Over the last twenty years, scholarly and popular writers have analyzed and celebrated the worlds of leisure and entertainment i

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问题     Over the last twenty years, scholarly and popular writers have analyzed and celebrated the worlds of leisure and entertainment in the burgeoning cities of mid nineteenth-century America, greatly expanding the literature on these subjects. They have found an enthusiastic readership by offering glimpses of modes of leisure, performance, and charlatanism that passed from the scene in the early 20th century, indicating how lively they were and how comparatively impoverished our own entertainment choices have become in an era dominated by corporate electronic media.
    Many scholars have been lured into a fascination with the extinct demimonde of dime museums, exhibition halls, saloons, and industrial exhibitions. During this period entertainment relied upon artful deception, comparable in importance to such contemporary forms of amusement as minstrelsy and melodrama. The cultural activities were forms of representational play in which spectators are caused to doubt their perceptions and judgment. Entertainments that tricked, or duped the paying public flourished in America’s cities in the 19th century. What distinguished these cohorts of entertainers, was not their ability to perpetrate fraud but that they understood the dynamics of a new urban audience that enjoyed distinguishing the genuine from the fake and the authentic from the concocted. The willing audience for artful deceptions maintained a double consciousness in which it simultaneously marveled at the qualities of the object or action displayed while enjoying the act of appraising the quality, audacity, and performance of the deception.
    By offering semiotic analyses of a range of Victorian performances, we learn there was more to these exhibitions than appeared at first viewing. The tricks and lures of these entertainers deserve a more than marginal position in American cultural history.  
It can be concluded from the text that______.

选项 A、the entertainment died out as society became more skeptical
B、the skills the entertainment employed were part of its ultimate demise
C、the entertainment used highly skilled understanding of human nature
D、the entertainment served a very important part role in the lives of people

答案C

解析 属信息归纳题。第二段第五句指出,表演者的高超之处并不在于他们实施骗术,而在于他们了解城市的一批新观众乐于辨别真伪,区分虚实。这说明,当时的娱乐业运用了对人性的高超理解。
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