Text 4
Many things make people think artists are weird. But 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 from the 19th century onward, more artists began seeing happiness as meaningless, 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 so much 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 danger 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 the average Westerner is surrounded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy. Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, 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—they 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.
But what we forget—what our economy depends on us 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 art 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. It’s a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.
36. By citing the example of poets Wordsworth and Baudelaire, the author intends to show that.
［A］ poetry is not as expressive of joy as painting or music
［B］ art grows out of both positive and negative feelings
［C］ poets today are less skeptical of happiness
［D］ artists have changed their focus of interest
37. The word “bummer”(Line 5, Paragraph 5) most probably means something.
［A］ religious ［B］ unpleasant ［C］ entertaining ［D］ commercial
38. In the author’s opinion, advertising.
［A］ emerges in the wake of the anti-happy art
［B］ is a cause of disappointment for the general public
［C］ replaces the church as a major source of information
［D］ creates an illusion of happiness rather than happiness itself
39. We can learn form the last paragraph that the author believes.
［A］ happiness more often than not ends in sadness
［B］ the anti-happy art is distasteful but refreshing
［C］ misery should be enjoyed rather than denied
［D］ the anti-happy art flourishes when economy booms
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 modern society.
［D］ Mass media are inclined to cover disasters and deaths.
Part B
Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of numbered gaps. There are two extra choices, which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.(10 points)
On the north bank of the Ohio river sits Evansville, Ind., home of David Williams, 52, and of a riverboat casino (a place where gambling games are played). During several years of gambling in that casino, Williams, a state auditor earning $35,000 a year, lost approximately $175,000. He had never gambled before the casino sent him a coupon for $20 worth of gambling.
He visited the casino, lost the $20 and left. On his second visit he lost $800. The casino issued to him, as a good customer, a “Fun Card,” which when used in the casino earns points for meals and drinks, and enables the casino to track the user’ s gambling activities. For Williams, those activities became what he calls “electronic heroin.”
(41) _______________. In 1997 he lost $21,000 to one slot machine in two days. In March 1997 he lost $72,186. He sometimes played two slot machines at a time, all night, until the boat docked at 5 a.m., then went back aboard when the casino opened at 9 a.m. Now he is suing the casino, charging that it should have refused his patronage because it knew he was addicted. It did know he had a problem.
In March 1998, a friend of Williams’s got him involuntarily confined to a treatment center for addictions, and wrote to inform the casino of Williams’s gambling problem. The casino included a photo of Williams among those of banned gamblers, and wrote to him a “cease admissions” letter. Noting the “medical/psychological” nature of problem gambling behavior, the letter said that before being readmitted to the casino he would have to present medical/psychological information demonstrating that patronizing the casino would pose no threat to his safety or well-being.
(42)_______________.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the casino has 24 signs warning:“Enjoy the fun... and always bet with your head, not over it.” Every entrance ticket lists a toll-free number for counseling from the Indiana Department of Mental Health. Nevertheless, Williams’s suit charges that the casino, knowing he was “helplessly addicted to gambling,” intentionally worked to “lure” him to “engage in conduct against his will.” Well.
(43) _______________.
The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders says “pathological gambling” involves persistent, recurring and uncontrollable pursuit less of money than of the thrill of taking risks in quest of a windfall.
(44) _______________.
Pushed by science, or what claims to be science, society is reclassifying what once were considered character flaws or moral failings as personality disorders akin to physical disabilities.
(45) _______________.
Forty-four states have lotteries, 29 have casinos, and most of these states are to varying degrees dependent on—you might say addicted to—revenues from wagering. And since the first Internet gambling site was created in 1995, competition for gamblers’ dollars has become intense. The Oct. 28 issue of Newsweek reported that 2 million gamblers patronize 1,800 virtual casinos every week. With$3.5 billion being lost on Internet wagers this year, gambling has passed pornography as the Web’s most profitable business.
(A) Although no such evidence was presented, the casino’s marketing department continued to pepper him with mailings. And he entered the casino and used his Fun Card without being detected.
(B) It is unclear what luring was required, given his compulsive behavior. And in what sense was his will operative?
(C) By the time he had lost $5,000 he said to himself that if he could get back to even, he would quit. One night he won $5,500, but he did not quit.
(D) Gambling has been a common feature of American life forever, but for a long time it was broadly considered a sin, or a social disease. Now it is a social policy: the most important and aggressive promoter of gambling in America is the government.
(E) David Williams’s suit should trouble this gambling nation. But don’t bet on it.
(F) It is worrisome that society is medicalizing more and more behavioral problems, often defining as addictions what earlier, sterner generations explained as weakness of will.
(G) The anonymous, lonely, undistracted nature of online gambling is especially conductive to compulsive behavior. But even if the government knew how to move against Internet gambling, what would be its grounds for doing so?
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