()的规定管理。
高速公路、一级公路路面不宜分期修建,但位于软土、高填方等施工后沉降较大的局部路段,可按()的原则实施。
下面哪一种分配方法将能确保生产部门在预算期开始就不会少估它们的辅助服务计划需要量,还能使得辅助部门发生的成本效率更高?
区国税局决定对某化工企业编造虚假计税依据的行为给予50000元罚款的处罚。该企业认为罚款过重,向市国税局申请复议。市国税局经复议审理,决定将罚款变更为30000元。该企业对复议决定仍不服,遂向法院起诉市国税局。法院经审理认为,30000元的罚款处罚也过重,
郭沫若的《女神》属于哪个文学团体有代表性和影响力的作品?()
唐朝的类推原则称为()。
下列选项中,不是C++关键字的是
A、Deliveryservicemanageranddriver.B、Teacherandstudent.C、Lawyerandclient.D、Doctorandpatient.D综合推断题。女士说每四小时服药一次,不过可能
最新回复
(
0
)