Exam 4: Critical Analysis & Reasoning Skills

Passage Dominated by stock character types and gloomy urban settings, film noir is a highly stylized art form with plots that pivot around crime and intrigue.  Chiefly a product of 1940s and 1950s Hollywood, noir was arguably more an approach, mood, or sensibility than a discrete genre.  Noir drew inspiration for its scenery from classic movies about bootlegging and heists but primarily imported its storylines and dialogue from the crime novels and pulp magazine tales of the Depression Era.  At the same time, noir imitated the unsettling cinematography of the German expressionist movement of the 1920s and borrowed from French poetic realist cinema a fundamentally jaundiced and tragic worldview.  As an unlikely amalgamation of ideas and styles, film noir also readily absorbed other contemporary cultural strains, notably existentialism and psychoanalysis.Most noir-type films belong to what is known as the "B" movie category-low-budget, black-and-white motion pictures originally produced to accompany a higher-budget or "A" film as a double feature-and display certain conventions that give them a distinguishing character.  Apart from a brooding mood, or pervasive sense of pessimism and meaninglessness, noir conventions include the investigation of a crime and a difficult-to-decipher plot unfolding in flashback sequences accompanied by voiceover narration.  Camera angles are distorting and disorienting, creating a sense of menace.  Chiaroscuro or contrast lighting predominates, with characters often appearing in silhouette or caught within the contrasting shadows cast by Venetian blinds.  Dark and rainy streets illuminated solely by flickering signs point to a dodgy underworld of corruption that is played out in crowded nightclubs, deserted warehouses, or dingy offices.Standard noir roles include an isolated, "hardboiled" detective and a dangerous female character who proves as duplicitous as she is sharp-tongued and glamorous.  Often, a kind of anti-hero is also featured-a man disillusioned and marginalized, down on his luck, desperate to escape his past, and morally ambivalent-who makes an easy target for the double-crossing woman.  Film noir is also replete with witty and ironic verbal exchanges that heighten the tension between characters who traverse treacherous ground in a hostile universe where fate is inexorable.  Such stylistic tropes, along with morally questionable character types, brought noir into conflict with mid-20^th-century American values.Despite conventions so recognizable they have hardened into clichés that lend themselves to parody, as a genre noir remains indistinct.  Although a few films, such as Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, seem paradigmatic of the style, most vary widely in the degree to which they follow the formula.  Many emphasize or are known for certain conceits: The Big Sleep and The Lady from Shanghai are notorious for the many twists and turns of their incoherent plots; Sunset Boulevard and Gilda for their deceptive female characters; and The Maltese Falcon for introducing the quintessential noir detective, deftly brought to life through the fedora-and-trench-coat-clad character of Sam Spade.Noir is so notoriously ambiguous and elusive that many films from the era flirt with the classification.  For example, 1941 saw the release of renowned film director Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, a quasi-documentary drama concerning a newspaper magnate, which has long been deemed a masterpiece and is considered noir by some critics.  At the least, it was heavily influential in the development of this film style due to its dark cinematography, enigmatic plot of an investigative nature, voiceover, multiple flashbacks, inventive camera angles, and themes of corruption.  Likewise, the 1942 World War II classic Casablanca features chiaroscuro lighting and flashback; moreover, it takes place in a crowded, urban setting filled with suspicious characters and spotlights a bitter loner haunted by his past.  Given such uncertainty, it is fitting that noir was a label applied only after the heyday of these films ended. -In the passage, adjectives such as "indistinct," "elusive," and "ambiguous" are used to describe the phenomenon of film noir.  The author most likely uses these descriptive words to suggest that:

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -The mention of the Neo-Confucian revival in Song dynasty China (Paragraph 1) serves which of the following functions in the passage?

Passage Because frequent consumption of unhealthy foods is strongly linked with cardiometabolic diseases, one way for governments to combat those afflictions may be to modify the eating habits of the general public.  Applying economic incentives or disincentives to various types of foods could potentially alter people's diets, leading to more positive health outcomes.Utilizing national data from 2012 regarding food consumption, health, and economic status, Peñalvo et al. concluded that such price adjustments would help to prevent deaths related to cardiometabolic diseases.  According to their analysis, increasing the prices of unhealthy foods such as processed meats and sugary sodas by 10%, while reducing the prices of healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables by 10%, would prevent an estimated 3.4% of yearly deaths in the U.S.  Changing prices by 30% would have an even stronger effect, preventing an estimated 9.2% of yearly deaths.  This data comports with that found in other countries: "These results are in line with previous modeling studies in South Africa and India, where a 20% SSB [sugar-sweetened beverage] tax was estimated to reduce diabetes prevalence by 4% over 20 years."  The effects of price adjustments would be most pronounced on persons of lower socioeconomic status, as the researchers "found an overall 18.2% higher price-responsiveness for low versus high SES groups."This differential effect based on socioeconomic status contributes to concerns about such interventions, however.  In Harvard Public Health Review, Kates and Hayward ask: "Well-intentioned though they may be, at what point do these taxes overstep government influence on an individual's right to autonomy in decision-making?  On whom does the increased financial burden of this taxation fall?"  They note that taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, for instance, "are likely to have a greater impact on low-income individuals…because individuals in those settings are more likely to be beholden to cost when making decisions about food."However, "well-intentioned though they may be," the worries that Kates and Hayward express are to some extent misguided.  In particular, the idea that taxing unhealthy foods would burden those least able to afford it misses the point.  Although the increased taxes would affect anyone who continued to purchase the items despite the higher prices, the goal of raising prices on unhealthy foods is precisely to dissuade people from buying them.  As Kates and Hayward themselves remark, "those in low-income environments may also be the largest consumers of obesogenic foods and therefore most likely to benefit from such a lifestyle change indirectly posed by SSB taxes."  As the goal of the taxes is to promote those lifestyle changes, the financial burden objection is a non-starter.Given this recognition, the question regarding autonomy constitutes a more substantial issue.  Nevertheless, that concern also rests on a dubious assumption, as people's autonomy is not necessarily respected in the current situation either.  The fact that those of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to have poorer diets suggests that such persons' food choices are the result of financial constraint, not fully autonomous, rational deliberation.  Hence, by making healthy foods more affordable relative to unhealthy ones, government intervention might actually facilitate autonomous choices rather than hindering them.On the other hand, suppose that the disproportionate consumption of unhealthy foods-and associated higher incidence of disease-among certain groups is not the result of financial hardship but rather the result of those persons' perceived self-interest.  If so, that would suggest that members of these groups are being encouraged to persist in harmful dietary habits for the sake of corporate profits.  In that case, violating autonomy for the sake of health may be permissible anyway, as that practice would be morally preferable to the present system of corporate exploitation. -According to the passage author, concern about the financial burden of taxes on unhealthy foods is misguided because:

