Q6 - Maria: Popular music is bad art

[irene122]

Maria says:
not reflect reality + exaggerate the role of love--> pop music is bad art
theo say:
not reflect reality not necessarily means bad art


I eliminate ABE and choose C although I don't know what exactly C is trying to convey("as it could be" refers to whatever artists want to express, "as it could be" refers to the reality of real world?), I eliminate D because of "good art" in it-- there is a gap between "not bad art" in the stimulus and "good art".

Would anyone help and point out the error in the reasoning above!? Thanks in advance!^^

[irene122]

sorry there is a typo, "as it is" refers to the real world, not "as it could be"

[demetri.blaisdell]

Be careful, irene122. This is not an assumption family question. It's not worth your time to consider the two sides as arguments. Instead, you want to look for the overlap in what they talk about or express opinions about. The wrong answers will usually come from things one of them does not talk about or things they agree upon.

Consider (D). Maria says that popular music is bad art because it fails to represent reality accurately. She would disagree with (D) because she thinks art should depict the reality of life. The first sentence of Theo's reply shows that he doesn't agree that popular music should reflect reality. The nitpicky thing to say here is that we aren't 100% sure that Theo thinks that popular music is good art. While that is true, (D) is still the most supported answer choice.

(A) is a misinterpretation of what Theo says. We don't know what, if anything, Maria thinks about this.

(B) is not discussed by Theo. Maria thinks this, but we don't know about Theo. He probably thinks that at least some bad art does this.

(C) might look tempting at first, but be careful about the word should. Neither of them says what "art should always do." Maria says what makes popular music bad art, but that is different from what art (in general) should or shouldn't do.

(E) also misses the disagreement. Maria thinks popular music is bad art (but it's still art). It seems like Theo probably agrees that music is art (but we can't be sure).

Let me know if that helps. I'm happy to answer any questions you have on this.

Demetri