#6 - Critic: The criticism of the popular film comedy

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen—PR. The correct answer choice is (D)

In this stimulus, the critic engages in a bit of meta-criticism, arguing that the criticism of Quirks, a popular comedy film, is misguided. Critics of the movie argue that it’s not realistic, and the stimulus author agrees, at least to the extent that the characters are unrealistic because they are too stylized. However—acknowledging that hyper-stylized characters can be a problem in some cases—the critic points out that Quirks is a funny film, which “is the important thing for a comedy.” Based on this criterion, the author concludes that the criticism of the film is misguided.

The question stem identifies this as a Strengthen—Principle question. The correct answer choice will contain a rule that, applied to the premises, supports the conclusion. Here, the reason the critic thinks the criticism of the film is misguided is that the film, which is a comedy, after all, is funny. Our prephrase is that the correct answer choice will provide a rule stating something like “so long as a comedic film is funny, it is misguided to criticize it for at least some other failings.” As applied here, even though the characters are over-stylized and unrealistic, the critic thinks it is misguided to criticize the film on this basis, since the resulting film, a comedy, was funny.

Answer choice (A): This answer choice weakens the conclusion, because the critic argues that Quirks should not be criticized for being unrealistic.

Answer choice (B): Here, the rule provided by the answer choice is inapplicable to the argument, which did not address the popularity of a film, but rather whether the criticism of it is misguided.

Answer choice (C): While this answer choice is more compatible with the argument than either answer choice (A) or (B), it also is incorrect because the critic did not address how film comedies should or should not find their humor.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice because it supports the critic’s conclusion that it is misguided to criticize Quirks, a comedy, for being unrealistic. Instead, by this rule, a film should be judged by how it performs within its own genre. For example, a comedic film, such as Quirks, should be considered successful if it is funny.

Answer choice (E): The critic did not address whether or not a film should attempt to fit into more than one genre, so the principle in this answer choice is irrelevant to the conclusion.

[15veries]

Hi,

I guess the thing I was not sure about this question is;
in the stimulus it does not say "successfully" directly.
It says "funny...that is the important thing for a comedy."
It only says important, but this is not the same as saying they are successful within their genre, I thought.
Isn't this a small jump? Or since it's asking most helps..., so small jump is OK?
Or we can just think it is successful if they are doing what they think important?

[Clay Cooper]

Hi 15veries,

Thank you for your post!\

This is how I understand your question: since the stimulus doesn't define success (or even mention it), but instead just states what is important for a comedy, aren't we making a bit of a leap? Perhaps, but I think it is a leap that is totally reasonable. We are told that the important thing (which is used in the sense of 'criterion') for a comedy is that it be funny; we are also told that this film is funny. I would argue that when a film meets its genre's only criterion, it can be considered a 'success' within that genre.

The correct answer adds the fact that being successful within a genre translates directly to overall success, and thus we have proved the conclusion.

I hope that helps!

[Khodi7531]

I was between C and D and chose C. I understand that previous admin tried to justify successful in this question and although it may make sense, it's just completely against anything LSAT logic related.


This is a justify...so strong words are ok, random words are ok. As long as it links it to the premise. But when it's between answers that have similar words vs ones that dont..not sure how you can chose D over C. "should" may be something to get bogged down on for a second but I feel like successful can't really link anything because I don't know what the hell successful is in this realm.


Is pt 73 a more difficult test then others? I've noticed all the PT 70s are RIDICULOUSLY hard.

[Robert Carroll]

Khodi,

This is not a Justify question but rather a Strengthen question. The question says the correct answer "most helps to justify the reasoning." Thus, the correct answer merely helps to justify, and need not completely justify, the conclusion.

It doesn't make a difference here, because anything correct for a Justify question would be correct for a Strengthen (though not necessarily vice versa).

Consider what we're trying to prove in this argument - the criticism is misguided. So the criticism is misdirected - those criticizing the film are judging it by the wrong standard. We need some information about why that's the wrong standard. Answer choice (D) does that by giving me some idea of what the RIGHT standard is (judge a film successful if it succeeds in its genre), and because this film meets that standard, then the correct judgment would praise it, not criticize it.

Answer choice (C) tells me what comedies should do, but not whether this comedy is a good one (and thus immune to the critics). Even if answer choice (C) is true, I'm left with no progress for the argument. Either this comedy was funny because of its style, or it wasn't - note that I still don't know if it was funny because of the stylized characters, so answer choice (C) doesn't apply. But even if answer choice (C) applied, all that would do is show me the film did something a comedy should - that does nothing to immunize it against criticism, so I'm no closer to knowing that the criticism is misguided.