Passage No one would argue that much good has ever come out of the crucible of war, and certainly not from the kinds of atrocities that characterized the Second World War.  However, the horror of the Dutch famine that occurred toward the end of the war, what in the Netherlands is commonly called the Hongerwinter, has provided epidemiologists a unique opportunity to research the long-term health effects of nutritional deficiency in utero on a specific cohort of individuals.Because it was so widespread-affecting as many as 4.5 million people in the German-occupied Netherlands-but limited in duration and swiftly followed by a return to prosperity, the Dutch famine constituted a highly aberrant situation of deprivation in a modern, developed nation.  The devastation began in September 1944 when Allied Airborne Forces failed to seize control of the bridge that crosses the Rhine River at Arnhem.  To impede German ground troops and assist the Allies, the Dutch government then ordered a railway strike, prompting the Germans to retaliate with an embargo that cut off food and fuel supplies to the central and western provinces of the Netherlands, including the country's largest urban centers.  Even after the embargo ended, railways remained dismantled and the Germans continued to requisition goods, stalling supplies.  This already dire situation was exacerbated by war-ravaged agricultural regions and an unusually harsh winter that froze the canals.  As the fighting dragged on, food rations dwindled.  Faced with escalating scarcity, urban dwellers desperately scoured the countryside seeking anything edible for which they could trade their valuables.  Many were reduced to eating tulip bulbs and grass.  The death toll from starvation alone reached 20,000.The famine was among the best documented in modern history, and the Dutch Hunger Winter Study has been the first study to examine the long-term consequences of intrauterine starvation.  The study compared 422 individuals exposed to adverse intrauterine conditions with 463 siblings who were the products of pregnancies that either came to term before the famine began or occurred afterward.  The initial results, published in 1976, revealed that, among other health consequences, individuals exposed to deprivation during early gestation had much higher than normal rates of obesity as adults.  Research by scientists from both the Netherlands and the US, together with new information from the field of epigenetics (the study of changes in gene expression barring alteration of the genetic code), now suggests that nutritional restriction during early gestation effectively inactivates specific genes.Additional studies have shown that genetic expression can be altered through the addition of a methyl group, an organic compound consisting of one carbon and three hydrogen atoms, to a DNA molecule.  This methylation can modify gene expression without altering the DNA sequence.  In other words, it changes an individual's phenotype, or the observable genetic expression, but does not change the genome.  With this discovery, scientists now theorize that in individuals whose mothers suffered near-starvation during the early stages of pregnancy, DNA methylation silenced specific genes that normally help boost the rate at which the body consumes cellular energy.  The inactivation of these genes lowers metabolism, causing an increased tendency toward adult obesity.Other factors such as diet, environment, and even stress have been shown to alter methylation patterns on genes.  Furthermore, it has now been documented that the offspring of the Hunger Winter babies frequently exhibit the same health problems as their parents, including not only obesity, but also diabetes and cardiovascular disease.  Thus, with the advancement of genomics, this unfortunate period of starvation in the Netherlands offers strong evidence that DNA methylation is heritable-invaluable knowledge that can be used to understand a multitude of disease processes. -The response to which of the following queries would be most relevant for assessing whether the Dutch Hunger Winter Study accurately measured the long-term health effects of intrauterine starvation?

Passage In America's early democratic republic, the superficial signifiers of social status that had long distinguished the aristocracy in Europe were no longer supposed to apply.  However, despite political theory and an emphasis on rhetoric that implied democratic equality, many among the late eighteenth-century social elite flaunted their status and at the same time condemned any pretense by the lower classes to a higher social position.For the American "nobility," the immoderation that had marked public life since before the Revolution assumed epic proportions in the later decades of the century.  From the viewpoint of society's top tier, social pretense, revealed through presumptive choices of costume or coiffure, was becoming far too common.  Sumptuary legislation-largely a holdover from the colonial era-was accordingly reinstituted in some states as a means to regulate behavior and a remedy for inappropriate displays of extravagance.  Indeed, libertine attitudes so dominated the population that George Mason IV, a congressional representative from the Commonwealth of Virginia, proposed that the federal government impose sumptuary legislation on all strata of society, including the affluent who would have traditionally been excluded from such laws.  However, the motion did not pass, with such social trends proving too deeply rooted.  Nevertheless, Mason was hardly alone in his alarm at the specter of mounting excess.The more established members of the republican gentility had long freely indulged in decadent consumption without attracting much attention.  Nevertheless, most of these older elites criticized their own younger generation, whose coming-of-age was characterized by more overt disregard for the Puritan austerity advocated by their forebears.  The self-gratifying taste for grande cuisine and propensities for haute couture of the upper-class youth were perceived as decidedly improper conduct by their elders.  Moreover, as this ostentatious comportment worsened, it influenced those from the inferior echelons of society to adopt similar displays.The presumptuous behavior mimicked by the lower classes led to an uproar by those in positions of power, who swiftly moved to modify societal conduct.  In particular, dissonance swelled in Massachusetts, where, within Boston's most select circles, a palpable anxiety over the maintenance of social hierarchies and their rightful exterior signifiers arose.  For the elite few who made up America's haute monde, any posturing of manner or appropriation of dress disrupted the customary rigidity of the social hierarchy, which, to their dismay, had now become increasingly fluid.  There was a communal uneasiness, which grew into national dread, that artful impostors might slip through the boundaries of the social strata undetected.  Yet, vexingly, counterfeits were becoming more difficult to recognize.  Consequently, in order to restrict impersonation, those of questionable lineage faced the threat of ostracization for an act as simple as sitting for a portrait.At the same time, a movement materialized that had Boston as its epicenter.  The new paradigm mandated that eighteenth-century gentlemen as well as ladies project positive, even edifying, public images, as their privileged position behooved.  Therefore, a distinctly American variety of noblesse oblige, though not without its detractors, spread throughout the new democratic republic.  In metropolitan centers across the new nation, the attributes of honor, modesty, and public virtue assumed increasing importance among the "aristocracy."  Keeping up appearances-that were oftentimes not all they seemed-became paramount in order to set examples of permissible public behavior for the benefit of those of humble birth or who were less affluent.  Meanwhile, the bulk of the American population, consisting of those with little wealth or status, did their best not to emulate their "role models." -Based on the passage, the elders within elite society most likely:

