Reading comp PrepTest 106 · Section 4 · Question 22

Passage

Questions 22-26  .        As one of the most pervasive and influential  . popular arts, the movies feed into and Remaining source text redacted.
Passage walkthrough
Passage Summary

Topic: Humanities


Paragraph 1

  • Paragraph note
    • The movie industry has developed a mutually beneficial marketing relationship with the other mass media.
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Origins: Hollywood star system, in which actors were under contract to a movie studio, was a result of the public’s interest in actors’ private lives (second sentence)
      • Public relations agents informed press about stars’ lives, and press promoted movies on the basis of this information (third sentence)
      • Press benefited financially from this, because the public went to the movies based on their publicity and found that movies were created by talented storytellers (fourth sentence)
    • Author’s attitude: “pervasive and influential” (first sentence); “feed into and off of” (first sentence); “whetting the public’s appetite” (third sentence); “additional virtue” (third sentence); “art of storytelling” (third sentence); “cultural cross-fertilization” (fourth sentence)

Paragraph 2

  • Paragraph note
    • Movies and mass media are interdependent and sustain themselves with the notion that there are always movies worth promoting.
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Other media do most of movie promotion for the studios (third sentence)
      • Many media outlets are already promoting movies, so there is a ready-made audience already interested (fourth sentence)
      • TV, radio, magazines, product ads (third sentence)
    • Author’s attitude: “mushroomed” (first sentence), “intricately interdependent” (first sentence), “sustains itself” (second sentence); “vast portion” (third sentence); “good business” (fourth sentence)

Paragraph 3

  • Paragraph note
    • Problem: mass media promotion model has made movies less emotionally satisfying
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Need to generate publicity has affected creation of movies (first sentence)
      • Studio execs choose subject matter and actors instead of writers and directors (second sentence)
    • Movies are made with an eye toward publicity rather than good art (fourth sentence)
    • This trend is likely to continue because it makes more money than producing emotionally engaging movies (fifth sentence)
    • Author’s attitude: “new danger” (fourth sentence), “audience’s curiosity” (fourth sentence), “engaging experience” (fourth sentence), “on the strength of media publicity” (fifth sentence), “word of mouth” (fifth sentence), “intimate relationship” (fifth sentence), “lost” (fifth sentence), “affect audiences emotionally” (sixth sentence), “increasingly rare” (sixth sentence)

Main Point: The system by which the mass media promote movies has created incentives for the film industry to make films that are easy to publicize rather than emotionally engaging.

Key Lines?

Paragraph 1, Sentence 4 (P1 S4) - Mass media benefits by promoting movies

P2 S2 - Mass media constantly promoting something

P3 S1 - System of mass media promotion has affected creation of films

P3 S4 - Incentives to produce easily-promotable films rather than good ones

P3 S6 - Films that affect audiences emotionally becoming rare

Meta-Structure?

Importance of Subject: This passage describes why the system by which the mass media came to promote movies is important. The author describes the origins of this system in the 1920s and traces the ways in which the system has grown and shaped the film industry. According to the author, the dependence of the film industry on the mass media promotion machine, and movie studios’ focus on turning the largest profit possible, have led them to focus on creating films that generate a large publicity buzz rather than films that engage emotionally with their audience. The author sees this as a problem and implies that the quality of films has suffered over the years. Moreover, the author says, this trend will likely continue into the future..

The minor Meta-Structure of this passage is Causality. It is the monetary incentive to create films that are easily-promotable that drives the film industry, the author argues, rather than the artistic motive to create films that connect emotionally with their audiences. Back in the 1920s, when the mass media just happened to begin promoting films because people were interested in the lives of movie stars, studios were still interested in creating films that could be considered vital pieces of popular art, but now, when the film industry and the mass media are so interdependent, studios focus on creating films that get viewers into seats just based on the publicity rather than on the content of the film.

Last Thoughts?

This passage is rather hard to classify, because the author clearly points out a problem, but they don’t offer any solutions. The passage traces how the problem of the film industry’s dependence on the mass media arose, and how that problem leads to lower-quality movies, but it does not offer any ways of fixing the issue. This means it can’t really be classified as a Problem/Solution passage. It is simply an explanatory passage where the author has a definite viewpoint that they support using evidence.

