Deck 13: Arts, Media, and Sports

Question 1

Found in a cave in Slovenia, the oldest known musical instrument, the "Divje babe flute," dates back more than

A) 130,000 years.
B) 5,000 years.
C) 5 million years, to roughly the time of the emergence of bipedalism.
D) 43,000 years.
E) 10,000 years, the same time as the emergence of agriculture.

Answer 1

43,000 years.

Question 2

Appreciation for the arts must be learned, it being part of the process of

A) aesthetic tuning.
B) biological adaptation.
C) imitation.
D) cultural evolution.
E) enculturation.

Answer 2

enculturation.

Question 3

What kind of society has buildings dedicated to the arts?

A) band
B) tribe
C) chiefdoms
D) segmentary lineage
E) state

Answer 3

state

Question 4

The techniques that anthropologists have used to analyze myth and folktales can be extended to two popular films in American culture, The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars. Which of the following is NOT an example of such an analysis, revealing the similarities between the two films?

A) Star Wars is a systematic structural transformation of The Wizard of Oz.
B) In both movies, fairy-tale heroes are often accompanied on their adventures by secondary characters who personify the virtues needed for a successful quest.
C) Both films focus on the child's relationship with the parent of the same sex, dividing that parent into three parts.
D) Both heroes use magic to accomplish their goals.
E) Confirming Lévi-Strauss's analysis of myths around the world, these movies have many secondary cultural references that only cultured audiences are able to perceive and appreciate.

Question 5

Folk art, music, and lore refer to the

A) unrefined manifestations of human creativity produced by illiterate societies.
B) expressive cultures of ordinary people.
C) forms of artistic expression found in the New World prior to the arrival of Columbus.
D) forms of artistic expression that exist independently of any given cultural system.
E) manifestations of human creativity that siblings exchange with their progenitors.

Question 6

What kind of evidence led scientists studying remains at South Africa's Blombos Cave to suggest that they had found proof of symbolic thought dated to more than 70,000 years ago?

A) The tools found were specialized for different purposes.
B) Among the bone tools they found were some that were not just sharp but also symmetrical and polished, characteristics that do not add functional value to the tool.
C) Like Upper Paleolithic cave paintings in Europe, the art in Blombos Cave exhibited graphic representations on its walls.
D) What looks like rudimentary pedestals were found that may have been used to exhibit artistic objects.
E) Among the smaller objects found were earrings and necklaces.

Question 7

In states, how is art typically defined?

A) If something is mass produced, it cannot be art.
B) State societies rely heavily on critics, judges, and experts to make these decisions.
C) Only things intentionally created as art can be called art.
D) Only artists create art.
E) If it is expensive, it is art.

Question 8

What is the term for the study of the music of the world and of music as an aspect of culture?

A) acoustic anthropology
B) harmonic anthropology
C) tonal anthropology
D) ethnomusicology
E) sociomusicology

Question 9

________ is synonymous with the arts.

A) Social creativity
B) Aesthetics
C) Myth
D) Expressive culture
E) Performance

Question 10

Because music is a cultural universal and musical abilities seem to run in families,

A) everybody, regardless of culture, loves to dance.
B) it is possible to use musical abilities as a biological marker for human races.
C) it has been suggested that music is a concept of a social fiction.
D) anthropologists should investigate the connection between music and formerly misunderstood kinship arrangements.
E) it has been suggested that the predisposition for music may have a genetic basis.

Question 11

In his study of Navajo music, McAllester found that it reflected the overall culture in all of the following ways EXCEPT a general

A) Navajo conservatism extended to music.
B) Navajo stress on proper form applied to music.
C) Navajo stress on individualism extended to music.
D) Navajo liberalism extended to music.
E) distaste among the Navajo for foreign music.

Question 12

Actors, musicians, and dancers

A) are not artists, since they perform but do not create art.
B) function as parasitic consumers of the creative works of artists.
C) distort and dilute the artistic mastery of other artists.
D) function as intermediaries who translate the works and ideas of other artists.
E) are marginal members of artistic communities around the world.

Question 13

In an example of how definitions of art change through time and space, this chapter describes how French impressionism, currently widely esteemed as exceptional art, was initially

A) celebrated as one of the great innovations of 19th-century painting.
B) based on abstract sand paintings from French colonies in West Africa.
C) considered a throwback to "old school" painting styles.
D) ignored for lacking any originality.
E) criticized for being too sketchy and spontaneous to be considered art.

Question 14

Which of the following statements is true regarding the relationship between art and religion?

A) All non-Western art is produced anonymously for religious purposes.
B) In all societies, art is produced for religious purposes as well as its aesthetic value.
C) All of the greatest accomplishments in Western art have been commissioned by formal religions.
D) Since nonstate societies lack permanent buildings dedicated to art (museums) or religion (temples, churches), there is no link between art and religion in these societies.
E) Western art is divorced from religion.

Question 15

Art can often lead to an intense emotional release, also referred to as

A) hypercommunication.
B) catharsis.
C) exalted symbolism.
D) humor.
E) intensive aesthetics.