If a Preptest is harder than others, that will be reflected in a looser scoring scale. It is not in LSAC's interest to make tests inherently harder, because that defeats the purpose of comparing applicants in a consistent manner. If this test felt harder for you, it may be that the LR was harder, but then other sections should be easier, or that it was just a coincidence. Use it as a learning experience!

Robert Carroll

[rachelbernard]

I'm still really confused as to why D is the correct choice here. I know that in a strengthen-type question, the correct answer doesn't have to solve ALL problems, it just has to help the most when compared to the other choice, but I still don't understand why D isn't too far out of the scope of the stimulus. The critic doesn't talk at all about success, and we have no basis for equating "important" with "successful" (which is what past responses in this thread are essentially doing). I picked C because I thought it connected the stylized humor found in the movie to things that are important for a comedy, thus suggesting that the criticism is misguided. If utilizing stylistic humor is important for a comedy, then people are misguided for saying that the movie was unrealistic because that wasn't an important element of the movie.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi rachelbernard!

Let's start with a brief summary of the argument. The author's argument is that recent criticism of a comedy is misguided. Why does the author believe this? That is, what evidence does the author marshal in support of this argument? The author explains that (1) the movie's stylization produces a result that is funny, and (2) that being funny "is the important thing for a comedy."

The question stem then asks for which answer choice would best justify the author's argument that criticism of the comedy is indeed misguided. Answer choice (C) is, "Film comedies should find their humor in their stylistic portrayals." If this were true, it doesn't do anything to strength the claim that the criticism was misguided. It is indeed true that the stimulus discusses that the comedy used stylization; however, the criticism is that "the characters are too stylized to be real people." Thus even if answer choice (C) were assumed--i.e., that comedies should find their humor in stylization, this doesn't support the author's response to the criticism of arguing that they are not in fact too stylized. If, instead of how it is actually phrased, answer (C) read something like ""Film comedies should find their humor in [...] stylistic portrayals [that render characters no longer to seem like real people]," then with such language (C) would have looked like a good answer.

By contrast, answer choice (D) is, "Films are successful if they succeed within their genre." This could be rewritten in if-then conditional reasoning:

succeed within their genre successful

To me, the reason this answer choice is correct comes across from the following language: "It is certainly true that the characters are too stylized to be real people. That could be problematic, but in this case the resulting film is funny." This shows that the author sees some validity to the critic's criticism, recognizing that they're too stylized to be real people. However, the author then makes the following conditional reasoning:

Too stylized to be real people funny ??? critic of the movie is misguided

Answer choice (D) fills in these question marks. Another way of saying "succeed within their genre successful" more specifically to this context of a comedy is:

funny successful comedy

We can then put this into the gap in the author's reasoning:

Too stylized to be real people funny successful comedy critic of the movie is misguided

For some people, like the critic, the fact that the characters were too stylized was reason enough to give the film criticism, rather than praise, even if this stylization made the film more funny. The author challenges the critic by saying that the critique is misguided because the stylization make it more funny; answer (D) would strengthen this argument if it were true, because it's saying that making it more funny makes it a better comedy rather than one more deserving of criticism.

[a19]

Can someone explain why D is not circular??

[gwlsathelp]

@Luke Haqq, thank you for your explanation! That really helped me to conceptualize how D is the correct answer; however, I see that the stimulus for this question is not noticeably conditional (and therefore did not read it as such), but should I have noticed it before getting to the answer choices?

[Paul Marsh]

Hey gwlsathelp! I'm glad Luke's explanation helped you out here. But to answer your question - no, you don't need to use conditional reasoning to break down this problem. The focus here is on what that "Gap" is between the argument's conclusion, and its premises. Luke used conditionals to more clearly visually demonstrate that "Gap" in the argument, but this isn't a problem where conditional reasoning is really at play. You'll notice that the other instructors above didn't use conditional reasoning in their approach to the problem (and neither did I, for that matter).

And a19, circular reasoning is a type of Flawed argument where an argument assumes the conclusion in order to prove that conclusion. It's discussed nicely in this blog post:

https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid-27 ... reasoning/

(D), on the other hand, does what a good Justify answer should do: it plugs up the Gap between conclusion and premises.

Hope that helps!