2012gre写作宝典：issue131范文参考

131. "The arts (painting, music, literature, etc.) reveal the otherwise hidden ideas and impulses of a society."

As is known to all, arts, such as painting, music, literature, etc. hold great value in the development of society. Arts of different contents and forms are established along with the progress of the world and can deeply reveal something of the society. While having reservation that observing a society merely through the arts is not enough and sometimes even misleading, I fundamentally agree with the speaker that arts reveal the otherwise hidden ideas and impulses of a society.

Generally speaking, people may consider arts as a temporary escape from the monotoneous routine work in the daily life. However, the aim of art is far more than merely to amuse the public. Above all, arts mirror people's recognition of the world and expectation to the society, since the theme of artistic products are extracted from the personal experience of the artists. One one hand, artistic products do provide us with a glance at people’s recognition of lives and the environment they live in. We need to look no further than Bandari’s music for supporting example. The peaceful and gentle style of this band reflects the calm they feel when they get close to the nature. Beethoven’s Symphonie No.5 is also a good case to the point. Having experienced the ups and downs in career as well as the extreme condition of deafness in his afterlife, the attitude towards fate and destiny is described as powerful, vigorous and hopeful in his music. On the other hand, arts widely hint people’s expectation for the society. For example, although the fiction Utopia is critisized as typically idealistic, we cannot deny that its description of equality, freedom, peace and the absence of evil in an imagined country does originates from the public expectation and demand for these loftly goals.

Besides, arts reveal not only the otherwise hidden ideas and impulses of a society but also the mainstream ones, which is an inevitable result of the reflection of people’s recognition and expectation. Since art creation is related to the social development to a large extent, it tends to reveal the people’s thinking in the social changes as well as some eternal asthetical preferrences in people’s value system. I turn first to the mainstream aspects. For instance, the sculpture of Venus, though without arms, reveals the common concept of beauty as elegant, tender and tranquil. Likewise, the Statue of Liberty suggests the mainstream impulse of the society as an assertion of freedom, equality and independence. I turn next to the hidden aspects. Take the comedies of Charlie Chaplin, who and won worldwide fame because of his silent movies, for example. Most of his movies were produced at the time of rapid development of capital economy. They not only make people laugh, but also expose labor's anger with the policies and bitter condition at that time. Implicitly, the hidden conflicts and impulses can be noticed.

Yet, it is not sufficiently reliable to understand a society merely through its arts. For one thing, except art, the observation of a society requires a comprehensive understanding of a multitude of elements, such as economy, education, laws and lifestyle. For another, the reflection by art may sometimes be misleading, because part of the artistic products will be utilized by political power as tools of reputation peddling and influence maintaining. These artistic products contribute little to show the ideas and beliefs of the social public.

To sum up, considering all the evidences and facts above, which sometimes intertwind to be an organic whole, the arts, no matter which form they belong to, can more or less provide signals of the ideas and impulses of a society, yet it is more important to take full account of other social element like economy and laws.