Question 16

For the women of Planinica, a Muslim village in prewar Bosnia, singing signaled

A) a series of transitions between life stages.
B) the arrival of spring.
C) that the artisans of the neighboring village were in town to sell their goods.
D) different things to different women.
E) the arrival of soldiers who had finished their military service.

Question 17

Which of the following statements about individual artists in non-Western societies is true?

A) They tend to be iconoclastic and antisocial.
B) They are more likely to be part of the cultural mainstream than Western artists, because social approval and acceptance is more important in non-Western societies.
C) They are all trained in formal, state-controlled schools for the arts.
D) They are nonexistent.
E) They are just copying Western art forms.

Question 18

Why do the Kalabari carve wooden sculptures of spirits?

A) purely for aesthetic reasons
B) as an artifact of colonialism; the carvings were a form of resistance to the colonial intrusion and were used in voodoo rituals
C) to market and sell them on the world market
D) to manipulate spiritual forces, illustrating that not all sculpture is art
E) to serve as voodoo dolls

Question 19

In many non-Western societies, how are traditional manifestations of expressive culture transmitted?

A) through formal state-run schools for the arts
B) by chance
C) in families
D) through the nonproductive members of society
E) only by fully initiated adults

Question 20

Findings of finely shaped bones dating from more than 70,000 years ago in South Africa's Blombos Cave suggest that

A) anatomically modern humans were good toolmakers but terrible artists.
B) australopithecines had the ability of symbolic thought.
C) scientists need to be careful with tampered evidence about the emergence of culture.
D) anatomically modern humans had the ability, as early as 70,000 years ago, of symbolic thought.
E) bones were used for their functional, not aesthetic, value.

Question 21

All of the following are examples of an ethnocentric view of art in the non-Western world EXCEPT that

A) all non-Western art is produced for religious purposes.
B) all non-Western art is anonymously produced by the culture.
C) non-Westerners cannot appreciate Western art, because they are not cultured enough.
D) non-Western artists simply follow tradition; they do not exercise their creativity or break from the norm.
E) non-Western sculpture is not always art.

Question 22

Any media-borne image or message can be analyzed in terms of its nature, including its symbolism and its effects. It can also be analyzed as a text, which refers to

A) literary works and other print media.
B) anything produced by mass media having commercial value.
C) anything that can be read or processed, interpreted, and assigned meaning by anyone exposed to it.
D) anything that can be read but whose interpretation is determined by the producer of the text.
E) our capacity to codify information.

Question 23

Traditionally, art and religion occupy mutually exclusive realms in society.

Question 24

Nonstate societies generally lack permanent, specialized venues for art and religion.

Question 25

Art and religion are similar, because both refer to aspects of culture that are of more than ordinary significance.

Question 26

Which of the following does NOT influence artistic expression?

A) patronage and sponsorship
B) advice and criticism from judges and experts
C) etic categories of utilitarian and nonutilitarian elements of society
D) public opinion
E) the desire of artists to express themselves

Question 27

All art is objectively beautiful.

Question 28

Susan Montague and Robert Morais (1981) argue that Americans appreciate football because it presents a miniaturized and simplified version of modern organizations. These researchers

A) suggest that football, with its territorial incursion and violence, is popular because Americans are violent people.
B) link football's values, particularly teamwork, to those associated with business.
C) argue that football allows spectators to vicariously realize their own hostile and aggressive tendencies.
D) suggest that football is a peculiarly American pastime because of our wartime history.
E) argue that football should be regulated the same way we regulate corporations.

Question 29

In modern states, there tends to be much more uniformity in the culture's artistic standards compared to in less stratified societies.

Question 30

Which of the following is NOT mentioned in this chapter as a way of defining art?

A) Art is something that attracts your attention, catches your eye, and directs your thoughts.
B) Art is the quality, production, expression, or realm of what is beautiful or of more than ordinary significance.
C) Art is the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria.
D) Art expresses culture through which a person or persons can express themselves creatively in the visual arts, literature, music, and theater arts.
E) Art is in a cultural sphere separate from politics and religion.

Question 31

During his work among the Tiv, Bohannan found that critics played a key role in the creative process for the production of works of art.

Question 32

Among the Kalabari, wood sculptures represent the highest form of purely artistic representation of loved ones.

Question 33

In the United States, there is a sharp distinction between what is considered art and what is not.

Question 34

As we enter the 21st century, artistic expression

A) within industrialized states is increasingly becoming more isolated and independent.
B) finds itself intentionally avoiding the use of multiple expressive media in favor of employing only one medium.
C) can be seen to be increasingly incorporating elements from many cultures into contemporary art and performance.
D) is disappearing from our cultural repertoire.
E) has lost most of its effectiveness.