Passage In 1482, a thirty-year-old Leonardo da Vinci left his art studio in Florence and traveled to Milan to seek employment at the court of Duke Ludovico Sforza.  A drafted letter of application to the duke detailed Leonardo's many useful skills, the majority of which concerned military developments such as "methods for destroying any fortress" and making "unassailable armored chariots."  Peacetime talents such as "guiding water from one place to another" or producing "sculpture in marble, bronze and clay" were mentioned only at the end of the letter.  Nevertheless, one of the most intriguing items is the entry stating, "I have designed extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be easily carried": in other words, portable bridges.Modern scholars question whether most of the devices mentioned in Leonardo's letter could really have been constructed.  For instance, Krull describes the fact that Leonardo never sent the letter as "a good thing, as it was mostly bluff."  Isaacson, though a bit more charitable, similarly declares that Leonardo's "boasts were aspirational."  Regarding the bridge, however, there is no doubt that the design is workable.According to at least one account, Leonardo really did make such a bridge for Sforza.  More significantly, examples of the bridge have been built and used in contemporary times.  A sketch in one of Leonardo's notebooks illustrates the bridge's construction, which includes different sets of wooden beams cut to specific lengths.  Requiring no nails, ropes, or other fasteners, nor any tools, the bridge can be assembled by a mere handful of people, and even some children could potentially build a small version or model.When the bridge is constructed correctly, each component helps to hold all the other components in place.  The original sketch calls for the beams to be notched so that the pieces of the bridge lock together.  However, in some cases this feature can be omitted, provided the wood is sufficiently rough.  This version of the bridge then stands and bears weight due to friction, gravity, and the physical integrity of the pieces.  In this way, the structure depends entirely on the interplay of physical forces upon its parts.The design is modular and repeatable, meaning that a longer bridge can be made by simply adding another section, with the supports interlocked accordingly.  Given enough materials, time, and manpower, such a bridge could in principle be made to quite a great length.  However, in longer bridges the notches would in fact be needed, because some of the beams would be at steeper angles.Despite the relative ease of constructing the bridge, there is one challenge: building it requires access to both sides of the region to be crossed, as well as the area in between.  Such a consideration might seem obvious in building any bridge, but it can still prove problematic.  If a bridge is meant to help cross a body of water, not all members of the group attempting to cross will receive its benefit, as some would have to stand in the water during the bridge's construction.  Of course, this assumes that it is safe to enter the water in the first place.  Crossing a chasm or a deep pit would pose even greater difficulties, as the bridge's prospective builders would, like the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, lack a place to stand.  Leonardo may have confronted that problem as well and considered how to make a bridge that was not only portable and freestanding, but constructible in sequence from one end to the other.  Although no evidence exists of such a design in the known pages of his notebooks, many pages have been lost to history and might one day be rediscovered. -Based on passage information, the author's primary reason for believing that the portable bridge is a workable design is that:

Passage Rhetorical questions with an end purpose can be propositioned with the intention of challenging curricular stratagem, particularly in the name of educational progress.  "Should we teach literature in our college classrooms?" or "Do we have an ethical obligation to teach humanities to the next generation of scholars?" are the sorts of enquiries that can set precedence in academic circles, providing fodder for discussion on implementing the best instructional tactics in the imminent restructuring of scholastic environments.  One particular issue in academia that is currently under deliberation is the justification for literary study in the classroom.So why study literature?  First, research has shown that studying the likes of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Dickens can generate feelings of human connectedness, an essential component for fulfilled living, social stimulation, and a long and healthy existence.  Immersive or "deep" reading of a literary piece serves as a meditation on, an excavation of, and a careful examination of the ubiquitous sociocultural ideas connecting the worlds in which both the author and reader reside.  One study on connectedness also found that emotionally compaginated individuals live longer than those who do not exhibit similar closeness with other humans.  Taken together, it can be surmised that "deep readers" may have a superior ability to understand and empathize socially by viewing the world through the differing perspectives of others, enhancing the potential for human connectivity.Second, it may be beneficial to recall our literary past in its truest form, the written word, over the superfluity of technological representations of ancient texts.  For instance, Shakespeare's body of work has been reduced to two-minute self-produced video clips found on the Internet, a valuable teaching tool for younger students with ever-shortening attention spans but one that lamentably excludes the essential beauty of the original prose.  The writings hold the intended "environmental literary print" up to the light, allowing readers to gain a valuable snapshot of history that cannot be substituted.  As our society continues to advance technologically, we can nevertheless find existential value in remembering our past.Third, if we could measure the unbridled joy felt upon discovering a forgotten text lying on the shelf, we might shift our focus from an extrinsic value of literature to an intrinsic one; that is, the written text is prized due to its ability to incite felicitousness, laughter, woefulness, and a myriad of emotions that make us inherently human.  As George Eliot writes in the canonical The Mill on the Floss, "We can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive.  There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them."  This exemplifies the human condition that strives toward fulfillment at our core psyche, a sentiment perhaps best expressed in the written language itself.Lastly, there is much to be gained from pedagogical models of studying literature:  women's studies teaches the value of gender equality, cultural studies intrinsically teaches less ethnocentrism and more tolerance, and the reader-response theory teaches that each individual response has value based on unique and subjective human experiences, to name a few.In certain higher education communities, there has been a grassroots movement gaining some traction in favor of removing humanities requirements from the core teaching curriculum, yet the lifelong consequences of doing so may not be quantifiable.  The humanities professors who protest silently, hoping that their colleagues will see the merit in studying literature as requisite, must remain reticent no more.  Without literary study to instill in us the value of the human experience, we may willingly sacrifice more than just coursework:  we may be on the verge of surrendering our human spirit. -In the context of the passage, it can be assumed that the term "pedagogical models" is introduced to show:

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -Given the information in Paragraph 1, the passage seems to imply that Charles Guiteau:

