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
109
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
OnceDailyPillCouldSimplifyHIVTreatmentBristol-MyersSquibbandGileadScienceshavecombinedmanyHIVdrugsintoasi
OnceDailyPillCouldSimplifyHIVTreatmentBristol-MyersSquibbandGileadScienceshavecombinedmanyHIVdrugsintoasi
DNAFingerprintingDNAisthegeneticmaterialfoundwithinthecellnucleiofalllivingthings.Inmammalsthestrandsof
HowtoGetAlongWellWithYourBoss1Beforeyouarguewithyourboss,checkwiththeboss’ssecretarytodeterminehismo
USBlacksHard-hitbyCancerDeathratesforcancerarefallingforallAmericans,butblackAmericansarestillmorelikely
TheBeginningofAmericanLiteratureAmericanhasalwaysbeenalandofbeginnings.【C1】______Europeans"discovered"America
GorillasHaveaWordforitKokoisthefirstgorillatohavebeentaughtsignlanguage.Withavocabularyofmorethan1,00
FederalDepositInsuranceCorporationBefore1933,andparticularlyduringtheperiod1929—1933,bankfailureswerenotuncom
Examiner:Now,inthispartofthetestI’mgoingtogiveeachofyoualistofthreedifferenttopics.I’dlikeyoutoselecto
Ofthefollowingmovementsinstructedbythebrain,whichoneisnotmentionedinthearticle?Howdoes"noise"affectabasket
随机试题
FX2N系列PLC通过()寄存器保持数据。
阅读《雪落在中国的土地上》一文。雪落在中国的土地上,寒冷在封锁着中国呀……我的在没有灯光的晚上,所写的无力的诗句,能给你些许的温暖么?请回答:作者在本诗中描绘了几幅画面,其寓意是什么?
A.溶解氧B.生化需氧量C.化学耗氧量D.悬浮物E.混浊度一定条件下,用强氧化剂氧化水中有机污染物和一些还原物质所耗氧量是
关于建设工程监理合同的特点,说法错误的是()。
分清品种、数量、坎级、返利额度等在制定返利政策时是考虑()的实例。
上市:停牌:退市
A、 B、 C、 D、 C
小王购买了一套价值105万元的商品房,向银行贷款60万元,贷款年限为20年,银行每月从小王的银行账户划扣4500元用于还贷。小王与银行之间的法律关系属于()(2013年一法综一第23题)
SupposeyoufailedtofinishanimportanttaskassignedbyProfessorLiubecauseofasevereillness.Writehimaletterto
YouwillfindarestaurantforeverysituationintheU.S.Ifyouareinahurry,youmayjustwantto【B1】______some"junkfood
最新回复
(
0
)