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

[gwlsathelp]

Hi, Paul! Thank you for your response again! They are very thorough and I greatly appreciate all of the work done on here to explain these concepts.

[Agent00729]

Hi! I was also choosing between C and D, but ultimately ruled out D because of the word "successfully". I can see how D makes sense, but only if we assume any "criticism" implies the critic feels the film is wholly unsuccessful. Am I correct in this thinking?

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Agent00729,

That assumption seems a little extreme. I don't think the critics would need to be assuming something quite that extreme for answer choice D to be relevant to undermining their criticism.

I'd prefer not to focus on the critics' assumptions anyway, since this isn't their argument. I'd rather focus on the question of what the author needs to assume for answer choice D to be a relevant principle in the author's argument. The author needs to assume that criticisms of films should be focused on their success. The author doesn't quite come out and use the word success in the argument. But it's not too much of a stretch to see it lurking beneath the last sentence: "the important thing for a comedy." The important thing is that it does what it's supposed to do (be funny), i.e. that it "succeeds" in its genre element. And the author clearly thinks the "important thing" is what good criticism should focus on. That's enough to get the success element into the argument and make answer choice D a relevant principle to the conclusion.

I hope this helps!

[fork4k]

I picked D initially and then changed my response to C in the last minute. It seems like the core point of their response is that the criticism of the movie is "misguided", but a principle that was largely about "success" seemed to shift topics a bit (since a criticism could be justified for a successful movie and a criticism could be misguided even if applied to an unsuccessful one). C seems to more directly address the rationale of the critic (since they said the "resulting" film was funny, where the humor "resulted" from the very feature of the movie that was being criticized). Why wouldn't that be the case?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi fork4k,

First, if you haven't done so already, I'd recommend reading the entire forum thread for this question as there are several excellent explanations in the discussion that you may find helpful.

As to your question, the "gap" in the argument is from the key premises:

1. The film is funny.
2. Being funny is the most important thing for a comedy.

to the conclusion:

The criticism of the film for being unrealistic is misguided.

(In other words, the criticism is not judging the film correctly, or by the correct criteria.)

Answer D basically states: if films succeed in their genre, then they succeed overall. It's important to note that success here means overall or artistically, not merely financially successful. Many films that are financially successful may still fail artistically.

While "success" is not specifically mentioned in the argument, it gets at the idea of why the criticism is misguided. Since the film succeeds at being funny, which is the most important thing for a comedy, then a lack of realism isn't very relevant and such criticism is misguided.

The problem with Answer C is that it doesn't address the gap in the argument. The key to succeeding as a comedy according to the argument is that it be funny. The argument has already established that this film is funny. How a film should be funny is not the issue.

What we need to do, as mentioned above, is to connect being funny as a comedy (i.e. succeeding based on the important criterion specific to that genre) to showing how the criticism is misguided in this case.