文学艺术

Lesson two

Jaded [n1] hollywood

    疲倦的好莱坞

The “jadedness problem” among reviewers is that, having seen 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[n2]  or badly done. This explains the critical success of the products of puerile [n3] “talents” like Quentin Tarantino[n4]  and Tim Burton[n5] , while lovely, well-crafted, but traditional films like One Fine Day[n6]  are treated with genial[n7]  disdain[n8] .

“审美疲劳问题”是指评论家们看多了某一类型的电影于是开始厌倦这类电影，即使拍的很好他们也不会喜欢。而有些拍摄并不太好的电影以新颖和异类冲击着他们的视觉感受，从而大获好评。这就是为什么评论家们给予导演Quentin Tarantino和Tim Burton拍摄的幼稚平庸的所谓电影“天才”很高的评价，而十分有趣且拍摄手法唯美的传统电影《一日钟情》却被他们所冷漠的忽略。

Jadedness especially applies to films that demand a strong emotional willingness from the audience. Many filmgoer[n9] s want a cathartic [n10] experience, but few reviewers are willing or even able to achieve catharsis[n11] . They get an intellectual epiphany [n12] and think they’ve experience 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[n13]  than the effects that move the mass audience deeply.

这种厌腻感对于那些需要观众强烈的情感共鸣的片子尤为严重。影迷去电影院看电影往往是寻求一种情感的宣泄，而影评人却很少有人愿意或者说很少有人能够流露自己真的情感。影评人大都阅历很深。他们认为自己经历着电影带给普通观众所经历的情感变化，然而他们错了。他们只窥见了其中的一斑，或者猜透了一个谜团，仅此而已。因此，正如很多剧作家所了解的，或迟早要了解的，取悦评论家比要深深的触动观众来的容易的多。

As a result, a film like Spitfire Grill[n14] , 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，只有全情投入才能够体会的电影，无法打动电影评论家们。影评人们走进电影院或者放映室的时候，他们是去工作，尽管他们真心的试图将自己看作普通观众，他们依旧是影评人。一个分析家在面对电影《温馨真情》时是不会落泪的，因为他们并非是去体会救赎爱情的真挚，而是抱着给自己专栏找些有意思的东西来写观看这部电影的。

I’m not immune [n15] to jadedness myself, of course. Even as I laughed to the point of misery during Dumb and Dumber[n16] , I knew it was a stupid, stupid, stupid movie. Nevertheless, no one had ever dealt with snot [n17] frozen on your face when it’s really cold, or the agonizing postures one takes on the toilet during violent diarrhea[n18] . Do I want to see these things again in a movie? Never. But they were new and worked once. (Warning to Jim Carrey[n19] : Nobody laughed in my local theatre when the Ace Ventura[n20]  sequel [n21] used butt [n22] ventriloquism [n23] 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 transcend[n24] s the moment their creation. In a world that includes (just for starters) Lawrence Kasdan[n25] , Ron Howard[n26] , and Steve Martin[n27] , it is disturbing that our critics give their acclaim to Tarantino (las year’s news, of course), Tim Burton, and Jane Campion[n28] .

当然了，我本人并非没有“审美疲劳”问题。尽管在看《阿呆与阿瓜》的时候我也曾被阿呆阿瓜的种种不幸逗得大笑不止，但我知道这是一部十分，十分，十分愚蠢的电影。尽管没人见过寒冷的天气里鼻涕被冻在脸上，也没有见过严重腹泻时候在厕所上摆出那样的姿势，然而我还想在另一部电影中看到同样的情节么？绝不。就因为它当时看起来很新奇所以它成功了。（给金.凯瑞一点小忠告：《王牌威龙2》你又一次使用口技作为结束，在我们当地的电影院上演的时候并没获得观众的笑声。老兄，同样的搞笑桥段，用一次就行了。）有些笑料靠着故技重演逗乐，就像有些卖弄艺术的片子只有麻木的观众才会看。但是那些真正的经典，那些杰出的影片，却是以另一种水准――思想穿越了所拍摄的瞬间。在有着Lawrence Kasdan, Ron Howard以及Steve Martin等电影人物的时代里，我们的影评家却把赞誉给予了Tarantino（众所周知，这是去年的事儿）, Tim Burton和Jane Campion，着实令人忧心。

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 [n29] 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 [n30] 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 [n31] hard to succeed with.

