Maria: Popular music is bad art because it greatly exaggerates the role love plays in everyday life and thereby fail...

shunhe on April 6, 2020

Hi @HannahNg,

Thanks for the question! So let’s start off by looking at the stimulus. Maria tells us that popular music is bad art because it doesn’t represent reality accurately (since it greatly exaggerates the role love plays in people’s lives). Theo tells us that popular music isn’t supposed to reflect reality; instead, it does other things like console people with fantasies or help people create romance in their otherwise difficult lives.

Now we need to find something that the two disagree with, and it’s often helpful to prephrase such answers before going to the answer choices. Clearly, Maria thinks that popular music is bad art, whereas Theo thinks that this isn’t necessarily the case. This seems to have to do with how they conceptualize both what “bad art” is and the purposes of popular music.

Now let’s take a look at (D), which tells us that they disagree over whether art need not represent reality accurately to be good art. Clearly, Maria would disagree with this statement, as she thinks that good art should represent reality accurately (since she thinks that bad art does not represent reality accurately). But Theo, on the other hand, would agree with this statement. Theo focuses on the functions that different kinds of art perform; the fact that popular music doesn’t reflect reality can’t be counted against it. He cautions against condemning a form of art before fully understanding it. Thus, Theo doesn’t think that it’s a necessary condition for good art to represent reality accurately; instead, he thinks that there are other factors (such as performing various functions) that should be counted as well. Thus, they disagree over (D), and it’s the correct answer choice.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

hfatima1 on May 27, 2020

I do not understand why the answer choice is not C?

hfatima1 on May 29, 2020

can someone please answer my question

Nljones on June 5, 2020

I agree please explain.

hfatima1 on August 5, 2020

commenting to bump up again

Emil-Kunkin on December 25 at 07:55PM

We don't know theos position on C. We do know that Theo thinks not all art must portray reality, but we don't know that he thinks all art must be idealistic, only that some can be.