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In a culture in which organ transplants, life-extension machinery, microsurgery, and artificial organs have entered everyday medicine, we seem to be on the verge of realization of the seventeenth century European view of the body as a machinE.But if we seem to have realized that conception, it can also be argued that we have in a sense turned it inside out. In the seventeenth century machine imagery reinforced the notion of the human body as a totally determined mechanism whose basic functionings the human being is helpless to alter. The then—dominant metaphors for this body—locks, watches, collections of springs—imagined a system that is set, wound up, whether by nature or God the watchmaker, ticking away in a predictable, orderly manner, regulated by laws over which the human being has no control. Understanding the system, we can help it perform. efficiently and intervene when it malfunctions, but we cannot radically alter the configuration of things.
Western science and technology have now arrived, paradoxically but predictably (for it was a submerged, illicit element in the mechanistic conception all along), at a new, postmodern conception of human freedom from bodily determination. Gradually and surely, a technology that was first aimed at the replacement of malfunctioning parts has generated an industry and a value system fueled by fantasies of rearranging, transforming, and correcting, an ideology of limitless improvement and change, defying the historicity, the mortality, and indeed the very materiality of the body. In place of that materiality, we now have what I call 'cultural plastiC.' In place of God the watchmaker, we now have ourselves, the master sculptors of that plastiC.
'Create a masterpiece: sculpt your body into a work of art,' urges Fit magazinE.'You visualize what you want to look like, and then you create that form.' The precision technology of body sculpting, once the secret of the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Rachel McLishes of the professional bodybuilding world, has now become available to anyone who can afford the price of membership in a health cluB.On the medical front, plastic surgery, whose repeated and purely cosmetic employment has been legitimated by popular music and film personalities, has become a fabulously expanding industry, extending its domain from nose jobs, face lifts, and tummy tucks to collagen-plumped lips and liposuction-shaped ankles and calves. In 1989, 681,00O procedures were done, up by 80 percent since 1981; over half of these were performed on patients between the ages of 18 and 35. The trendy Details magazine described such procedures as just 'another fabulous (fashion) accessory' and used to invite readers to share their cosmetic surgery experiences in the monthly column 'Knifestyles of the Rich and Famous.'
Popular culture does not apply any brakes to these fantasies of rearrangement and transformation. 'The proper diet, file right amount of exercise, and you can have, pretty much, any body you desire,' claims an ad for a bottled mineral water. Of course, the rhetoric of choice and self-determination and the breezy analogies comparing cosmetic surgery to fashion accessorizing are deeply misleading. They efface not only the inequalities of privilege, money, and time that prohibit most people from indulging in these practices, but also the desperation that characterizes the lives of those who do. 'I will do anything, anything to make myself look and feel better,' says a contributor to the 'Knifestyles' column. Medical science has now designated a new category of 'polysurgical addicts' (or, as more casually referred to, 'scalpel slaves') who return for operation after operation, in perpetual quest of that elusive yet ruthlessly normalizing goal, the 'perfect' body. The dark underside of the practices of body transformation and rearrangement— reveals botched and sometimes—fatal operations, exercise addictions, and eating disorders.
W
A.only the rich should undergo such procedures
B.doctors should worry about medicine, not ethics
C.advertising should accurately reflect popular culture
D.nature should not be tampered with unnecessarily

A.B.'
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G.only
H.doctors
I.advertising
J.nature