Question 35

In a study assessing the effects of television on behavior, attitudes, and values, Kottak and a team of researchers found that

A) television exposure has a greater impact on behavior, attitudes, and values in the United States than in Brazil.
B) the claim that television exposure affects people's behavior, attitudes, and values is overstated.
C) television exposure inevitably leads to a decrease in social interaction, regardless of the culture.
D) Brazilians watch telenovelas because they see in these programs the traditions of their culture vividly represented and valued.
E) people's ideas about proper family size are influenced as they see, day after day, nuclear families smaller than the traditional ones in their town.

Question 36

Expressive culture refers to the components of a culture that are expressed publicly, as opposed to the private aspects of culture that are hidden from anthropologists.

Question 37

Anthropologists have an interest in sports because, as the media's illustrations of U.S. football suggest,

A) sports can symbolize certain key aspects of the culture where they are highly popular.
B) sports are a rare aspect of culture that is influenced by culture but not vice versa.
C) sports allow for easy cross-cultural cultural comparison, because in the international arena the way sports are practiced is the same.
D) they give insight into unfamiliar cultural dynamics that have nothing to do with the general culture.
E) they exemplify how the media determine single-handedly which sports are popular and which are not.

Question 38

In nonindustrial societies, artists

A) tend to be full-time specialists.
B) tend to be part-time specialists.
C) do not exist.
D) are relegated to the hidden transcript of the social contract.
E) tend to display their work exclusively in galleries.

Question 39

Appreciating art involves an aesthetic appreciation of form as well as feeling.

Question 40

There is more collective production and performance of art in non-Western societies than in Western, industrialized states.

Question 41

Some researchers have proposed that early humans with a biological penchant for music may have been able to live more effectively in social groups, thus conferring an adaptive advantage to this penchant.

Question 42

Readers of a text make their own interpretations and derive their own feelings from it. "Readers" of media messages constantly produce their own meanings.

Question 43

The reason students of non-Western art have generally ignored individual artists in the societies they have studied is that there aren't any. In non-Western communities, there is no concept of individual artists.

Question 44

In general, folk art is much less symbolic than the artistic expression of full-time artists.

Question 45

U.S. popular culture has moved from a preoccupation with class differences to a tendency to deny or ignore their existence. The narratives we see on screen and in print today often present homogenized upper-middle-class lifestyles in which social diversity is minimized and the economic underpinnings of class are ignored.

Question 46

In states, all artwork can be clearly attributed to a specific artist.

Question 47

In Western societies, the standards for artistic completeness and mastery are maintained in large part by critics, specialists, and experts.

Question 48

Catharsis is an intense emotional release.

Question 49

Because appreciation of the arts is acquired through enculturation, what one finds aesthetically pleasing depends in part on one's cultural background.

Question 50

What is the relationship between art and religion? Is all art religious? Are all religious objects art? Could an object that starts off as religious acquire the qualities of art, and vice versa?

Question 51

The study of television's impact on people's behavior, attitudes, and values is the domain of sociologists, not anthropologists.

Question 52

The oldest known musical instrument, the "Divje babe flute," dates back to more than 43,000 years ago.

Question 53

The media offer a rich web of external connections-through cable, satellite, the Internet, television, movies, radio, telephones, print, and other sources-that can provide contact, information, entertainment, and potential social validation.

Question 54

Discuss why it is so difficult to come up with a universally applicable definition for art.

Question 55

Music is one of the most social kinds of artistic expression.

Question 56

In Western societies, artistic and craft specialization is based on kin groups.

Question 57

Anthropologist W. Arens (1981) argued that the reason football is such a peculiarly U.S. pastime is that Americans enjoy particularly violent sports.

Question 58

The increasing role of the media in our lives is responsible for the deterioration of our artistic sensibilities.

Question 59

In non-Western societies, artists tend to be iconoclastic and antisocial.

Question 60

Cultural values, social forces, and the media influence international sports success.

Question 61

What role do the arts play as collective expressions of cultural identities? Is art conservative or liberal? Does art promote change or inhibit it?

Question 62

To what extent can art be isolated from the person who created it? Be sure to include cross-cultural examples to support your answer.

Question 63

Where is art found? Is art found in the same contexts in all kinds of societies?

Question 64

What factors influence the production and appreciation of art? Do artists work in a cultural vacuum of pure personal self-expression? What role does society play?

Question 65

Consider the impact that the media have on your daily life. From what sources do you have access to popular culture? Which are your favorites, and why?

Question 66

This chapter's "Appreciating Anthropology" unit shows that techniques that anthropologists have used to analyze myth and folktales can be extended to two popular American fantasy films, The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars. In 2009, U.S. American movie director James Cameron, a fan of The Wizard of Oz, released the long-awaited Avatar. If you have seen the movie, compare its structure and symbolic elements in a way similar to that of how The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars have been analyzed in the text. If you have not seen Avatar, explain the connection between The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars.

Question 67

How do the media affect Americans and Brazilians differently? How do the media play a role in the discrepancy between the amount of Olympic medals won by the United States and Brazil?

Question 68

This chapter describes how sports and the media reflect culture, and offers among its illustrations a cross-cultural comparison that explores why some countries but not others enjoy international success. Describe the two contrasting cases. Are any of the conclusions surprising? Why or why not?