Television eats out our substance. Mander calls this the mediation of experience. "With TV what we see, hear, touch, smell, feel and understand about the world has been processed for us." When we "cannot distinguish with certainty the natural from the interpreted, or the artificial from the organic, then all theories of the ideal organization of life become equal." In other words, TV teaches that all lifestyles and values are equal, and that there is no clearly defined right and wrong. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, one of the best recent books on the tyranny of television, Neil Postman wonders why nobody has pointed out that television possibly oversteps the instructions in the Bible. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of the traditional standards and mores of society came under heavy assault. Indeed, they were blown apart, largely with the help of one"s own. There was an air of unreality about many details of daily life. Even important moral questions suffered distortion when they were reduced to TV images. During the Vietnam conflict, there was much graphic violence—soldiers and civilians actually dying—on screen. One scene that shocked the nation was an execution in which the victim was shot in the head with a pistol on prime-time TV. People "tuned in" to the war every night, and controversial issues about the causes, conduct, and resolution of the conflict could be summed up in these superficial broadcasts. The same phenomenon was seen again in the Gulf War. With stirring background music and sophisticated computer graphics, each network"s banner script read across the screen, "War in the Gulf," as if it were just another T,V program. War isn"t a program—it is a dirty, bloody mess. People are killed daily. Yet, television all but teaches that this carnage merely is another diversion, a form of blockbuster entertainment—the big show with all the international stars present. In the last years of his life, Malcolm Muggeridge, a pragmatic and print journalist, warned: "Form the first moment I was in the studio, I felt that it was far from being a good thing. I felt that television would ultimately be inimical to what I most appreciate, which is the expression of truth, expressing your reactions to life in words." He concluded: "I don"t think people are going to be preoccupied with ideas. I think they are going to live in a fantasy world where you don"t need any ideas. The one thing that television can"t do is express ideas. There is a danger in translating life into an image, and that is what television is doing. It is thus falsifying life. Recorder of what is going on, it is the exact opposite. It cannot convey reality nor does it even want to."
单选题 What is the author"s attitude towards television?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】解析:从文章语句中推断作者是持批评态度。认为电视节目不加辨别地以图像的形式展现生活,甚至以娱乐节目的方式报道血腥战争,违背社会道德水准。从文章语句中推断作者是持批评态度。认为电视节目不加辨别地以图像的形式展现生活,甚至以娱乐节目的方式报道血腥战争,违背社会道德水准。Ambiguous暧昧的;Skeptical怀疑性的;Appreciative欣赏的。
单选题 How is television said to distort life in reporting warfare and conflicts?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】解析:从文中第三、四段内容可知答案为"电视以娱乐节目的形式展现人类相互残杀流血的惨状,扭曲生活"。
单选题 Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】解析:四个表述中只有答案选项是正确的,即"电视图像中没有明确的对错之分"。
单选题 Which of the following ideas might probably be preferred by Malcolm Muggeridge?
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】解析:文章末段引用Malcolm Muggeridge的观点:I don"t think…express ideas.可以推断,他认为每个人应有自己的是非观。
单选题 According to the text, Amusing Ourselves to Death is a book
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】解析:本题为推论题。文章第二段:In Amusing Ourselves to Death…in the Bible.可以看出这本书是关于"the tyranny of television"即文章是鞭挞电视种种弊端的。