<p>This is from the Blue book (1st edition). pg. 485 #10</p>
<p>"The motifs that recur in this thesis can be idntified as far back as the eighteenth ventury in the vain warnings that early cultural criticism sounded against the dangers of reading novels."</p>
<p>Question1: The author makes the comparison in the novel in order to...</p>
<p>a.)point out television's literary origins
b.) underscore the general decline of culture (I picked this one)
c.) emphasize televisions's reliance on visual imagery
d.)expose narrow minded resistnace to new forms of expression
e.)attack the cultural shortcomings of television producers.</p>
<p>Why in the world the answer be D?</p>
<hr>
<p>pg. 485 #11</p>
<p>"Even the minimal criterion of plausibility does not worry them at all. To mention just one example, nn one has yet succeeded in putting before us even a single viewer who was incapable of telling the difference between a fmaily quarrel in the crrnt soap opera and one at his or her family's breakfast table. This doesn't seem to bother the advocat3es of the simulation thesis."</p>
<p>Question2: Advocates of the simluation thesis might best respond to the critisicm by pointing out that the author...</p>
<p>a.)trivialzes their theory by applying it to literally (answer)
b.) concentrates excessively on a relatively insignificnat point (my answer)</p>
<p>I was stuck between these two choices. I read the line ref. but can't seem to support the answer choice A.</p>
This sentence is saying that the author’s point about how people are resisting and criticizing T.V. now can be compared to how people were resisting and criticizing reading novels centuries ago. You can generalize and say that people tend to resist new forms of expression (reading novels, T.V., etc.). Therefore the author makes a comparison in order to “expose narrow-minded resistance to new forms of expression.” Just because the author describes a phenomenon about how people react to new things like T.V. and books doesn’t mean that he or she thinks that culture is declining.</p>
<p>
The author says that according to the simulation thesis the viewer is rendered “incapable of distinguishing between reality and fiction.” The author disagrees with this thesis. He or she says that “no one has yet succeeded” in showing a viewer that actually can’t tell the difference between reality (family’s breakfast table) and fiction (soap opera). </p>
<p>Obviously any viewer CAN literally tell the difference between reality and fiction; he or she has a mind after all. The simulation thesis makes more sense if it is not taken literally; a viewer may SEEM like he or she cannot tell the difference between a T.V. show and real life, but the viewer is NOT actually unable to tell the difference. In the paragraph about the simulation thesis, the author describes the secondary reality as “phantom-like,” which means the viewer perceives no difference between reality and fiction, but doesn’t substantially believe that there is no difference.</p>