<p>Passage excerpt: (numbers are line references)
Where did noir come from? Its an
intriguing question and one still not
adequately answered, despite the quantity
75 of writing that wallows in that noir mood.
Dont rule out the influence of German
film from the twenties, if only because
there were, by the early forties, so many
European refugees (writers, directors,
80 camera operators, designers, actors)
working in Hollywood. Dont forget the
impact of French films of the late thirties,
especially those of Marcel Carne. His Le
Jour Se Leve (1939, called Daybreak in
85 the United States) was such a success
that it was remade in Hollywood in 1947
as The Long Night. Finally, dont
underestimate the influence Citizen Kane
had on anyone whose art and craft was
90 cinematography. The film was a box
office flop, but filmmakers were absorbed
by it. A landmark in so much, Kane is a
turning point in the opening up of a noir
sensibility.</p>
<p>The phrase wallows in in line 75 is closest in
meaning to
(A) indulges in
(B) conforms to
(C) criticizes
(D) explores
(E) reveals</p>
<p>The answer is (D).
That's what I put, which was wrong. I lied: the answer is "indulges in." Just to fool your subconsciousness.</p>
<p>To indulge means to satisfy or fulfill a desire. I really can't see it fit, and the explanation provided is just as confusing.</p>
<p>To be honest, I just scrolled down and chose choice A because that’s what WALLOW actually means. It means to be lazy and smug. After actually reading the passage, I still would go with A, since the passage seems to focus on the nostalgic films of the past (sort of a indulgence).</p>
<p>The sentence (with “wallows”) states earlier that the question of “Where did noir come from” is “still not adequately answered.” It goes on to say that this is still the case “despite the quantity of writing that wallows in that noir mood.”</p>
<p>Basically, even though so much work explores the noir mood, we still don’t really know where it came from.</p>
<p>Not sure what happened to my original post, but as I said this is one of those questions where you explicitly need to know the meaning of “to wallow”. If I did not know the phrase “wallowing about”, I like most of you would have chosen a different answer.</p>
<p>My initial reaction when I saw “wallows in”, I instantly gravitated towards answer choice A.</p>
<p>I think the question is asking the meaning of the phrase “wallows in” in context, and since the expression is figurative, the denotation isn’t as important as its meaning in context.</p>
<p>Here is the official explanation, which doesn’t help at all:
</p>
<p>And here’s supposedly why (D) is wrong:
</p>
<p>This explanation sucks. I’m glad I didn’t pay for this course.</p>
<p>“Wallows in” is a use of an exaggerated and pejorative term by the author to express an implied criticism of the large amount and generally low quality of the writing about noir. Pigs wallow in mud.</p>
<p>The use of indulge is in the sense of ‘indulgent’ as in: ‘Indulgent parents spoil their children’ or ‘Wise people learn not to indulge every impulse’. In this case ‘indulge’ means to be ‘injudiciously permissive’, ‘overlooking bad behavior’, or ‘having low standards’. A common use of the word in this sense is in the compound adjective ‘self-indulgent’.</p>
<p>This is a problem you have to watch out for when studying SAT word lists. They give the first definition of words that often have several different meanings and connotations. Harder SAT vocab questions usually look for those second and third ‘senses of the word’.</p>