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  3. A simple pair of pants may contain a multitude of meanings. In the 1850s, jeans were the unemotional, durable dress of those tha

A simple pair of pants may contain a multitude of meanings. In the 1850s, jeans were the unemotional, durable dress of those tha

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问题     A simple pair of pants may contain a multitude of meanings. In the 1850s, jeans were the unemotional, durable dress of those that came to California to labor in the gold fields. Seams were strengthened with metal pins to make them hold, a technology borrowed from the construction of horse blankets. Cloth for beasts of burden was translated to the needs of men of burden. These were the clothes of hard-laboring people, and these pants held little promise for the men who wore them, save the promise that they would be ready for the next day’s labors.
    During the same decade, in the court of one European queen, "the gown worn by a fashionable lady in attendance contained 1,100 yards of material not including lace and other ornaments." American women of wealth were also wrapped in an abundance of cloth. While makers of jeans worried over how many men could be fitted into a given amount of cloth, for women of wealth the concern was with how many yards of cloth could be attractively arranged upon a given individual. This was the mark of prosperity: to wear enough material on one’s back to clothe many of more modest means.
    The fashionable rich could not imagine themselves wearing the vulgar canvas pants of workers and "peasants". Neither could working-class people reasonably imagine themselves in the costumes of wealth and power. Tile only fashion link between them—subtle at best—was the stern top hat of wealthy capitalists, a coal-black cylinder symbolizing the factory chimney pipes that brought profit to one, hardship to the other. Blue jeans only signified labor and sweat.
    Years later, the clothing of nineteenth-century laborers would assume new and different meanings. Humble beginnings became increasingly obscure within the unfolding of popular culture. In the movies, the horse riders of the early cattle industry were reborn as symbols of a noble, rural simplicity, and blue jeans became conspicuous within the landscape of the American media. On the screen these pants teased the imaginations of city folk, who longed for a simpler and less corrupt life. While laborers would continue to wear them at work, now the well-off might put on a pair at home or in the garden—an escape from the discipline of the business world.
    In the 1950s, blue jeans became a statement by those who wished to boycott the values of a consumer-based society that was concerned only with acquisition. Blue-jeans-wearing rebels of popular movies were an expression of contempt towards the empty and obedient silence of Cold-War America; the positive images of American consumer society were under siege. What had been a piece of traditional American culture—blue jeans—became a rejection of traditional culture.
选项 A、rescue
B、preserve
C、put aside
D、except
答案D
解析 本题是词汇题，此处的save为介词，与except同义，如：All is lost save honor．除荣誉外一切都丧失了。
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考研英语一

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