According to this passage, the modern audience

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question that follows.

In place of old pleasures demanding intelligence and personal initiative, we have vast organisation’s personal participations and no intellectual effort of any sort. To the interminable democracies of the world, a million cinemas bring the same stale balderdash. There have always been fourth-rate writers and dramatists; but their workers, in the past, quickly died without getting beyond the boundaries of the city or the country in which they appeared. Today, the inventions of the scenario, writers go out from Los Angeles across the whole world. Countless audiences soak passively in the tepid bath of nonsense. No mental effort is demanded of them, no participation; they need to only sit and keep their eyes open.