2017年雅思考试阅读练习题（3）

　　Four of the year’s 25 top-grossing movies(票房收入最高的电影)star a minority in a leading role. All but two had white directors. And the number of minority actors forecasters expect to get Oscar nominations(提名)can be counted on one hand.(有望获得奥斯卡提名的少数族裔演员屈指可数。)

　　In the year since the Sony Pictures hack exposed racially insensitive emails and cast a spotlight on Hollywood’s diversity problem, movie studios have shown little progress in hiring more people of color for their casts and crews.

　　The industry is ignoring a gold mine. Every year for the past half-decade, the average white American has bought a ticket to fewer films than the average black, Hispanic or Asian moviegoer, industry data shows. Though 37 percent of the U.S. population, minorities bought 46 percent of the $1.2 billion in tickets sold in the United States last year.

　　Some of the year’s biggest surprises had diverse actors and small budgets but ended up dominating(控制)the silver screen. For five straight weeks ending in September, movies with predominately(占绝大多数地)black casts topped the box office(票房), including the Christian drama “War Room,” thriller “The Perfect Guy” and rap biography “Straight Outta Compton,” which has made $200 million on a $28 million budget to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time.

　　More recently, “Creed,” a “Rocky” spinoff starring Michael B. Jordan and directed by Ryan Coogler — both 20-something black men who led the 2013 critical darling “Fruitvale Station” — has triumphed with $72 million at the box office and one of the best opening weekends in the boxing franchise’s(连锁加盟店)40-year history.

　　High-profile hires of actors such as Jordan in “Creed” and John Boyega in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” have remained the exception in a Hollywood that has shown only stuttering(结巴的;不持续的)progress over the past year in getting more-diverse talent into blockbuster(大片) roles. (《信念》中用乔丹当演员，以及《星球大战：力量苏醒》用约翰.勃耶加，如此高调的行为在好莱坞仅仅是例外而已。过去的一年中，在使用非白人演员出任大片主角方面，好莱坞没有取得什么大的进展。)

　　But that lack of diversity, long a social issue, is increasingly becoming a business issue, and analysts say the success of movies such as “Creed” and “Compton” could make a big difference in persuading Hollywood’s dealmakers to better reflect the multicultural country it represents.

　　“Oftentimes it’s not emotional appeal, it’s the spreadsheet(电子表格;财务报表)that can make the change,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst with industry researcher Rentrak. “Show the empirical evidence. Look at the profitability of all these movies written, directed, produced by African Americans. That’s how you get the attention of Hollywood — or at least the people holding the purse strings.”

　　For all its grandeur(辉煌), Hollywood is a fiscally conservative industry, and studios and financiers have long proved hesitant to invest tens of millions of dollars into projects backed by filmmakers they do not know. (好莱坞尽管辉煌无比，但涉及到金钱方面却很保守，长期以来，电影公司和投资人都不愿意将数千万美金投入到一些他们不熟悉的制片人支持的项目。)

　　Very often, the people they know share their skin tone(肤色). In 2013, more than 92 percent of movie studios’ senior executives, 82 percent of film directors and 88 percent of film writers were white, UCLA researchers said.

　　“When I go to [film studio] offices, I see no black folks except for . . . the security guard,” director Spike Lee said while accepting an honorary Oscar last month at the Governors Awards. “It’s easier to be the president of the United States as a black person than to be the head of a studio.”

　　That monolithic(整体的;似铁板的)whiteness has created a chicken-and-egg problem: Talented actors and filmmakers of color are routinely shut out because they were never given a chance in the first place.

　　Over the past year, “my sense is not a lot has changed,” said Darnell Hunt, director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. “The people who control the industry are still very reluctant to take a risk on untested talent — that is to say, people of color.”

　　Of the top 100 films last year, 73 percent of all characters were white, and only 17 of those movies starred nonwhite lead or supporting actors, University of Southern California researchers found.

　　Minority audiences, of course, did not flood only minority films: People of color bought more than 60 percent of the U.S. tickets to last year’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” a $245 million blockbuster whose cast was almost exclusively white.

　　The power of minorities’ spending, particularly in movies with more diverse stars and stories, has become impossible to ignore. “Furious 7,” which made more than $1 billion worldwide, pocketed 62 percent of its $350 million gross in the United States from minority moviegoers. Notably, “Compton,” which far outpaced financial projections, counted a box-office audience that was 75 percent nonwhite.

　　“If you try to be diverse for the sake of being diverse, it’s going to fail,” (如果你是为了多样化而去多样化，你一定会失败)Jeff Shell, the chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment, the studio behind “Compton,” told Variety last month. “The real reason to do it is that it’s good business. Our audience is diverse.”

　　The debate over Hollywood diversity sharpened last winter after stolen private emails between Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal and movie producer Scott Rudin revealed the two joking that President Obama would like only films starring black actors: “I bet he likes Kevin Hart,” Rudin said. Both have since apologized, and Pascal lost her job.

　　The Academy Awards solidified(加剧) the slight(轻慢)earlier this year when, for only the second time since 1998, no actor of color was named among the Oscars’ 20 acting nominees. Viewers chastised(指责)the Academy with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, and the Oakland Tribune headlined the news “And the Oscar for best Caucasian goes to . . .”