Passage Throughout the twentieth century, the performer-spectator dynamic has been challenged both in artistic practice and from a theoretical perspective.  Contextual Futurists, nonsensical Dadaists, and the surreal avant-garde theatrical experiments upended the conventional notion of passive spectatorship, paving the way for performers to disrupt the invisible wall between the artist and audience altogether.  Most scholarly attention, however, has traditionally been directed toward one-way theatrical practices by which performers engage, transform, and heighten the bodily state of the audience through a framework of communal "felt-experience," and not vice versa.The actors on stage are ostensibly the central object of attention, yet their communication with those in attendance is not solely a one-way discourse.  After the curtain falls at the end of a performance, it is common to hear professional performers commentate on audience reaction:  sometimes the spectators were "attuned"; at other times they seemed "aloof."  Occasionally, performers feel as if they "captured" the audience; at other times, they perceive that they "lost touch" with the viewers entirely.  One could say that this jargon is merely an oversimplified and closed communication that reduces the true complexity and aesthetic dimensions of the theater experience.Nevertheless, performers are ultimately the vessels responsible for detecting and absorbing the moods, attitudes, and emotions of individuals, and these aspects are vital to the apparent success or failure of the performative process.  One day, actors might find the audience energetic, welcoming, and appreciative; the next day, they may find a stiff, critical, and disconnected crowd, even when performing in the same production with unchanged levels of enthusiasm.  In some instances, a single audience may be unmoved, regardless of how well a show is performed.  In concert with this insight, the language used by artists from across the globe to portray such audience encounters is notably similar.  Their predilection for tactile idiomatic expressions when describing the performer-audience connection is perfectly captured in these remarks from a well-known stage actor:"The level of attention the audience gives to what is happening on stage provides a certain quality of stillness that makes it possible for a performer to know whether the audience is attuned or not.  However, for the audience to be 'with' the performer, it must embrace a state of tension and immerse itself in the profundity of the performance…it's a very 'tangible' moment-it's all I can find as a word."Because the audience is the proclaimed foundation of a theatrical event, a staged play aims to affect the audience, usually by "capturing" the viewers in some poignant manner.  According to this paradigm, there can be no performance without an audience.  Despite this, the presence of spectators does not guarantee that a meaningful emotional, or affective, exchange will transpire.  Such collective encounters in a shared space and time present only the possibility-for connection or disconnection; and, accordingly, an audience member must be physically present and willing to be affectively influenced.The audience serves an integral function in the performance:  it activates, intensifies, and amplifies the circulation of emotional affect in a communal social space.  Individually and collectively, each spectator is able to participate in the intrinsically variable theatrical plot.  Affect is thereby experienced simultaneously through action, thought, and perception by both the artist and the audience.  This mutual "transmission of affect" induces a corporeal sentiment that ultimately resonates as a palpably emotional atmosphere.  Entertainers can only know if the audience is "present" to the degree that they also embrace the mutual tension of the experience.  In this way, the performer dutifully influences the audience, and the audience, in essence, "re-affects" the stage. Adapted from Pais, A, Affective Resonance as the Function of the Audience. Published 2016. -The author's focus differs from that of most theater historians in that attention is given to:

Passage In America's early democratic republic, the superficial signifiers of social status that had long distinguished the aristocracy in Europe were no longer supposed to apply.  However, despite political theory and an emphasis on rhetoric that implied democratic equality, many among the late eighteenth-century social elite flaunted their status and at the same time condemned any pretense by the lower classes to a higher social position.For the American "nobility," the immoderation that had marked public life since before the Revolution assumed epic proportions in the later decades of the century.  From the viewpoint of society's top tier, social pretense, revealed through presumptive choices of costume or coiffure, was becoming far too common.  Sumptuary legislation-largely a holdover from the colonial era-was accordingly reinstituted in some states as a means to regulate behavior and a remedy for inappropriate displays of extravagance.  Indeed, libertine attitudes so dominated the population that George Mason IV, a congressional representative from the Commonwealth of Virginia, proposed that the federal government impose sumptuary legislation on all strata of society, including the affluent who would have traditionally been excluded from such laws.  However, the motion did not pass, with such social trends proving too deeply rooted.  Nevertheless, Mason was hardly alone in his alarm at the specter of mounting excess.The more established members of the republican gentility had long freely indulged in decadent consumption without attracting much attention.  Nevertheless, most of these older elites criticized their own younger generation, whose coming-of-age was characterized by more overt disregard for the Puritan austerity advocated by their forebears.  The self-gratifying taste for grande cuisine and propensities for haute couture of the upper-class youth were perceived as decidedly improper conduct by their elders.  Moreover, as this ostentatious comportment worsened, it influenced those from the inferior echelons of society to adopt similar displays.The presumptuous behavior mimicked by the lower classes led to an uproar by those in positions of power, who swiftly moved to modify societal conduct.  In particular, dissonance swelled in Massachusetts, where, within Boston's most select circles, a palpable anxiety over the maintenance of social hierarchies and their rightful exterior signifiers arose.  For the elite few who made up America's haute monde, any posturing of manner or appropriation of dress disrupted the customary rigidity of the social hierarchy, which, to their dismay, had now become increasingly fluid.  There was a communal uneasiness, which grew into national dread, that artful impostors might slip through the boundaries of the social strata undetected.  Yet, vexingly, counterfeits were becoming more difficult to recognize.  Consequently, in order to restrict impersonation, those of questionable lineage faced the threat of ostracization for an act as simple as sitting for a portrait.At the same time, a movement materialized that had Boston as its epicenter.  The new paradigm mandated that eighteenth-century gentlemen as well as ladies project positive, even edifying, public images, as their privileged position behooved.  Therefore, a distinctly American variety of noblesse oblige, though not without its detractors, spread throughout the new democratic republic.  In metropolitan centers across the new nation, the attributes of honor, modesty, and public virtue assumed increasing importance among the "aristocracy."  Keeping up appearances-that were oftentimes not all they seemed-became paramount in order to set examples of permissible public behavior for the benefit of those of humble birth or who were less affluent.  Meanwhile, the bulk of the American population, consisting of those with little wealth or status, did their best not to emulate their "role models." -Based on passage information, why did the legislation proposed by George Mason fail to pass?The aristocracy believed noblesse oblige made legislation unnecessary.Immoderation was too ingrained for prohibition to gain support.Affluent members of society would be affected.

