Sports and Entertainment

Lesson Two

Jaded Hollywood

疲倦席卷好莱坞

The “jadedness problem” among reviewers is that, having been so many films, they get tired of certain kinds of films even when they are done well, while they get excited by something that strikes them as new, even when it’s actually loathsome or badly done. This explains the critical success of the products of puerile “talent” like Quentin Tarantino and Tim Burton, while lovely, well-crafted, but traditional films like One Fine Day are treated with genial disdain.

影评人中盛行的“疲劳现象”是这样的，看了这么多影片，他们开始厌倦特定类型的影片，尽管这些片子拍摄得很好。相反评论家对于给他们带来新鲜感的片子特别感兴趣，即使这些影片让人讨厌或是粗制滥造。这种现象解释了为什么昆丁塔伦蒂诺和堤姆帕顿这类平庸的“天才”会在评论界取得成功，而像“一日钟情”这样令人愉悦并且制作精良的传统影片却遭嘲讽的原因。

Jadedness especially applies to films that demand a strong emotional willingness from the audience. Many filmgoers want a cathartic experience, but few reviewers are willing or even able to achieve catharsis. They get an intellectual epiphany and think they’ve experienced catharsis. But they’re wrong. They’ve seen a light or solved a puzzle, that’s all, and as most writers learn, sooner or later, the effects that wow critics are much easier to bring off than the effects that move the mass audience deeply.

这种疲劳特别表现在需要观众强烈情感共鸣的影片上。很多影迷需要一种宣泄情绪的体验，但是少有评论家愿意或者说能够真情流露。他们知性富有洞察力，认为自己经历了这样的过程。但他们错了，他们看到的是一点点信息，被揭开的谜团，仅此而已，大多数作家迟早会明白，营造让评论家叫绝的效果，要比烘托出让大多数观众深深触动的氛围容易得多。

As a result, a film like Spitfire Grill, which only works if you’re willing to get emotionally involved, leave reviewers cold. When they enter the movie theater (or screening room), they’re going to work, and despite their honest efforts to pretend to be normal movie-goers, they are who they are. An analyzer sheds no tears at Spitfire Grill because he isn’t looking for an experience with redemptive love, he’s looking for interesting things to say in his column or show.

结果，像“温馨真情”这样，只有全情投入才能体会的影片无法打动影评家。他们走进影院或放映厅就是来工作的，尽管他们诚心想装作一名普通观众，他们还是评论家。抱着分析心态看"温馨真情"的人不会落泪，因为他并不想体会救赎之爱，而只是为了写专栏或作秀找好玩的题材。

I’m not immune to jadedness myself, of course. Even as I laughed to the point of misery during Dumb and Dumber, I knew it was a stupid, stupid, stupid movie. Nevertheless, no one had ever dealt with snot frozen on your face when it’s really cold, or the agonizing postures one takes on the toilet during violent diarrhea. Do I want to see these things again in a movie? Never. But they were new and worked once. (Warning to Jim Carrey: Nobody laughed in my local theatre when the Ace Ventura sequel used butt ventriloquism again. Funny once, my friend.) Some jokes count on jadedness in order to be funny, just as many arty films only appeal to a jaded audience. But the true classics, the great films, work on a completely different level that transcends the moment of their creation. In a world that includes (just for starters) Lawrence Kasdan, Ron Howard, and Steve Martin, it is disturbing that our critics give their acclaim to Tarantino (last year’s news, of course), Tim Burton, and Jane Campion.

当然我自己也无法避免这种迟钝现象，甚至在我被"阿呆和阿瓜"中的种种不幸逗乐的时候，我还是清楚，那是非常非常愚蠢的影片。然而，没有人碰到过天寒地冻时鼻涕在脸上冻僵，或是严重腹泻时在厕所痛苦地变化姿势吧。你还想在电影里看一遍么？决不。但这些举止曾经很新鲜，也产生了的效果。（警告金凯利：在我这里的剧场内，当神探飞机头再次使用口技这一笑料时，没有观众被逗乐。兄弟，一次才会有趣。）。有些把戏只在疲倦时有效，就像有些做作的片子只对麻木的观众有吸引力。而真正经典的作品，那些伟大的电影，却是在一个完全不同的层次上起作用，折射出他们所在的时代气息。在有劳伦斯卡斯丹，罗霍华德，史蒂夫马丁等等人物的时代，我们的影评家却把他们的赞誉给了塔伦蒂诺（当然是去年的新闻），提姆帕顿和简卡宾，这不能不让人忧虑。

