June 2017 LSAT Section 2 Question 17

Film historians often find it difficult to determine typical audience members' responses to particular films, especia...

devinjax14 on February 21, 2020

Why D and not C?

I put C because of the second sentence. I don't get why it would be C because all it says about film reviews is that they didn't provide the historians with much insight.

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Skylar on February 22, 2020

@devinjax14, happy to help.

(D) states that "Film historians do not believe that film reviews in newspapers and magazines reveal typical film audience members' views." This is drawn directly from the last sentence of the passage, which states that "These historians also find that newspaper and magazine reviews fail to provide much insight." Therefore, (D) is explicitly supported by the passage.

(C) states that "The box office success of a film does not depend on its viewers finding it funny, frightening, or moving." The second sentence of the passage states that "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 is tricky, but very different. Whereas (C) says "depend," the passage says "help little." It is entirely possible that box office figures do not show what in specific audiences thought was funny/frightening/moving, but that the figures depended on the movie being overall funny/frightening/moving. Therefore, the statement made in (C) does not necessarily follow from the passage.

Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any other questions!

lxnxrd19 on December 10, 2020

But doesn't d make a jump from the stimulus from talking about early twentieth century to such a general statement in a MBT question? Thats the part that tricked me.