Passage In America's early democratic republic, the superficial signifiers of social status that had long distinguished the aristocracy in Europe were no longer supposed to apply.  However, despite political theory and an emphasis on rhetoric that implied democratic equality, many among the late eighteenth-century social elite flaunted their status and at the same time condemned any pretense by the lower classes to a higher social position.For the American "nobility," the immoderation that had marked public life since before the Revolution assumed epic proportions in the later decades of the century.  From the viewpoint of society's top tier, social pretense, revealed through presumptive choices of costume or coiffure, was becoming far too common.  Sumptuary legislation-largely a holdover from the colonial era-was accordingly reinstituted in some states as a means to regulate behavior and a remedy for inappropriate displays of extravagance.  Indeed, libertine attitudes so dominated the population that George Mason IV, a congressional representative from the Commonwealth of Virginia, proposed that the federal government impose sumptuary legislation on all strata of society, including the affluent who would have traditionally been excluded from such laws.  However, the motion did not pass, with such social trends proving too deeply rooted.  Nevertheless, Mason was hardly alone in his alarm at the specter of mounting excess.The more established members of the republican gentility had long freely indulged in decadent consumption without attracting much attention.  Nevertheless, most of these older elites criticized their own younger generation, whose coming-of-age was characterized by more overt disregard for the Puritan austerity advocated by their forebears.  The self-gratifying taste for grande cuisine and propensities for haute couture of the upper-class youth were perceived as decidedly improper conduct by their elders.  Moreover, as this ostentatious comportment worsened, it influenced those from the inferior echelons of society to adopt similar displays.The presumptuous behavior mimicked by the lower classes led to an uproar by those in positions of power, who swiftly moved to modify societal conduct.  In particular, dissonance swelled in Massachusetts, where, within Boston's most select circles, a palpable anxiety over the maintenance of social hierarchies and their rightful exterior signifiers arose.  For the elite few who made up America's haute monde, any posturing of manner or appropriation of dress disrupted the customary rigidity of the social hierarchy, which, to their dismay, had now become increasingly fluid.  There was a communal uneasiness, which grew into national dread, that artful impostors might slip through the boundaries of the social strata undetected.  Yet, vexingly, counterfeits were becoming more difficult to recognize.  Consequently, in order to restrict impersonation, those of questionable lineage faced the threat of ostracization for an act as simple as sitting for a portrait.At the same time, a movement materialized that had Boston as its epicenter.  The new paradigm mandated that eighteenth-century gentlemen as well as ladies project positive, even edifying, public images, as their privileged position behooved.  Therefore, a distinctly American variety of noblesse oblige, though not without its detractors, spread throughout the new democratic republic.  In metropolitan centers across the new nation, the attributes of honor, modesty, and public virtue assumed increasing importance among the "aristocracy."  Keeping up appearances-that were oftentimes not all they seemed-became paramount in order to set examples of permissible public behavior for the benefit of those of humble birth or who were less affluent.  Meanwhile, the bulk of the American population, consisting of those with little wealth or status, did their best not to emulate their "role models." -With which of the following statements about noblesse oblige would the passage author most likely agree?

Passage Dominated by stock character types and gloomy urban settings, film noir is a highly stylized art form with plots that pivot around crime and intrigue.  Chiefly a product of 1940s and 1950s Hollywood, noir was arguably more an approach, mood, or sensibility than a discrete genre.  Noir drew inspiration for its scenery from classic movies about bootlegging and heists but primarily imported its storylines and dialogue from the crime novels and pulp magazine tales of the Depression Era.  At the same time, noir imitated the unsettling cinematography of the German expressionist movement of the 1920s and borrowed from French poetic realist cinema a fundamentally jaundiced and tragic worldview.  As an unlikely amalgamation of ideas and styles, film noir also readily absorbed other contemporary cultural strains, notably existentialism and psychoanalysis.Most noir-type films belong to what is known as the "B" movie category-low-budget, black-and-white motion pictures originally produced to accompany a higher-budget or "A" film as a double feature-and display certain conventions that give them a distinguishing character.  Apart from a brooding mood, or pervasive sense of pessimism and meaninglessness, noir conventions include the investigation of a crime and a difficult-to-decipher plot unfolding in flashback sequences accompanied by voiceover narration.  Camera angles are distorting and disorienting, creating a sense of menace.  Chiaroscuro or contrast lighting predominates, with characters often appearing in silhouette or caught within the contrasting shadows cast by Venetian blinds.  Dark and rainy streets illuminated solely by flickering signs point to a dodgy underworld of corruption that is played out in crowded nightclubs, deserted warehouses, or dingy offices.Standard noir roles include an isolated, "hardboiled" detective and a dangerous female character who proves as duplicitous as she is sharp-tongued and glamorous.  Often, a kind of anti-hero is also featured-a man disillusioned and marginalized, down on his luck, desperate to escape his past, and morally ambivalent-who makes an easy target for the double-crossing woman.  Film noir is also replete with witty and ironic verbal exchanges that heighten the tension between characters who traverse treacherous ground in a hostile universe where fate is inexorable.  Such stylistic tropes, along with morally questionable character types, brought noir into conflict with mid-20^th-century American values.Despite conventions so recognizable they have hardened into clichés that lend themselves to parody, as a genre noir remains indistinct.  Although a few films, such as Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, seem paradigmatic of the style, most vary widely in the degree to which they follow the formula.  Many emphasize or are known for certain conceits: The Big Sleep and The Lady from Shanghai are notorious for the many twists and turns of their incoherent plots; Sunset Boulevard and Gilda for their deceptive female characters; and The Maltese Falcon for introducing the quintessential noir detective, deftly brought to life through the fedora-and-trench-coat-clad character of Sam Spade.Noir is so notoriously ambiguous and elusive that many films from the era flirt with the classification.  For example, 1941 saw the release of renowned film director Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, a quasi-documentary drama concerning a newspaper magnate, which has long been deemed a masterpiece and is considered noir by some critics.  At the least, it was heavily influential in the development of this film style due to its dark cinematography, enigmatic plot of an investigative nature, voiceover, multiple flashbacks, inventive camera angles, and themes of corruption.  Likewise, the 1942 World War II classic Casablanca features chiaroscuro lighting and flashback; moreover, it takes place in a crowded, urban setting filled with suspicious characters and spotlights a bitter loner haunted by his past.  Given such uncertainty, it is fitting that noir was a label applied only after the heyday of these films ended. -The fact that some critics consider Orson Welles' Citizen Kane noir would most contradict the claim that:

