Logical Reasoning

PT146 · S2 · Q17 Film historians often find

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Film historians often find it difficult to determine typical audience members' responses to particular films, especially those from the early twentieth century.

Statements

It's hard for film historians to figure out typical audience reactions to certain films, especially from the early 20th century.

Newspaper and magazine reviews fail to provide much insight.

So do box office figures. They just show whether a film was a financial success or failure. They don't show what audiences found funny, frightening, or moving.

Evaluate

Did we see any Conditional, Causal, Mathematical, or Pivot language that would suggest which ideas to combine?

The closest we have is some anti-causal wording.

Box office figures don't help us figure out the typical audience reaction to films. Newspaper and magazines reviews don't provide much insight into typical audience reaction to films.

We could potentially derive statements that reinforce that anti-causal relationship: - newspaper and magazine reviews don't usually mention the typical audience reaction, and they can't be trusted to reflect the typical audience reaction.

- box office figures don't indicate typical audience reactions - financial success or failure doesn't reveal typical audience response

The middle sentence seems to have some utility. If we say, then we seem to be implying that "Y does not help us determine X" and that "Z is part of determining X".

(we already covered "Y doesn't help us determine X" when we said that )

(Z is part of determining X) - what audiences found funny, frightening, or moving is part of determining the "typical audience response".

Goal

Hard to know exactly what they're going for because there are several ways to spell out what does and doesn't help us determine typical audience reactions.

17.

Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the statements above?

Newspaper and magazine reviews of
Too Strong
Too Strong: usually Out of Scope: in advance It's definitely supported that newspaper and magazine reviews didn't reveal typical audience reactions, but that doesn't mean it's because they were usually written in advance. Maybe they were usually written once the film had been released, but the opinion of a movie reviewer just isn't influenced by or representative of the typical audience opinion.
2% picked this
Typical audience members' responses to
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: late 20th century Too Strong: easy The passage stressed that films from the early 20th century were especially difficult, but that can mean that films from the latter half of the 20th century were just regular ol' difficult. We can't categorically say that typical audience reactions to every film from 1950-2000 is easy to determine.
1% picked this
The box office success of
That vs. What
It doesn't get any more lawyerly that parsing between the meaning of these two ideas: 1. Box office success doesn't show that audiences found it funny, frightening, or moving 2. Box office success doesn't show what audiences found it funny, frightening, or moving This answer choice is talking about #1. We can't derive that from the passage. It may be true that the box office success of a film, its financial success, convinces us that audiences did find that film funny, or frightening, or moving. (i.e. it must have stirred some sort of emotion if that many people came to see it) But the passage only talked about #2. We might know that a film was massively popular, but not know why. When we're talking about trying to ascertain typical audience responses, it would be granular stuff like "What parts of the film were funny to them? What was frightening? What was moving?" The box office success may depend on a movie fulfilling at least one of those categories (funny / frightening / moving), but that wouldn't instruct historians about which specific parts of the movie typical audiences found funny, scary, or moving.
29% picked this
Correct
Film historians do not believe
Why this is right
Suppose we say that "Ben is finding it difficult to find the recipe for his mom's old fudge recipe. His sister Grace failed to provide much insight". We could infer that "Ben does not believe that Grace has adequately conveyed to him his mom's old fudge recipe". That's all we're doing to derive this answer: Film historians can't figure out typical audience members' responses. Newspaper and magazines fail to provide much insight. So, newspaper and magazines to not adequately convey typical audience members' responses.
Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
67% picked this
Films from the early part
Too Strong: usually not reviewed
This is just like choice (A), speculating a reason why newspapers and magazines failed to provide much insight into typical audience reactions. (A) said, "It's cuz the reviews come out before the film is released." (E) says, "It's cuz most films weren't reviewed in newspapers or magazines." We don't know if either of those are the reason why. It could be that films were always reviewed, after the film had been released, and historians just don't think that the review of a critic is representative of the typical audience members' reactions.
1% picked this

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