CAT 2024 Question Paper | VARC Slot 1

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The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

In the summer of 2022, subscribers to the US streaming service HBO MAX were alarmed to discover that dozens of the platform's offerings – from the Covid-themed heist thriller Locked Down to the recent remake of The Witches – had been quietly removed from the service . . . The news seemed like vindication to those who had long warned that streaming was more about controlling access to the cultural commons than expanding it, as did reports (since denied by the show's creators) that Netflix had begun editing old episodes of Stranger Things to retroactively improve their visual effects.

What's less clear is whether the commonly prescribed cure for these cultural ills – a return to the material pleasures of physical media – is the right one. While the makers of Blu-ray discs claim they have a shelf life of 100 years, such statistics remain largely theoretical until they come to pass, and are dependent on storage conditions, not to mention the continued availability of playback equipment. The humble DVD has already proved far less resilient, with many early releases already beginning to deteriorate in quality Digital movie purchases provide even less security. Any film "bought" on iTunes could disappear if you move to another territory with a different rights agreement and try to redownload it. It's a bold new frontier in the commodification of art: the birth of the product recall. After a man took to Twitter to bemoan losing access to Cars 2 after moving from Canada to Australia, Apple clarified that users who downloaded films to their devices would retain permanent access to those downloads, even if they relocated to a hemisphere where the [content was] subject to a different set of rights agreements. Thanks to the company's ironclad digital rights management technology, however, such files cannot be moved or backed up, locking you into watching with your Apple account.

Anyone who does manage to acquire Digital Rights Management free (DRM-free) copies of their favourite films must nonetheless grapple with ever-changing file format standards, not to mention data decay – the gradual process by which electronic information slowly but surely corrupts. Only the regular migration of files from hard drive to hard drive can delay the inevitable, in a sisyphean battle against the ravages of digital time.

In a sense, none of this is new. Charlie Chaplin burned the negative of his 1926 film A Woman of the Sea as a tax write-off. Many more films have been lost through accident, negligence or plain indifference. During a heatwave in July 1937, a Fox film vault in New Jersey burned down, destroying a majority of the silent films produced by the studio.

Back then, at least, cinema was defined by its ephemerality: the sense that a film was as good as gone once it left your local cinema. Today, with film studios keen to stress the breadth of their back catalogues (or to put in Hollywood terms, the value of their IPs), audiences may start to wonder why those same studios seem happy to set the vault alight themselves if it'll help next quarter's numbers.

Question 21 :Which one of the following statements about art best captures the arguments made in the passage?

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Explanatory Answer

With regard to art, key ideas mentioned in the passage include that of cultural commons, the commodification of art with advancement in technology and the difficulty in preserving access to it over time. Option C, which touches upon the problem of technology-driven complications in access to art, best captures the essence of these arguments.
Consider option 1. While the author is likely to agree with the view that works of art belong to the cultural commons, there is no argument put forth in the passage that art must be available in perpetuity, irrespective of who pays for access to it. So, this option is ruled out.
Option 2 overstates the author's point about streaming service providers controlling access to and altering classic works of art. The author does not argue that it is time to change our understanding of classic works of art as being primarily immutable and easily available. Option 2 is hence not a good choice.
Option 4, too, is incorrect for a similar reason. The Netflix example is given by the author to make a point about streaming service providers not being reliable custodians of work of art, but to say that retroactive changes to works of art is dangerous is overstating the author's arguments.

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The answer is 'As art is increasingly created, stored and distributed digitally, access to it is counterintuitively likely to be made more difficult by the rapid churn in technology and the whims of host platforms.'

Choice C is the correct answer.

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