聽力原文:

Artistic judgment
藝術判斷力
Everyone’s a critic
大家都是評論家
Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think about Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth. By A. O. Scott. Jonathan Cape
批評讓生活更美好：如何思考藝術，壓力，美和真相。
THESE are tough times for the gatekeepers, for those who claim a certain expertise and get paid to pass judgment. The oracular voice of authority is being drowned out by the aggregated voice of the Everyman, the credentialled scholar dethroned by the anonymous Wikipedia contributor. As assessments of quality are increasingly crowd-sourced—through the Facebook “Like” button, the Yelp review, and algorithms predicting preferences based on previous purchases—the professional critic is marginalised as at best irrelevant and at worst the embodiment of an elitist and undemocratic patriarchy.

重點詞匯：

1 drown out （聲音）淹沒（另一聲音）
2 Everyman普通人；常人
3 aggregate總計；合計
4 credential提供證明書（或證件）
5 dethrone廢黜（國王或女王）；攆下臺；免（某人）的職；罷（某人）的官
6 assessment看法；評估
7 crowd-sourced 眾包
8 yelp（因疼痛等）尖叫
9 algorithm算法；計算程序
10 marginalize使顯得微不足道；使處于邊緣；使無實權;
11 irrelevant無關緊要的；不相關的
12 embodiment（體現一種思想或品質的）典型，化身
13 elitism精英統治；精英主義 派生詞：elitist 優秀人材; 杰出人物; 杰出人物統治論的鼓吹者;
14 patriarchy男性統治的社會（或制度、國家）；男權政治；父權制
15 pass judgment 明斷
16 oracular神諭般的；天書般的；高深莫測的

Yelp是美國最大點評網站，2004年，Yelp在舊金山起步。2012年3月2日登陸紐交所，股票代碼為“YELP”，共發行715萬股普通股。按照15美元的發行價計算，Yelp融資額為1.07億美元，目前市值為60億美元。Yelp創建于2004年，由前貝寶（Paypal）工程師杰里米·斯托普爾曼(Jeremy Stoppelman)和羅素·西蒙斯（Russel Simmons）共同創建。

聽力原文:

Few people are in a better position to respond to these slings and arrows than A. O. Scott, a film critic for the New York Times. As he points out in “Better Living Through Criticism”, his newbook in defence of his own profession and of the critical faculty in each of us, “critic” has always been ranked somewhere between “undertaker” and “tax collector” in terms of popularity. Artists tend to regard critics as parasites on real creativity, while the general public asks what gives them the right to pronounce on matters that properly belong to everyone. “Criticism is not nice,” Mr Scott admits. “To criticise is to find fault, to accentuate the negative, to spoil the fun and refuse to spare delicate feelings.”

重點詞匯：

1 sling投石器
2 slings and arrows 禍殃（指不利的因素、事態）
3 critical faculty 批判能力
4 undertaker殯葬承辦人；殯儀服務員
5 undertake承擔；從事；負責
6 tax collector 收稅員；稅務員
7 parasite寄生蟲；依賴他人過活者
8 accentuate著重；強調；使突出
9 spoil破壞；搞壞；糟蹋；毀掉
10 delicate柔和的；清淡可口的；清香的 delicate feelings 溫情，細膩的感情

聽力原文:

But it is also essential. Without thoughtful and disinterested judges, everyone would be at the mercy of the marketers. “Culture now lives almost entirely under the rubric of consumption,” Mr Scott says, and it is the critic’s job to step in to protect the audience from the hucksters, the frauds and the sell-outs. Criticism, then, “is not an enemy from which art must be defended, but rather another name—the proper name—for the defence of art itself”.

重點詞匯：

1 disinterested客觀的；無私的；公正的
2 at the mercy of 任…處置；對…無能為力；任由…擺布
3 rubric標題，提示，說明
4 consumption消費
5 huckster強行推銷的人 沿街叫賣的小販；上門推銷員
6 fraud欺詐罪；欺騙罪
7 sell-outs 脫銷貨

聽力原文:

Despite that, it is often the artists who are quickest to condemn. Among the more creative defences Mr Scott mounts is that artists are essentially critics, paying tribute to or improving upon the work of their predecessors. Quentin Tarantino (pictured) and the Coen Brothers, for instance, are not only film-makers themselves but also students of film, their work informed by countless hours spent analysing images on the flickering screen. “A work of art is itself a piece of criticism,” Mr Scott asserts.

重點詞匯：

1 condemn譴責，指責
2 mount組織;發起;開展
3 tribute（尤指對死者的）致敬，頌詞；悼念；致哀；吊唁禮物 pay tribute 致敬，朝貢
4 Coen Brothers 科恩兄弟
5 flicker閃爍，搖曳
6 assert明確肯定；斷言

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