　　The Golden Globe nominations, unveiled last week, featured a number of nods for minority TV actors but few candidates of color in film. Of the 35 nominees for best director, actor, actress and supporting actor, only three were minorities: director Alejandro González Iñárritu and actors Will Smith and Idris Elba. None of the 10 nominees for best picture were led by minority stars.

　　The frustrations over Hollywood’s lack of diversity could grow by the time of the next Oscars, hosted in February by comedian Chris Rock, who last year wrote an essay calling Hollywood “a white industry.” When Rock first hosted the show, in 2005, he joked that the Oscars’ four black nominees made it “kind of like the Def Oscar Jam.”

　　The academy has yet to announce its nominees, but predictions from Oscar handicappers have surfaced only a few minority hopefuls: Elba in “Beasts of No Nation” and Samuel L. Jackson in “The Hateful Eight” for best supporting actor; Smith for best actor in“Concussion”; and Iñárritu for best director for “The Revenant.” Also, “Compton” is a long shot for best picture.

　　No women of color are in the running to win any of the 10 lead- or supporting-actress Oscar nods this year, a discouraging sign coming shortly after Viola Davis became the first African American woman to win an Emmy as lead actress in a drama, for her role in Shonda Rhimes’s “How to Get Away With Murder.”

　　“The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity,” Davis said in September during her acceptance speech. “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”

　　The academy said recently it will launch a five-year plan, called A2020, intended to encourage film executives to hire a more diverse talent base. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in September that, although the academy “has no power over Hollywood [and] nothing to do with hiring,” she hoped the plan can get studios and agencies to “widen their normal stream of thought.”

　　Filmmakers, in turn, have pointed the finger at their financiers. Director Ridley Scott, criticized for casting white actors, including Christian Bale as Moses, in “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” said last year the move was needed to secure the money for his $140 million epic: “I can’t mount a film of this budget . . . and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. . . . I’m just not going to get it financed.”

　　Studios and film crews that did fill roles with actors of color faced resistance this year from angry fans, including over Boyega in his role as a stormtrooper in the new “Star Wars” and Jordan for his “Fantastic Four” role playing a superhero who is white in the original comic-book version.

　　When big films this year focused on minority characters, many instead filled their spots with white actors. In “Aloha,” for instance, Emma Stone was cast to play a Chinese Hawaiian woman.

　　After “Gods of Egypt,” a fantasy tale set in the ancient Middle East, was cast with mostly white actors in Egyptian roles, director Alex Proyas apologized, saying that “the process of casting a movie has many complicated variables(变量), but it is clear that our casting choices should have been more diverse.”

　　“Selma” director Ava DuVernay said the “Gods of Egypt” apology was an “unusual occurrence worth noting” for a casting problem “that happens all the time.” She also said it made her value the minority castings in “Star Wars” and “Creed” even more, tweeting, “We all deserve icons(偶像) in our own image.” (我们大家都有权拥有与自己形象一致的偶像。)

　　Vocabulary

　　Top-grossing movies 票房最高的电影

　　Nomination 提名

　　Dominate 统治;控制

　　Predominately 占统治地位地;绝大多数地

　　Box office 票房

　　Franchise 连锁

　　Stuttering 结巴的;不持续的

　　Spreadsheet 电子表格;财务报表

　　Grandeur 辉煌

　　Skin tone 肤色

　　Monolithic 整体的;巨大的

　　Solidify 加剧;加固

　　Slight 轻慢;稍微的

　　Chastise 指责;批判

　　Variable 变量

　　Icon 偶像

　　雅思真题重现：

　　It also suggests in which of these three waves the ancestors of various groups of modern native Americans first reached the continent. (剑7T3P2)

　　参考译文：这同样表明了在三次浪潮中的哪一次，各种现代本地美国人的祖先首先到达这块大陆。

　　Toothed species in general employ more of the frequency spectrum, and produce a wider variety of sounds, than baleen species (though the sperm whale apparently produces a monotonous series of high-energy clicks and little else).(剑4T1P2)

　　参考译文：齿鲸们可以更多地利用频谱，发出多种声音。当然，抹香鲸只会发出一系列单调激烈的咔嗒声。

　　Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer - lexical as well as social and commercial.(剑5T1P1)

　　参考译文：除了规范混乱的实际需求，字典的热卖与英语人群中中产阶层崛起有着密不可分的联系，他们渴望通过定义和限制来征服丰富多彩的世界——不只是词汇这一领域，还有社会和商业。

　　However, it should be remembered that not everybody is motivated by jobs that are high in independence, variety and responsibility.(剑6T3P2)

　　参考译文：但是，值得提起的是，高独立性、变化性以及责任感的工作并不能激励每一个人。

　　There is a wide range of photosynthetic responses of plants to variations in light intensity. (剑5T4P3)

　　参考译文：对光强度的变化，植物可对其作出多种光合作用的反应。

　　An important project, led by the biological anthropologist Robert Williams, focused on the variants (called Gm allotypes) of one particular protein - immunoglobin G - found in the fluid portion of human blood.(剑7T3P2)

　　参考译文：由生物人类学家罗伯特•威廉姆斯领导的一项重要工程把研究点聚焦在了免疫球蛋白G变体(又叫做免疫球蛋白同种异型Gm )上——在人类血液流体中可以找到这种变本。