#11 - Must Be True, Author's Perspective

[Robert Carroll]

kwc,

Line 44 and following tell me about the decline of Scar Art, but also about the preoccupation that persisted and gave rise to Native Soil. So I get the impression that Native Soil was an even later development than Scar Art. Thus, I can't conclude that Native Soil arose originally in opposition to Revolutionary Realism - the time frame appears off.

Line 55 and following tell me that Native Soil reacted by idealizing traditional peasant life. This is stated in contrast to the way Scar Art reacted to the Cultural Revolution. Further, I know from line 40 that Revolutionary Realism (which the Cultural Revolution intensified) demanded that artists depict contemporary Chinese society in a certain way. Traditional peasant life would not have been contemporary, so Native Soil set itself apart by depicting an idealized past, not the contemporary society brought about by Mao and his followers.

Robert Carroll

[Anshul]

Hello Powerscore team! I just wanted to clarify the general strategy when tackling inference questions in RC. I had originally picked answer choice A but I now realize how choosing this required me to beyond the scope of the passage.

I had found myself getting many of these wrongs till I read in this thread that inference questions are MBT questions. Is this always the case? I had always thought of inference questions as requiring a certain amount of... inference. However, I suppose that could be chalked up to one of the many times in which the LSAT doesn't work how our common knowledge works.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Anshul,

Yes, just like in the LR section, inference questions in the RC section ask you to find what can be inferred based on the information in the passage. Sometimes that's going to involve rephrasing information directly from the passage; other times, it will involve drawing connections that must be true based on the passage. In fact, for inference questions in reading comp, you should be able to point to the lines (or groups of lines) that support your answer. Of course, during the pressure of a timed test, you won't want to spend time doing this. But in practice, it's often a good idea to think, and mark, where in the passage you found your support for an inference answer choice.

Hope that helps!

[catherineshi99]

Hi there,

I'm still struggling to see how E) is the correct answer – it claims that "[Native Soil's] nostalgic representation of rural life was the means by which it stood in opposition to Revolutionary Realism". But I fail to find where in the passage it says that Native Soil opposes Revolutionary Realism. The only sentence that I found that talks about the relationship between Native Soil and Revolutionary Realism is here:

Where the Scar artists had reacted to the ideological rigidity of the Cultural Revolution by emphasizing the damage inflicted by modernization, the Native Soil painters reacted instead by idealizing traditional peasant life.

How does idealizing traditional peasant life oppose Revolutionary Realism?

Thanks!

[Ryan Twomey]

Hey Catherine,

So to make this clear, I will discuss the 3 ideas in the passage of importance.

Revolutionary realism is what Mao believed in and enforced, and the passage suggests that he dictated art could only depict political and social material in the first paragraph, and the passage suggests that this art should depict the new modernization in a positive light.

The Scar movement reacted to the revolutionary movement by portraying things unacceptable to Mao and they were exiled, and then they portrayed the day to day hardships of rural life.

Then the Native soil was born out of the Scar movement and portrayed rural life as beautiful, the peasants as beautiful.

Both the Scar movement and the native soil movement are in opposition to the Revolutionary realism movement, because they did not fit into what the revolutionary realism wanted them to depict, making answer choice E the correct answer. I agree that the word "opposition" should give you pause, but it is not strong enough to be incorrect.

Answer choice A is tempting, but the word phrase "inevitable consequence" is too strong. We do not know that this development was inevitable. The word inevitable means certain to happen or unavoidable. We can't assume that every art movement becoming politicized is going to lead to other movements.

I hope this helps and I wish you all of the luck in your studies.


Best,
Ryan

[desiboy96]

Hello I have a question about choice E and this is a follow-up question to the post above.

I fail to see how the native soil style is in opposition to Revolutionary Realism.

The Revolutionary Realism style was meant to show life in an idealized way whereas the Native Soil looked on to the past peasant life in a romanticized way. Aren't the two forms of art the same then? I guess I'm missing something but I don't know what it is exactly.

[Robert Carroll]

desi,

First, we know that Scar Art and Native Soil are both reactions to Revolutionary Realism, from the first sentence of the second paragraph.

Further, Native Soil was idealizing traditional peasant life. Revolutionary Realism, on the other hand, idealized socialist life in China. The second sentence of the last paragraph talks about the nostalgic aspect of Native Soil. So, while it was idealizing, it was idealizing a past that didn't exist any longer, whereas Revolutionary Realism constrained artists to idealize their current, Maoist circumstances.

Robert Carroll

[Lauren123]

why is it not (C)?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Lauren,

Answer C states that "the rural scenes it depicted were appealing to most people in China."

The short answer is that no where in the passage is the popularity of the Native Soil paintings among the people of China mentioned. The only mention of the Native Soil paintings appeal appears in the final sentence, in which their appeal to Western (i.e. not China) galleries and collectors is discussed.

For these types of questions, you're looking for an answer that can be inferred from/is supported by the passage. For Answer C to be correct, there would need to be some mention of the popularity in China of the rural scenes painted by the Native Soil painters, especially with having such a strong word as "most" in the answer choice. As a general rule, you should be wary of very strongly worded answer choices for Must Be True type questions, as they are often exaggerated wrong answer traps.