Oddly, jaded reviewers tend to use inapplicable clichés in responding to films that did not please them. Thus we have movies with good characterization accused of having cardboard characters, simply because the reviewers didn’t like the characters; they mistook their subjective distaste for an objective flaw in the work. Instead of recognizing that the reasons they didn’t like One Fine Day were primarily within themselves, they had to find something wrong with the movie itself. Thus Ebert and Siskel complained that the audience knew immediately that these two characters were in love with each other and they grew impatient at the characters’ failure to recognize the truth. To which I can only reply, “What do you think a romantic comedy is?” It’s like complaining that in a western, you knew right from the beginning that the bad gunslinger and the good guy would have a showdown at the end. Furthermore, Ebert and Siskel complained about the quality of the writing! Apparently, their utter inability to get involved in the film blinded them to the fact that the dialogue actually achieved that mystical thing called “charm.” But because they weren’t willing to commit to the film, they gave us the standard charge of bad writing when in fact the writing was very good, and of a sort that is devilishly hard to succeed with.

更不合情理的是，麻木的影评人往往对他们不喜欢的影胡乱指责。因此有些角色塑造很成功的影片，仅因不讨评论家喜欢，就被贬为人物肤浅。影评家们把主观的嫌恶误认为作品客观上的缺陷。他们意识不到他们不喜欢“一日钟情”的原因出在自己身上，于是费尽心机的寻找影片的问题。因而艾伯特和西斯科抱怨，观众一开始就知道这两个角色互相仰慕，对于他们不明真相感到厌烦。对此，我只能说，“你认为浪漫喜剧是什么？”这就像是抱怨在西部片里，你开场就知道坏蛋抢手和好人会在最后一决上下。艾伯特和西斯科甚至指摘剧本的质量！明显的，他们无法融入电影中，所以看不到这样的事实：对白实际上已经取得了神奇的效果，那就是“魅力”。但因为他们不愿受制于影片，所以他们用标准的剧本低劣作为指责，事实上剧本很出色，何况在这一领域很难取得成功。

Blindest of all were the comments about Pfeiffer and Clooney not having “chemistry” or “spark .”
What does this mean? Frankly, I suspect that it means that these jaded reviewers can’t tell that there’s an attraction between characters unless they see clothing being feverishly removed. The English Patient was absolutely faithful to a morally vacuous book that almost worships adultery, suicide, and mercy-killing but reviewers commented on the chemistry between the lovers in the film. Apparently, they took off enough clothes around old-fashioned bathtubs. And while Jerry Maguire was a good film, it was in spite of, not because of, the “cute sex” scene on the porch, and I’m not the only one in the audience who was disappointed when they slept together. (Several groan were audible.) In contrast, for the nonreviewers I know, One Fine Day had plenty of sparks between the leads. But theirs was the chemistry of romance. These were people longing to intertwine their lives, not just their bodies.

所有评论中最轻率的就是批评帕菲和克鲁尼“不融洽”或者说“不来电”。这是什么意思呢？坦率的讲，我怀疑除非角色们的衣衫退尽，否则这些麻木的影评人已经分辨不出他们之间有无吸引了。“英国病人”非常忠于道德空虚的原著，而那本书对不伦，自杀以及安乐死几近崇拜，但是影评人却称片中的情侣关系融洽。显然，那是因为他们在老式的浴缸边脱够了衣服。虽然甜心先生是一部好片，但是那并不是由于走廊里“巧妙的情色”场面。我不是唯一对他们最后睡在一起失望的观众，（好多人看到这段甚至大叹）。相比之下，据我认识的非影评人士所言，“一日钟情”有大量的隐含火花。他们之间存在着浪漫的默契，这些人渴望灵魂的交汇，而不只是肉体。

This is not exclusively a problem of reviewer, of course. Many filmmakers and studio officials have been sucked into the same mindset. I was shocked to learn of and, occasionally, see for myself how many times Hollywood decision-makers push for nudity and sex, the kinkier the better. When one sees things like Garry Marshall’s recent sex fantasy (mercifully, I have blocked out the title) one can only ask, What was he thinking? This man knows how to make good movies. And the answer is : He lives in a culture (Hollywood) where sex is constantly in the forefront, where his storyline could seem interesting instead of merely repulsive. In another recent case, a noted “money” director had a chance at creating a Twilight Zone-like TV anthology series, but because it would be on pay cable he got obsessed with the possibility of nudity and pushed to get more of it into every show. The result? Trashy scripts that cheapen the general American culture, bringing it more in line with the worldview of this adolescently oversexed and undercivilized man.

