Julie Dash's lyrical film Daughters of the Dust, first released in 1991, follows members of a Gullah family as they depart from their island home near Georgia in 1902. Though an imaginative, critically acclaimed film with a wide release—and a highly appreciative global audience—Dash's work never received the plaudits it deserved within the US film industry. Interest in the film reignited, however, with Beyoncé's release of Lemonade in 2016, due to the visual album's numerous allusions to Dash's film in the form of stylistic references to its scenes, costumes, and celebration of Black life in the US South.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?
Explanation
Context: The text reports that Dash's Daughters of the Dust was acclaimed and widely seen yet underhonored by the US film industry, then describes how Beyoncé's Lemonade revived interest in it in 2016. The underlined sentence is the one stating that mismatch.
Answer: C) It presents a discrepancy between the value of Dash's film and the industry's response to it that the text goes on to demonstrate was partially rectified by the film's influence on a later work
Why? The sentence sets high merit, an "imaginative, critically acclaimed" film with a global audience, against the industry's failure to give it "the plaudits it deserved." The next sentence's "however" then shows interest reigniting through Lemonade's allusions to Dash's scenes and costumes, the partial correction C describes. The underlined portion thus opens a gap that the rest of the text narrows.
Traps:
- A) Alludes to the reception of a similar work → the underlined sentence mentions no other work, and Lemonade's own reception is never discussed.
- B) Draws distinctions between the film and a later work → the text stresses Lemonade's debt to Dash rather than contrasts with her film.
- D) Implies recognition would have cost the film its influence → no such trade-off is suggested anywhere.