题目内容
What does the author mean by "a stretch" (Line 1, Para. 2)？
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What does the "real thing" refer to in the second paragraph？
Jeans were invented a little over a century ago and are currently the world's most popular, versatile garment, crossing boundaries of class, age and nationality. From their origins as pure workwear, they have spread through every level of the fashion spectrum, and are embraced internationally for their unmatched comfort and appeal.
In the mid 1940s, the Second World War came to an end, and denim blue jeans, previously worn almost exclusively as workwear, gained a new status in the U. S. and Europe. Rugged but relaxed, they stood for freedom and a bright future. Sported by both men and women, by returning GI's and sharp teenagers, they seemed as clean and strong as the people who chose to wear them. In Europe, surplus Levi's were left behind by American armed forces and were available in limited supplies. It was the European population's first introduction to the denim apparel. Workwear manufacturers tried to copy the U. S. originals, but those in the know insisted on the real thing.
In the 1950s, Europe was exposed to a daring new style. in music and movies and consequently jeans took on an aura of sex and rebellion. Rock'n'roll coming from America blazed a trail of defiance, and jeans became a symbol of the break with convention and rigid social morals. When Elvis Presley sang in "Jailhouse Rock", his denim prison uniform. carried a potent, virile image. Girls swooned and guys were quick to copy the King. In movies like "The Wild One" and "Rebel Without a Cause" cult figures Marion Brando and James Dean portrayed tough anti-heroes in jeans and T-shirts. Adults spurned the look; teenagers, even those who only wanted to look like rebels, embraced it.
By the beginning of the 1960s, slim jeans had become a leisure wear staple, as teens began to have real fun, forgetting the almost desperate energy of the previous decade, while cocooned (包围在) in wealth and security. But the seeds of change had been sown, and by the mid 1960s jeans had acquired yet another social connotation—as the uniform. of the budding social and sexual revolution. Jeans were the great equalizer, the perfect all-purpose garment for the classless society sought by the Hippy generation. In the fight for civil rights, at anti-war demonstrations off the streets of Paris, at sit-ins and love-ins everywhere, the battle cry was heard above a sea of blue.
Jeans were first designed for ______.
Many things make people think artists are weird—the odd hours, the nonconformity, the clove cigarettes. However, the weirdest may be this: artists' only jobs are to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel lousy. This wasn't always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere in the 19th(上标) century, more artists began seeing happiness as insipid, phony or, worst of all, boring. In the 20th(上标) century, classical music became more atonal, visual art more unsettling.
Sure, there have been exceptions, but it would not be a stretch to say that for the past century or so, serious art has been at war with happiness. In 1824, Beethoven completed his "Ode to Joy". In 1962, novelist Anthoy Burgess used it in A Clockwork Orange as the favorite music of his ultra-violent antihero.
You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen such misery. But the reason may actually be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.
In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms. Today the messages that the average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial, and relentlessly happy. Since these messages have an agenda—to pry our wallets from our pockets—they make the very idea of happiness seem bogus (假的). "Celebrate!" commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attack.
What we forget—what our economy depends on our forgetting—is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us that it is OK not to be happy, that sadness makes happiness deeper. As the wine-connoisseur movie Sideways tells us, it is the kiss of decay and mortality that makes grape juice into Pinot Norway need art to tell us, as religion once did, that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It's a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, is a breath of fresh air.
What is most strange about artists？
The author would most probably agree that restricting the use of pesticides in schools ______.
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