Passage Jorge Luis Borges' 1946 short story "On Exactitude in Science" plays with the well-known aphorism, "The map is not the territory."  In this paragraph-long fable, an empire's ambitious cartographers produce a map so spectacularly isomorphic it corresponds precisely in scale and detail with the kingdom it represents.  Perfect yet useless, the map is virtually indistinguishable from the landscape until it begins to decay.  In a 1981 treatise, Simulacra and Simulation, French sociologist Jean Baudrillard cites Borges' tale as "the finest allegory" of his own provocative proposition that, in the current era, we have lost the ability to distinguish between reality and its representation.  Thus, Baudrillard-known as an extreme cultural relativist and often mocked as "the high priest of postmodernism"-postulates that "it is no longer a question of either maps or territories"; rather, "[s]omething has disappeared: the sovereign difference, between one and the other," that, he laments, once "constituted the charm of abstraction."  Indeed, our postmodernist world is saturated with signs, symbols, and images that are never neutral or transparent but, by mediating reality, come to construct it.  Consequently, in a sinister twist on the story, Baudrillard can assert that "today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the map."  As he elaborates, "[T]he territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it."  Instead, "[i]t is…the map that precedes the territory…that engenders the territory."  In other words, representation can be seen to precede, produce, and ultimately surpass reality.But how can a copy be the antecedent of an original?  How does an image become so alienated from reality?  In Baudrillard's scheme, signs are subject to degeneration.  Initially, a sign reflects reality, substituting for an original; like a carefully crafted counterfeit, it is a faithful but identifiable copy.  In the next stage, the sign devolves into a less faithful copy of the original, thus distorting what it represents and masking reality.  In its penultimate phase, the representation no longer pretends to be the original but now instead pretends to be a copy; hence, it masks an absence of reality and erodes the distinction between the real and representation.  For instance, when images are mass produced, they propagate, taking on a life of their own and diminishing the authoritative aura of the original.  In the final stage of the sign's devolution, it can claim "no relation to any reality whatsoever"; it no longer reflects or refers to reality but instead signifies nothing but signification.  It has become a pure simulation, a suspiciously specious semblance Baudrillard calls the simulacrum.In Baudrillardian theory, when the distinction between representation and reality, sign and referent, original and reproduction disintegrates, the real disappears; we are left with copies of copies that no longer have-or never had-an original.  What remains, then, is a "hyperreality" of simulacra and simulation.  So, Baudrillard maintains, "[s]imulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or substance....  It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody."  It is instead a question of substitution, of "substituting the signs of the real for the real."  As one writer describes it, "The simulation is no longer a reflection of reality, nor a reference to it, but a creation of a new real by models that are not based on reality."  This new real may be genetically engineered, as with cloning, or possibly computer generated.  Even something as essential as currency has been progressively replaced, first by checks and then by credit and debit cards, until finally only numbers, divorced from any concrete reality, are exchanged on money transfer apps.  Likewise, as reality dissolves into the hyperreality of simulacra, human experience devolves into "a simulation of reality." -A potential modification to the die-rolling example described in the passage that would most strengthen the author's point about objective and subjective probability would be if:

Passage Of the myriad problems facing translators, perhaps the most significant lies in the tension between what a text conveys and the words used to convey it.  Strict fidelity to the specific words of a text often fails to capture the full sense of its meaning.  Beyond this loss of meaning can also arise a loss of artistry and structural features which often cannot be replicated.For instance, a fully evocative rendering of the 119th Psalm seems unattainable.  Comprising twenty-two strophes of eight lines each, the one hundred and seventy-six verses do appear somewhat poetic in translation.  But in the original Hebrew the Psalm is an acrostic: the verses of the first strophe all begin with the letter Aleph, those of the second with Beth, and so on, with Tav, the last letter of the alphabet, commencing the final eight verses.  The reader of a translation would, understandably, be ignorant of this fact.  While this does not affect the essential meaning of the verses, it does affect their character-something is lost from the original in its non-native presentation.  Although there have been occasional attempts to mimic this structure in other languages, they have all been unsuccessful.  The tortured and unnatural wording that results proves the wisdom of most translators in prioritizing readability.  Nevertheless, the Psalmist wrote with a particular purpose that is left untransmitted.  The sacrifice of the acrostic, however necessary, is regrettable.Another concern is what might be called translational multiplicity.  Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges famously remarked: "The Quixote, due to my congenital practice of Spanish, is a uniform monument, with no other variations… the Odyssey, thanks to my opportune ignorance of Greek, is an international bookstore of works in prose and verse."  To speak of "the" Odyssey, or more generally, "the" text of any work, runs headlong into the reality that for translated works, "the text" is not a unitary entity but a collection of candidates.  Thus, a perennial difficulty of translation is conveyed through Borges' idiosyncratic presentation.  Or is it?  For Borges' remarks are elsewhere listed as: "Since Spanish is my native language, the Quixote is to me an unchanging monument, with no possible variations….  But the Odyssey, thanks to my opportune ignorance of Greek, is a library of works in prose and verse."  That we might ask which of these translations more closely represents his actual words is a fact that Borges would likely have found amusing.Considerations of this sort are magnified when one approaches the writings not only of individual authors, but of past civilizations.  Despite being one of the world's foremost sinologists, the late D. C. Lau was convinced that none of us truly understand classical Chinese.  The sentiment was no mere expression of modesty; fellow scholar Roger Ames described Lau as "[h]aving assimilated the classical corpus through a lifetime of careful study and reflection."  Rather, Lau was keenly aware of the difficult truth that the fluidity of language and culture over time can shroud the works of the ancients in obscurities that may be inscrutable to even their most passionately curious descendants.Modern works may also be altered, however, and sometimes through more subtle types of translation.  The book known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in England was changed to refer instead to the "Sorcerer's Stone" in the United States, reportedly due to a belief that the original title would be unpalatable to an American audience.  While that depressing assumption may indeed have been correct, the change removes a titular connection to a pre-existing myth.  The generic fantasy idea with which it is replaced thus fails to embody the full character of the original work. -The author seems to imply that Japanese whaling:

