Passage - General Questions

[Administrator]

Passage Discussion

VIEWSTAMP Analysis:

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[blade21cn]

I've difficulty comprehending the sentence starting on line 9: "Public relations agents fed the information to gossip columnists, whetting the public's appetite for the films - which, audiences usually discovered, had the additional virtue of being created by talented writers, directors, and producers devoted to the art of storytelling." What does "virtue" mean? What is being created by talented writers, directors, and producers? Thanks for any input!

[Robert Carroll]

blade,

Basically, the sentence is telling us that PR agents were giving information about movie stars to the gossip columnists. The gossip columns got the attention of the public, which wanted to see films to see the stars they were reading gossip about.

The antecedent of "which" is "films". In other words, the films were being created by the talented writers, directors, and producers. A "virtue" is any good quality a thing has. Normally, the word is used with a moral connotation, so that a virtue is a morally good quality, but it can also be used more generally. For instance, my computer has the virtue of having a lot of memory, so I can play video games.

As for the "virtue" the films had, think of it this way - if you had read a lot of gossip about a movie star, you might go see their movies just because of that. It would be even better if the movies that person is in were good ones! And the author of the passage is saying that, in this case, not only was the public motivated to see movies because of gossip about the stars, but the movies the public was motivated to view were ALSO produced by some talented people.

Robert Carroll