#13 - Specific Reference, Weaken

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[shengtg]

I did not find how choice C weakens the two sentence. The first two sentence stated musical was from live theater. It cues viewers to expect a structure that viewers are prepared for and accept as realistic. The choice c said if or not familiar with musical viewers enjoy them just the same. Is that the “prepare for” trigger a requirement for previous experience of musical? My wrong choice A seems to be wrong because it requires viewers to find it unrealistic instead of reviewers. Please help me to justify my thoughts.

[Brook Miscoski]

Shengtg,

To understand this, it is helpful to reprise passage structure as well.

Paragraph 1--Bordwell defines classical era film to be concerned with telling a realistic story.
Paragraph 2--but musicals seem to break that mold.

Paragraph 3 (first 2 sentences)--Bordwell defends by claiming that the musical film evolved from musical live theater, so that audiences accept it as realistic story-telling. He does also indicate that the interlude elements help define the narrative structure.

You chose (A) because you were thinking of the second part of what I described for Paragraph 3. However, the idea that those interludes helped structure the story but weren't part of it doesn't require the audience not to like those interludes. A is thus a bit off target.

(C) is a better choice because if the audience wasn't responding based on its prior experience of musicals. Let's say there was no difference between someone who had viewed live theater musicals and someone who hadn't--then how believable is Bordwell's explanation. Not very, since he claims the audience viewed it as realistic story telling because of its previous experience with live theater.

[shengtg]

Thank you for the explanation. I agreed that the two sentence is what Bordwell logic response to how musicals fit into his theory because he thought musicals are also considered as "realistic" by the viewers. Yet I did not find that it is because musical evolved from live theater so that it makes viewers find it realistic. The original sentence draw to the realistic conclusion based on that viewers expect the structure (from that of other genre) so they are prepared and considered it realistic. Maybe the "other genre" is another way referring to live theater then your logic seems being complete. In the following sentences the author attacked Bordwell's response by mentioning that the awareness of the genre alone is not sufficient to make viewers considering musicals realistic. So that is it correct to understand C as it doesn't matter for the viewers being skilled in "pigeonholing genres" so that Bordwell's response focus on "prepared for ... a structure (of a certain genre)" becomes unfounded? Cheers!

[Robert Carroll]

shengtg,

The key is that Bordwell says viewers were "prepared" for a certain structure. If prior experience with musicals provides no different a response than a lack of experience, then "prepared" viewers are no different from unprepared viewers, which undermines his claims.

Robert Carroll

[shengtg]

That should make sense. Thank a million.

[KSL]

Hi,

I do understand why c is correct but I don’t understand why A is wrong. Bordwell whole thing is persuading that musical videos do fit into his definition if realistic. By reviewers point blankly saying it was unrealistic, wouldn’t that be a crush to Bordwells defense no matter what.

[cathyli1996]

Not really, I think there is a big difference between "viewers" and "reviewers". In the passage, Bordwell explicitly says "the musical's conventions cue viewers to expect a different structure" and that "audiences are prepared for it". So even though the reviewers think the musical film is unrealistic, it won't weaken (and in fact is irrelevant to) the argument that VIEWERS are not prepared to accept it as realistic.

The reviewers can in fact be the minority's view that is not representative of the viewer's view in general.

Hope it helps.

[Adam Tyson]

Good question, KSL! I'll second that explanation from cathyli1996 - the answer fails because it focuses on reviewers, rather than audiences in general, and reviewers may be in the minority and not representative of the whole. We see that difference in other questions and RC passages - consider the passage about Miles Davis from October 1996, where at least one wrong answer focuses on "popular acclaim" rather than on the subject of the passage, which was response from critics. Critics aren't like the rest of us - they are special, and thus not representative.

[jm123]

I can see why answer choice C is correct but I chose A because I misread it.

I read A as "evidence that reviewers of musical films in the 1930s generally viewed the films as unrealistic."

Because of my misread, I thought this was a stronger weaken answer choice than C. Even though I know it is wrong, if A was worded the way I read it, would that have been the right answer choice? I want to make sure I was weakening the right part of the passage even though I misread the answer choices and got it wrong due to that.