Passage Dominated by stock character types and gloomy urban settings, film noir is a highly stylized art form with plots that pivot around crime and intrigue.  Chiefly a product of 1940s and 1950s Hollywood, noir was arguably more an approach, mood, or sensibility than a discrete genre.  Noir drew inspiration for its scenery from classic movies about bootlegging and heists but primarily imported its storylines and dialogue from the crime novels and pulp magazine tales of the Depression Era.  At the same time, noir imitated the unsettling cinematography of the German expressionist movement of the 1920s and borrowed from French poetic realist cinema a fundamentally jaundiced and tragic worldview.  As an unlikely amalgamation of ideas and styles, film noir also readily absorbed other contemporary cultural strains, notably existentialism and psychoanalysis.Most noir-type films belong to what is known as the "B" movie category-low-budget, black-and-white motion pictures originally produced to accompany a higher-budget or "A" film as a double feature-and display certain conventions that give them a distinguishing character.  Apart from a brooding mood, or pervasive sense of pessimism and meaninglessness, noir conventions include the investigation of a crime and a difficult-to-decipher plot unfolding in flashback sequences accompanied by voiceover narration.  Camera angles are distorting and disorienting, creating a sense of menace.  Chiaroscuro or contrast lighting predominates, with characters often appearing in silhouette or caught within the contrasting shadows cast by Venetian blinds.  Dark and rainy streets illuminated solely by flickering signs point to a dodgy underworld of corruption that is played out in crowded nightclubs, deserted warehouses, or dingy offices.Standard noir roles include an isolated, "hardboiled" detective and a dangerous female character who proves as duplicitous as she is sharp-tongued and glamorous.  Often, a kind of anti-hero is also featured-a man disillusioned and marginalized, down on his luck, desperate to escape his past, and morally ambivalent-who makes an easy target for the double-crossing woman.  Film noir is also replete with witty and ironic verbal exchanges that heighten the tension between characters who traverse treacherous ground in a hostile universe where fate is inexorable.  Such stylistic tropes, along with morally questionable character types, brought noir into conflict with mid-20^th-century American values.Despite conventions so recognizable they have hardened into clichés that lend themselves to parody, as a genre noir remains indistinct.  Although a few films, such as Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, seem paradigmatic of the style, most vary widely in the degree to which they follow the formula.  Many emphasize or are known for certain conceits: The Big Sleep and The Lady from Shanghai are notorious for the many twists and turns of their incoherent plots; Sunset Boulevard and Gilda for their deceptive female characters; and The Maltese Falcon for introducing the quintessential noir detective, deftly brought to life through the fedora-and-trench-coat-clad character of Sam Spade.Noir is so notoriously ambiguous and elusive that many films from the era flirt with the classification.  For example, 1941 saw the release of renowned film director Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, a quasi-documentary drama concerning a newspaper magnate, which has long been deemed a masterpiece and is considered noir by some critics.  At the least, it was heavily influential in the development of this film style due to its dark cinematography, enigmatic plot of an investigative nature, voiceover, multiple flashbacks, inventive camera angles, and themes of corruption.  Likewise, the 1942 World War II classic Casablanca features chiaroscuro lighting and flashback; moreover, it takes place in a crowded, urban setting filled with suspicious characters and spotlights a bitter loner haunted by his past.  Given such uncertainty, it is fitting that noir was a label applied only after the heyday of these films ended. -Based on the passage, which of the following characters is LEAST likely to be portrayed in a conventional noir film?

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -Passage information suggests that Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence of the Same:

Passage Dominated by stock character types and gloomy urban settings, film noir is a highly stylized art form with plots that pivot around crime and intrigue.  Chiefly a product of 1940s and 1950s Hollywood, noir was arguably more an approach, mood, or sensibility than a discrete genre.  Noir drew inspiration for its scenery from classic movies about bootlegging and heists but primarily imported its storylines and dialogue from the crime novels and pulp magazine tales of the Depression Era.  At the same time, noir imitated the unsettling cinematography of the German expressionist movement of the 1920s and borrowed from French poetic realist cinema a fundamentally jaundiced and tragic worldview.  As an unlikely amalgamation of ideas and styles, film noir also readily absorbed other contemporary cultural strains, notably existentialism and psychoanalysis.Most noir-type films belong to what is known as the "B" movie category-low-budget, black-and-white motion pictures originally produced to accompany a higher-budget or "A" film as a double feature-and display certain conventions that give them a distinguishing character.  Apart from a brooding mood, or pervasive sense of pessimism and meaninglessness, noir conventions include the investigation of a crime and a difficult-to-decipher plot unfolding in flashback sequences accompanied by voiceover narration.  Camera angles are distorting and disorienting, creating a sense of menace.  Chiaroscuro or contrast lighting predominates, with characters often appearing in silhouette or caught within the contrasting shadows cast by Venetian blinds.  Dark and rainy streets illuminated solely by flickering signs point to a dodgy underworld of corruption that is played out in crowded nightclubs, deserted warehouses, or dingy offices.Standard noir roles include an isolated, "hardboiled" detective and a dangerous female character who proves as duplicitous as she is sharp-tongued and glamorous.  Often, a kind of anti-hero is also featured-a man disillusioned and marginalized, down on his luck, desperate to escape his past, and morally ambivalent-who makes an easy target for the double-crossing woman.  Film noir is also replete with witty and ironic verbal exchanges that heighten the tension between characters who traverse treacherous ground in a hostile universe where fate is inexorable.  Such stylistic tropes, along with morally questionable character types, brought noir into conflict with mid-20^th-century American values.Despite conventions so recognizable they have hardened into clichés that lend themselves to parody, as a genre noir remains indistinct.  Although a few films, such as Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, seem paradigmatic of the style, most vary widely in the degree to which they follow the formula.  Many emphasize or are known for certain conceits: The Big Sleep and The Lady from Shanghai are notorious for the many twists and turns of their incoherent plots; Sunset Boulevard and Gilda for their deceptive female characters; and The Maltese Falcon for introducing the quintessential noir detective, deftly brought to life through the fedora-and-trench-coat-clad character of Sam Spade.Noir is so notoriously ambiguous and elusive that many films from the era flirt with the classification.  For example, 1941 saw the release of renowned film director Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, a quasi-documentary drama concerning a newspaper magnate, which has long been deemed a masterpiece and is considered noir by some critics.  At the least, it was heavily influential in the development of this film style due to its dark cinematography, enigmatic plot of an investigative nature, voiceover, multiple flashbacks, inventive camera angles, and themes of corruption.  Likewise, the 1942 World War II classic Casablanca features chiaroscuro lighting and flashback; moreover, it takes place in a crowded, urban setting filled with suspicious characters and spotlights a bitter loner haunted by his past.  Given such uncertainty, it is fitting that noir was a label applied only after the heyday of these films ended. -Based on passage information, it can most reasonably be inferred that most of the conversation between characters in noir films from the 1940s and 1950s was derived from:

