2006年Text 4

　　Many things make people think artists are weird and the weirdest may be this: artists only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.

　　This wasn't always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere in the 19th century, more artists began seeing happiness as insipid, phony or, worst of all, boring as we went from Wordsworth's daffodils to Baudelaire's flowers of evil.

　　You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen such misery. But it's not as if earlier times didn't know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.

　　After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.

　　People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.

　　Today the messages your average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy .Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an agenda--to lure us to open our wallets to make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. "Celebrate!" commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.

　　What we forget--what our economy depends on is forgetting--is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. Its a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.

　　40. Which of the following is true of the text?

　　[A] Religion once functioned as a reminder of misery.

　　[B] Art provides a balance between expectation and reality.

　　[C] People feel disappointed at the realities of morality.

　　[D] mass media are inclined to cover disasters and deaths.

　　[答案] A

　　[解題思路]

　　本題的正確答案為A，具體的對應信息在文章第四段第三句話，即"In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms" (在西方，在大眾傳媒和文學普及之前，最有效的大眾媒體是教堂，它提醒信徒們，他們的靈魂處于危險之中，他們總有一天會成為蛆蟲的食物)，因此宗教曾經起到了提醒人們生活的苦難這一功能。B選項的錯誤在于文章探討的是藝術態度的變化，即藝術從過去的以表達歡樂感情為重點變為現在以表達悲傷和痛苦為重心，至于藝術是否在人們的期望與觀點之間創造了平衡這一觀點沒有論及。C選項的錯誤在于現在人們并沒有感到失望的情緒，相反正如第六段指出的，他們被包圍在一種充滿商業氣氛的幸福感中。D選型的錯誤在于大眾媒體盡管給人們創造了幸福的幻覺，但文章并沒有談及它們傾向于壓制報道災難和死亡，只是人們需要得到更多關于人生苦難的提醒。

　　[題目譯文]

　　下列哪一項符合文意?

　　[A] 宗教曾起過提示苦難的作用。

　　[B] 藝術在希望與現實之間提供了一種平衡。

　　[C] 人們對于現代社會的現實感到失望。

　　[D] 大眾傳媒傾向于掩蓋災難和死亡。

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