当然这不只是影评家的问题，很多制片人和电影公司官员也陷入了相同的思维定式中。我很惊讶的听闻，有时候甚至目睹，好莱坞的决策层竭力推销暴露与性，越古怪越好。如果谁看过盖瑞马歇尔关于性幻想的新作，（名字就不提了吧），他肯定会问。这个人在想什么？他知道怎么拍出好电影。答案是，他生活在好莱坞这样的文化氛围中，性永远被放在第一位，他的故事情节只是让其变得有趣些不那么惹人反感而已。这里还有个例子，有名的“钱本位”导演本来有机会制作一部象阴阳魔界这样的电视剧集，由于将在付费的有线电视上播出，他执迷不悟的研究暴露镜头的可行性，往每一集里拼命填塞这些内容。结果呢？贬低美国大众文化的垃圾一样的剧本，倒是很符合这个青春期性欲过剩的粗俗男人的世界观。

These filmmakers, jaded themselves and surrounded by other jaded people, keep trying to create something “fresh” and “new”, not realizing that the freshest, newest thing they could create is something so old-fashioned few know how to make it anymore: stories about the lives that real people live. Here’s a clue: Most of us don’t spend every waking moment trying to live out our sexual fantasies. Most of us are thinking about our families, our jobs, and our friends; and our lives are enriched by affection, by religion, by commitment, by achievement, by romance, by warm and genuine humor. Who is making films for us? A few. A few. But their work is almost inevitably treated with disdain by the jaded reviewers.

这些制片人以及他们身边的各式麻木的人，不断试图创造出“新鲜有趣”的东西，丝毫意识不到，他们所能创造的最鲜活东西就存在于那些看似古板，但是无人能企及的寻常人的生活故事之中。这里有些线索：我们中的大多数人并不会分分秒秒想着如何实现自己的性幻想，大多数人想的是自己的家庭，工作和朋友。我们的生活因为情感，信仰，责任，成就，浪漫，温暖真挚的幽默感而变得充实。谁在为我们而制作影片呢？很少。是的，而且他们的作品几乎不可避免的受到那些迟钝评论家的讥讽。

Believe it or not, the vast missing audience, the kind of people who stopped going to the movies in the 1960s when nudity began to rule the screen, aren’t staying away because they’re prudes or because they love TV. They come back whenever they find out that a movie has been created for them. (E.T. Poltergeist. Indiana Jones. Lucas and Spielberg , for a time at least, promised and delivered storytelling at a mythic rather than sensual level. Storytelling for humans rather than beasts, to put it bluntly.) The trouble is, that audience can’t trust the reviewers to tell them when such a movie is found. While You Were Sleeping brought to the theaters, again and again, people I know who otherwise do all their viewing by renting videos of pre-1967 movies. But they didn’t learn about this film from the reviewers. They learned about it from their friends who took a chance. Or from the TV ads.

不管你信不信，被忽略的广大观众，这些自70年代裸露主义一统银屏起便不再去影院的人们并没有故作清高或是因为迷上了电视而放弃电影。只要他们发现有符合他们的口味的影片，他们随时会回来。（ET外星人，鬼驱人，夺宝奇兵，卢卡斯和斯皮尔伯格系列，至少在短期内，营造出让人期待的奇幻而非煽情的故事氛围。或者更坦率地讲，他们的片子是拍给人看的，而不是给动物）。问题在于，当影评人告诉观众，他们期待的片子出现的时候，观众已经不再信任影评的话了。二见钟情这部片子让我认识的许多原本会在租片店淘67年之前的老电影的人走进了影院。他们可不是从影评人这里得到的消息，而是通过朋友推荐，或是电视广告。

If I believed reviewers, my wife and I would think that The Piano was a great movie, instead of the most hate-filled, ugly experience of dishonest, unfair storytelling we’ve ever sat all the way through together. In the end, one wonders whether the jadedness problem shows that reviewers can’t see story content anymore at all, leaving them to review only the manner and style of filmmaking, or shows instead that they really do prefer films that degrade the human spirit for two hours in the dark.

如果我和妻子听信了影评的话，我们可能还真以为钢琴别恋是一部好片。事实上，那却是我和妻子一起看完影片中充斥着最多仇恨，丑恶，不忠和私欲的一个。最后，你可能好奇，疲劳现象是否意味着影评人完全不看故事内容只就影片的拍摄手法和风格作评论, 还是他们确实更偏好能在漆黑的两小时里引人堕落的影片？

总算完工了 好难翻哦

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posted on 2005-03-10 00:46 Celinar 阅读(1382) 评论(5)  编辑  收藏 所属分类: Translation Practice 网摘收藏