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  3. In the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, one scene shows an American newspaper reporter eagerly snapping photos of men looting a sa

In the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, one scene shows an American newspaper reporter eagerly snapping photos of men looting a sa

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问题     In the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, one scene shows an American newspaper reporter eagerly snapping photos of men looting a sabotaged train. One of the looters, Chief Auda abu Tayi of the Howeitat clan, suddenly notices the camera and snatches it. "Am I in this?" he asks, before smashing it open. To the dismayed reporter, Lawrence explains, "He thinks these things will steal his virtue. He thinks you’re a kind of thief."
    As soon as colonizers and explorers began taking cameras into distant lands, stories began circulating about how indigenous peoples saw them as tools for black magic. The "ignorant natives" may have had a point. When photography first became available, scientists welcomed it as a more objective way of recording faraway societies than early travelers’ exaggerated accounts. But in some ways, anthropological photographs reveal more about the culture that holds the camera than the one that stares back. Up into the 1950s and 1960s, many ethnographers sought "pure" pictures of "primitive" cultures, routinely deleting modern accoutrements such as clocks and Western dress. They paid men and women to re-enact rituals or to pose as members of war or hunting parties, often with little regard for veracity. Edward Curtis, the legendary photographer of North American Indians, for example, got one Makah man to pose as a whaler with a spear in 1915 —even though the Makah had not hunted whales in a generation.
    These photographs reinforced widely accepted stereotypes that indigenous cultures were isolated, primitive, and unchanging. For instance, National Geographic magazine’s photographs have taught millions of Americans about other cultures. As Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins point out in their 1993 book Reading National Geographic, the magazine since its founding in 1888 has kept a tradition of presenting beautiful photos that don’t challenge white, middle-class American conventions. While dark-skinned women can be shown without tops, for example, white women’s breasts are taboo. Photos that could unsettle or disturb, such as areas of the world torn asunder by war or famine, are discarded in favor of those that reassure to conform with the society’s stated pledge to present only "kindly" visions of foreign societies. The result, Lutz and Collins say, is the depiction of "an idealized and exotic world relatively free of pain or class conflict."
    Lutz actually likes National Geographic a lot. She read the magazine as a child, and its lush imagery influenced her eventual choice of anthropology as a career. She just thinks that as people look at the photographs of other cultures, they should be alert to the choice of composition and images.
What’s the main idea of the passage?
选项 A、Photographs taken by Western explorers reflect more Westerners’ perception of the indigenous cultures and the Western values.
B、There is a complicated relationship between the Western explorers and the primitive peoples.
C、Popular magazines such as National Geographic should show pictures of the exotic and idealized worlds to maintain high sales.
D、Anthropologists ask the natives to pose for their pictures, compromising the truthfulness of their pictures.
答案A
解析 从文章中可以看出西方的媒体，为了迎合西方读者猎奇的心理，为了不与西方读者的中产阶级价值观发生冲突，在他们拍摄的照片中，并不是真正客观公正地反映经济发展水平较为落后的社会中人们的生活。他们经常有意删除照片中反映西方文明烙印的成分，甚至摆布照片中的主人公，以描绘出一个西方读者想象中的，经济不发达的，有异域风情的，相对地没有痛苦和阶级冲突的经济落后社会的画面。他们甚至避免刊登那些反映饥荒、战争、灾害的照片，以满足西方媒体“只刊登外国社会美好一面的照片”的默契。
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