Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 1...

Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 14 to 23.

WHY HAS CULTURE COME TO A STANDSTILL?

For over a century, a core belief of our culture was its promise to the future. Beginning with Édouard Manet, whose work was a striking expression of its own time, the demand for any serious artist was to create something new. To be modern was to reject imitation in favor of an utterance that could only exist now. This relentless pursuit of novelty became the engine of cultural history, a succession of avant-gardes each rendering the last obsolete.

Yet to look at culture in 2023 is to feel this engine has stalled. One gets the nagging feeling that we are living through a period of unmatched stillness, stuck on a painfully slow Ferris wheel of remakes, sequels, and imitations. The unique sounds and styles of past decades have blended into a shapeless present, where skinny jeans from the 2000s and high-waisted jeans from the 1990s can coexist without either looking particularly dated or current. [I] The feeling that our era’s culture seems likely to be forgotten is difficult to shake.

The principal reason for this confusion about time is our deep dive through the screen into endless information. The digital tools we use have created such deep confusion about time that the very idea of progress has lost its meaning. In this dark wood of algorithmic feeds, past and present are made to seem equally close, removed from their original context and flattened into a single, continuous feed. [II]

Perhaps one work predicted this situation: Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black.” Arriving on the verge of the iPhone era, it was the first major cultural product that was neither new nor old-fashioned, but instead existed in a timeless state. [III] Drawing from the entire catalogue of 20th-century music, it wasn't nostalgic, instead showing a new awareness shaped by the digital world, where all of history could be sampled at once.

Working within the old modernist framework, it feels as if the possibilities for innovation have been exhausted. We now seek newness not in form, but in “content.” The long-overdue inclusion of diverse voices into the culture industry has, unfortunately, been confused with artistic innovation itself. A work is praised as a “breakthrough” for the identity it represents, even if its storytelling and style remain deeply traditional. [IV] There is no built-in reason, however, that a decline in newness must mean a decline in value. To escape our situation, we must first abandon the outdated influence of modernism and its obsession with progress. The task is to find and value the art that speaks for our confused present, even—and especially—if its style is tied to the past.

Question 14: According to paragraph 1, the modernist principle of rejecting imitation in favor of originality might fuel ______.

A. the demand for a serious artist to create a striking expression of the time
B. a consecutive process of creative innovation and displacement
C. a succession of avant-gardes fulfilling culture's promise to the future
D. the engine of cultural history, beginning with the work of Édouard Manet