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An eccentric is by definition someone whose behaviour is abnormal, someone who refuses to conform. to the accepted norms of his society. This, of course, immediately begs the question, 'What is normal?' Most of us, after all, have our quirks and oddities. It may be a passion for entering newspaper competitions, a compulsion for collecting beer mats, a tendency to write indignant letters to the press on every conceivable subject. Eccentricity is the assertion of our individuality. Within most of us that urge is constantly in conflict with the contrary forcE.It is as though in the depths of our psyche we have two locomotives head-to-head on the same track, pushing against each other. One is called individualism and the other conformity and in most of us it is conformity that is the more powerful. The desire to be accepted, loved, appreciated, to feel at one with our fellows, is stronger than the desire to stand out in the crowd, to be our own man, to do our own thing.Notice, for example, how people who have unusual hobbies, strong opinions, or unconventional behaviour, tend to congregatE.They form. clubs, hold meetings, and organise rallies where they can get together and discuss their common enthusiasms or problems. The important word is 'common'. They look for other people with whom they can share what in the normal run of events is regarded by relatives, friends and neighbours as an oddity. A crowd, even a small crowd, is reassuring.Probably all of us recognise a tension within ourselves between the two forces of individualism and conformity, for at the same time that most of us are going with the crowd, we tend to resent any suggestion that this is what we are doing. We feel a self-conscious need to assert our individuality as when the belligerent man at the bar informs his small audience, 'Well, I say what I think.' Or the wary stranger to whom we have just been introduced announces, 'You must take me as you find mE.I don't stand on ceremony.'Any of us can, at any time, reverse this trenD.We can stoke the boiler of individualism, assert our own personality. Many people have made it to the top in their chosen professions, basically by doing just that. One example is Bob Dylan, the American singer, who has gone on record as saying, 'When you feel in your gut what you are doing and then dynamically pursue it— don't back down and don't give up—then you're going to mystify a lot of folk.' But that self conscious assertion of individuality is not eccentricity, at least not in the early stages. When a pop singer deliberately wears bizarre clothes to gain publicity, or a society hostess makes outrageous comments about her guests in order to get herself noticed in the gossip columns, that is not eccentricity. However, if the pop star and the society hostess perpetuate such activities until they become a part of themselves, until they are no longer able to return to what most of us consider 'normal behaviour', then they certainly would qualify. For the most important ingredient of eccentricity is its naturalness. Eccentrics are not people who deliberately try to be odd, they simply are odD.The true eccentric is not merely indifferent to public opinion, he is scarcely conscious at all. He simply does what he does, because of who he is. And this marks the eccentric as essentially different from, for example, enthusiasts, practical jokers, brilliant criminals, exhibitionists and recluses. These people are all very conscious of the world around them. Much of what they do, they do in reaction to the world in which they livE.Some wish to make an impression on society, some wish to escape from society, but all are very much aware of society. The eccentric alone goes on his merry way regardless.According to the writer, eccentric people ______.A.want to show that they are differentB.try to do what is expected of them.C.express their own views in publicD.pretend to be something they are not

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K.pretend

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听力原文：W: Hey, Steve, got any plans for tonight?M: Hi, Jane, er, no, I don't think so. Why, got any suggestions?W: In fact I do. I just got two tickets to the opening of an exhibit of reprints by Julia Margaret Cameron. I would have mentioned it earlier but I was on a waiting list for these tickets and I wasn't sure I even get them.M: An exhibit huh? I like such things. But I don't know who JuliA...W: Margaret Cameron. She was a photographer in the 1800's. She's interesting to art historian in general and students of photography in particular, because she, how should I say, changes the aesthetics of photography.M: What do you mean?W: Well, her specialty was portraits, and instead of just making a factual record of details like most photographers did, you know, just capturing what a person looks like a dispassionate sort of way. She, like a portrait painter, was interested in capturing her subject's personality.M: Interesting. How did she do that?W: She invented a number of techniques that affected the picture, like one of these things she did was blur images slightly by using a soft focus on a subject, that's pretty common now.M: Yeah, I've seen that, who did she photograph?W: Famous people of her day. Alfred Lord Tenson, Henry, Charles Darvin, I don't know who well, we'll see the exhibition.M: You really pick my curiosity. I'm going to enjoy this.What did Julia Margaret Cameron emphasize in her portrays?A.Her subject's homE.B.Her subject's social status.C.Her subject's personality.D.Her subject's role in history.

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