奇怪的是，疲倦的评论家往往用不适宜的陈词滥调评价那些不能取悦他们的创作。因此会出现很好的角色被评价为贫瘠枯燥的情况，仅仅是因为评论家不喜欢这个角色；他们将自己主观的厌恶感误认为是电影本身客观存在的缺陷。评论家们不愿承认他们不喜欢《一日钟情》的主要原因是他们本身，而是非要从这部电影中寻找所谓的毛病。这就是为什么Ebert和Siskel评价这部电影时指出：观众都很快看出这两个角色彼此相爱，他们就会对这两个角色本身认不清这个事实而感到不耐烦。对于这种说法我只有一句话，“你知道什么是爱情喜剧么？”这就好像在西部片中，你从一开始就知道持枪歹徒和好人最终会有一场决战。另外，Ebert和Siskel还抱怨剧本的创作！显然，他们根本无法将自己融入到这部电影之中，使得他们竟然看不出剧中台词的奥秘之处――它有着“迷人的魔力”。然而因为他们不愿认可这部电影，他们只能用剧本不好这类官话贬低作品。实际上剧本写的十分出色，几乎已经好到后无来者的地步。

Blindest of all were the comments about Pfeiffer and Clooney not having “Chemistry” or “sparks”. 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 [n32] removed. The English Patient[n33]  was absolutely faithful [n34] to a morally vacuous [n35] book that almost worship[n36] s adultery[n37] , suicide, and mercy-killing[n38]  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[n39]  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 groans 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.

其中最缺乏判断力之处就是批评Pfeiffer和Clooney之间“没感觉”、“不来电”。这样的评价指的是什么？坦白的说，我认为那些疲惫不堪的评论家是觉得只有看到两个人兴奋的退去衣衫才会觉得他们相互吸引。电影《英国病人》极大程度的忠于了其书中所描写的对于通奸行为，自杀以及安乐死的近乎崇拜，然而影评家们却评价电影中的爱人之间感情很融洽。显然，这样的评价源自于演员们在老式的浴缸边脱够了衣服。《甜心先生》可以说是一部不错的影片，然而走廊里那一段所谓的“美丽性爱”场面却不是它好看的原因，正好相反，很多观众都和我一样当男女主角发生关系的时候我们都有些失望（演到此时影院里叹息声是此起彼伏）。与之不同的是很多我所知道的非专业电影评论人认为，《一日钟情》中的男女主演之间充满了爱的火花，只不过他们的融合充满浪漫。他们渴望的是将他们的一生缠绕而不是身体的纠缠。

This is not exclusively [n40] a problem of reviewers, 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 [n41] 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 [n42] 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.

这种问题并不仅仅出现在评论家当中。很多电影制片人和工作人员也被拖进了这类想法当中。我震惊于自己所知道的，并且偶然的亲眼见到的太多好莱坞里的决策人物要求电影中加入裸体和性，且越不正常越好。如果谁看过最近Garry Marshall拍的性爱影片（出于礼貌，片名我就不提了），他一定会问，这个人在想什么？这个人其实知道怎么拍出好的电影。然而他生活在好莱坞这个大环境里，在这里无论拍什么都要围绕性这个主题，那些故事、那些情节只是为了让它看起来有趣一点，不那么让人排斥而已。另一件最近发生的事，一位

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 spent 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.

自己已是疲惫不堪又被一群同样疲惫的人围绕着的电影制片人们，他们试图创造出所谓“新鲜的”“有趣的”作品，却丝毫没有意识到他们真正可以创造出来的新鲜的、有趣的东西正是那些旧到几乎已经没人能找到拍摄方式的亘古不变的时尚――那就是人们真正的生活所在。这里有一条线索：大多数人不会每天睁眼的那一刻想着如何得到更加美轮美奂的性爱生活。我们中的大多数所想的是我们的家庭，我们的工作以及我们的朋友；还有如何通过友爱、信仰、承诺、成就、浪漫、温暖和真正的浪漫令我们的人生更加丰富。有谁在为我们这样想法的人拍电影？太少，太少了。然而纵然有这样的人，感觉冷酷的影评人们也无可避免的轻视着他们所做出的努力。

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[n43] . Indiana Jones[n44] . Lucas [n45] and Spielvery[n46] , 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[n47] ). 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 1967 movies. But they didn’t learn about this film from the reviewers. The learned about it from their friends who took a chance. Or from the TV ads.

无论你相信与否，如此巨大的观众流失，一大批人从1960年代裸露开始成为电影潜规则开始不再去电影院，并非是因为他们假正经又或者他们更喜欢看电视。只要有真正为他们拍摄的电影出现他们一定会回来。（E.T. 《鬼哭神嚎》 《印第安纳琼斯》 卢卡斯和斯皮尔伯格系列，曾经一度承诺并且营造出了一些玄幻的而非情色的故事。恕我直言，这些才是给人而不是给畜生看的。）问题是，当评论家推荐这类电影的时候，观众们反而不相信了。就像《二见钟情》一次又一次不断的在电影院上映，我身边的人还要再去租1967年时候的影碟回家看。然而他们并不是因为听了影评人的介绍，有的是因为某个人偶然的看到了，推荐给他的朋友，而朋友之间又这样口耳相传，也有的是看了电视上的预告片。

If I believe 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 really do prefer films that degrade the human spirit for two hours in dark.

如果我信了评论家的话，我太太和我就会认为《钢琴别恋》是一部十分不错的影片。可是它实际上却是我们所看过的影片中几乎通片充斥着仇恨，丑恶的不忠，没有公平可言的一部影片。到最后，我们只能纳闷的问是那些影评人真的没看影片内，只评价那些拍摄手法，影片风格，还是说他们确实更加偏好那些在黑暗的两小时里引人堕落的影片？