Question prompt

The passage suggests that Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: A

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Question Type

Humanities

Strategy Overview

Review the main point, and use notes or highlighted/underlined text in the passage to recall the author’s attitude, and find the answer that best reflects your understanding of the main point/author’s attitude.

Answer Anticipation

This question asks us about the author's view, but doesn't provide any insight into the topic of the correct answer or where the supporting information might show up in the passage. This means the correct answer is likely to relate back to the author's main point. As such, we'll need to rely on our big-picture understanding of the passage to answer this question. We should start by reminding ourselves of the main point by reviewing what we said after reading the passage. We can also review any notes about the author's attitude or any text we highlighted because it expressed the author's opinion. After doing that, we can head to the answer choices, tabling those that don't line up with the main point. For those answer choices that conform to the author’s main point, we'll use our notes and the passage to see if it's correct.Let’s look for those ideas in the answer choices.

Answer choices

  1. A
    The Hollywood films of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A matches the stem

    (A) Does this answer choice line up with the main point and the author’s attitude toward the subject?

    Yes. This answer choice is supported by P1 S3, in which the authors states that audiences flocked to movie theaters in response to publicity about movie stars’ lives in the 1920s and found that movies were entertaining and well-crafted. The press thus discovered that publicizing movies worked to their advantage (P1 S4). Over the decades, this mutual benefit created a system whereby movie studios began pandering to the press and audience interest in movie stars rather than focusing on creating entertaining, emotionally-engaging films (P3 S1-4). The author winds up the passage by saying that, in all likelihood, emotionally-engaging films will become rarer and rarer in Hollywood (P3 S6).

    This argument implies that, at least in the ‘20s, the movie machine had not yet begun pandering to the publicity machine and films were still of good quality and emotionally engaging. That word, “engaging,” is found in (A), and the rest of the answer choice is equally traceable to the author’s overall argument.

    This is the right answer choice.

  2. B
    The writers, producers, and Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited

    (B) Does this answer choice line up with the main point and the author’s attitude toward the subject?

    No. The author makes a distinction between the studio executives, who often make pivotal artistic decisions about films, and writers, producers, and directors, who are obliged to make films with the ingredients given to them by the leadership of the studios (P3 S2). So the author doesn’t say that films of the ‘20s were better crafted because the writers, directors, and producers were more talented, but because, in recent decades, creative control has been wrested away from those individuals by the leadership of the studios, who are interested in turning the largest profit (P3 S3-4) by generating the biggest amount of publicity for a movie rather than creating a film that engages well with its audience.

  3. C
    The Hollywood film studios Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited

    (C) Does this answer choice line up with the main point and the author’s attitude toward the subject?

    No. In fact, the author says in P2 S1 that the trend begun in the ‘20s of the media promoting films has “mushroomed” into an “intricately interdependent” industry, which implies that film studios of today are much more dependent on the media to publicize films than their counterparts in the ‘20s.

  4. D
    The publicity generated for Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited

    (D) Does this answer choice line up with the main point and the author’s attitude toward the subject?

    No. There is no support for this answer choice in the passage. The author makes no comparisons between publicity from the ‘20s and publicity today, nor is there any implication in the text that there was any difference in interest or quality between publicity from the two eras.

  5. E
    The star system of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited

    (E) Does this answer choice line up with the main point and the author’s attitude toward the subject?

    No. The author mentions the star system of the ‘20s simply to explain why it arose; it was a result of the discovery by movie studios that the public was interested in the actors’ private lives (P1 S2). The public continues to be interested in actors’ private lives even though the star system doesn’t operate anymore. The author brought up the star system merely to explain how it played into the beginnings of the mass media publicity machine rather than to link it to the quality of films from the ‘20s and today. The reason for the lower quality of films today, in the author’s opinion, is that studios pander to the press in order to make a profit on their films rather than focusing on making a good film, which is what they focused on more in the ‘20s (P3 S1-4).

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A Credited 65%
  2. B 3%
  3. C 10%
  4. D 4%
  5. E 19%

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