Q17 - Film historians often find it difficult to determine

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Most Strongly Supported

Stimulus Breakdown:
Historians don't find ticket sales or reviews enough to determine what the average movie-goer liked, especially as you go further into the past.

Answer Anticipation:
There doesn't seem to be much here that overlaps or leads to strong inferences, so I'm expecting the answer to be more of a vague restatement of the situation.

Correct answer:
(D)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) While this might be one reason for the reviews to fail to provide insight (they were written before the audience could react), it's not the only explanation, so it's not something we can infer.

(B) Relative/absolute. While we can infer that they're easier to determine (since the audience response in theearly 20th century is noted as being "especially" difficult), that doesn't allow us to infer it's easy.

(C) This answer sounds like the second statement, so I might leave it on the first pass. However, the stimulus doesn't let us rule out that these are a factor; it only lets us say that they're not determinative.

(D) Boom. While I'd normally be a little hesitant to pick an answer that talks about a belief, the stimulus is about what film historians think. We know they find the reviews to lack insight, which aligns with this answer.

(E) The stimulus tells us that the reviews aren't insightful, not that they don't exist.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Don't be afraid of an answer that sounds like a restatement of what was said in the stimulus - it can definitely be inferred!

#officialexplanation

[LaurenP895]

Can someone explain more in detail why C isn't correct?

[ImadL659]

Can someone explain more in detail why C isn't correct?

Here's the way I see it. The statement in the stimulus is, "Box office figures help little, for they indicate only a film's financial success or failure; they do not show what audiences found funny, or frightening, or moving."

Answer choice (C) says, "The box office success of a film does not depend on its viewers finding it funny, frightening, or moving."

You cannot logically infer answer choice C from the statement in the stimulus. I'll explain by example.

You are presented with the box office figures for Iron Man, which made $1 trillion. A resounding success.

Why did Iron Man make $1 trillion? It *could* have depended on its viewers found it funny, or it *could* be because it had Robert Downey Jr. That number doesn't tells anything.

Now look at the stimulus passage again: "Box office figures help little, for they indicate only a film's financial success or failure; they do not show what audiences found funny, or frightening, or moving."

This leaves open the possibility that Iron Man's $1 trillion success depended on its viewers finding it funny etc.

But answer choice (C) rules out this possibility: "The box office success of a film does not depend on its viewers finding it funny, frightening, or moving." The stimulus says that box office figures leave the reasons for their success entirely open-ended, answer choice (C) rules out a possibility.