Passage People sometimes dance for joy, or report that they are so happy that they could dance for joy.  However, one might wonder why this is so.  What is it about happiness that would lead someone to dance?  What exactly is dancing, when one ponders this activity that might otherwise be taken for granted?  Is it only a human practice, or is dancing something in which other animals also engage?Indeed, some animals do seem to dance, although their reasons for doing so are goal-based.  For instance, bees dance to provide information to other colony members, using complicated movements to describe the location and quality of a food source.  This behavior is not emotive; it would seem odd, if not unscientific, to ascribe an emotive character to such displays.  Nevertheless, these displays are communicative, as are emotive human behaviors.Might this similarity bespeak a common evolutionary basis for the dance of humans and other animals?  Perhaps, although there are differences which cast doubt on that hypothesis.  A bee's dance is its main method of communication, whereas most human communication is vocal.  Even with non-vocal communication such as sign language, the types of bodily movements are qualitatively different than those used in dance, as dance movements signify at most a general feeling or impression rather than corresponding to specific words or ideas.  If the bee's dance functions like human sign language (albeit in a much less sophisticated form), it is questionable whether it is an appropriate analogue to human dance at all; the term "dance" would be simply a weak metaphor.  If the bee's dance is a type of language, then it is not the same sort of thing as human dance.Still, there are other types of animal behaviors that might more aptly be called dances.  Many animals engage in courtship displays of varying complexity, in which carefully choreographed movements are designed to win the favor of a potential mate.  Historically, a connection between human dance and courtship has also been assumed, and often cautioned against.  For instance, in the 1950s Elvis was denounced by parents as a corrupting influence upon the young women who swooned over him, and some of his dance moves were censored.  People often voice similar concerns with regard to the behavior of crowds in nightclubs and explicit lyrics in popular music.  Many believe that such an outcry may also be heard in the future, as the struggle of parental restraint against youthful vigor continues.It should not be thought, however, that all amorous dancing is subject to condemnation.  Weddings include dance as a matter of custom, suggesting a long-standing endorsement within socially approved couplings.  Through social tradition or natural instinct, dance seems linked with romance in the human mind.  Nevertheless, such a connection is clearly not the whole story.  One of the most fundamental uses of dance is the physical expression of music-a language not of words, but emotion.If music expresses emotion and dance expresses music, then, do we dance not only "for joy" but for all emotions?  Seemingly not, but why?  Certainly music itself conveys a wide spectrum of feelings.  Although we do not dance "for sadness" or "for anger," we do droop our bodies or clench our fists, and perhaps more subtle emotions produce other physical markers.  Still, happiness too can be seen in a smile, and to actually dance for joy is comparatively rare.  Is dance then truly an entity unto itself?  Or, is it merely one instance of a wider class of physical behaviors? -The ideas in the passage would be most relevant to the work of:

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -The Lacanian notion of misrecognition suggests that:

Passage Locomotives were first invented in England, with the first major railroad connecting Liverpool and Manchester in 1830.  However, it was in America that railroads would be put to the greatest use in the nineteenth century.  On May 10, 1869, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines met at Promontory Point, Utah, joining from opposite directions to complete a years-long project-the Transcontinental Railroad.  This momentous event connected the eastern half of the United States with its western frontier and facilitated the construction of additional lines in between.  As a result, journeys that had previously taken several months by horse and carriage now required less than a week's travel.  By 1887 there were nearly 164,000 miles of railroad tracks in America, and by 1916 that number had swelled to over 254,000.Although the United States still has the largest railroad network in the world, it operates largely in the background of American life, and citizens no longer view trains with the sense of importance those machines once commanded.  Nevertheless, the economic and industrial advantages those citizens enjoy today would not have been possible without America's history of trains; as Tom Zoellner reminds us, "Under the skin of modernity lies a skeleton of railroad tracks."  Although airplanes and automobiles have now assumed greater prominence, the time has arrived for the resurgence of railroads.  A revitalized and advanced railway system would confer numerous essential benefits on both the United States and the globe.The chief obstacles to garnering support for such a project are the current dominance of the automobile and the languishing technology of existing railroads.  In a sense these two obstacles are one, as American dependence on personal automobiles is partially due to the paucity of rapid public transportation.  The railroads of Europe and Japan, by comparison, have vastly outpaced their American counterparts.  Japan has operated high-speed rail lines continuously since 1964, and in 2007, a French train set a record of 357 miles per hour.  While that speed was achieved under tightly controlled conditions, it still speaks to the great disparity in railroad development between the United States and other countries since the mid-twentieth century.  British trains travel at speeds much higher than those in America, where both the trains themselves and the infrastructure to support them have simply been allowed to fall behind.  In much of Europe it is common for trains to travel at close to 200 miles per hour.To invest in a modern network of railroads would improve the United States in much the same way that the first railroads did in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  A high-speed passenger rail system would dramatically transform American life, as travel between cities and states would become quicker and more convenient, encouraging commerce, business, and tourism.  Such a system would also make important strides in environmental preservation.  According to a 2007 British study, "CO₂ emissions from aircraft operations are...at least five times greater" than those from high-speed trains.  For similar reasons, Osaka, Japan, was ranked as "the best…green transportation city in Asia" by the 2011 Green City Index.  As Lee-in Chen Chiu notes in The Kyoto Economic Review, Osakans travel by railway more than twice as much as they travel by car.It is true that developing a countrywide high-speed rail system would come with significant costs.  However, that was also true of the original Transcontinental Railroad, as indeed it is with virtually any great project undertaken for the public good.  We should thus move ahead with confidence that the rewards will outweigh the expenditure.  Both for society's gain and the crucial well-being of the planet, our path forward should proceed upon rails. -The author's argument for the value of building a high-speed rail system in America would be most challenged if which of the following statements were true?