同性戀彩虹旗的歷史與來歷大綱

Suddenly, they are everywhere: stretched across balconies, flapping from car antennas, and pinned to coat lapels the world over in a moving display of solidarity with the community that was brutally terrorised on Sunday after a bigoted assault at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. At first glance, the rainbow flag’s joyous refraction of colour may seem a strangely sunny response to the dark savagery of the deadliest mass shooting in US history. But as we watch its jubilant stripes bind together communities around the globe, it is worth pausing to reflect on the origin of a cultural symbol that was propelled into iconic status nearly 40 years ago by heartbreaking tragedy.

突然間，它們變得無處不在：在陽臺間飄揚，在汽車天線上迎風舞動。在佛羅里達州奧蘭多市一家同性戀夜總會週日受到瘋狂攻擊後，它們被作爲一個移動標識，呼籲慘遭恐襲打擊的社會團結起來，被全世界人民別到胸前。乍看之下，彩虹旗喜慶的色彩似乎是對美國曆史上最致命的槍擊案本身黑暗野蠻的一種奇怪的正面響應。但是，當我們看到它的歡騰條紋將全球社區聯和爲一體時，值得停下來深思一下這個文化符號的來源：是近 40 年前那個令人心碎的悲劇才使它具有了象徵性意義。

According to the US gay activist Gilbert Baker, who is credited with creating the emblem in the late 1970s, the idea behind the flag’s bold design emerged in 1976 – the year the United States celebrated the bicentenary of its independence as a republic. Still reeling from the twin traumas of withdrawal from the Vietnam War in 1973 and the first ever resignation of a US President in 1974, following the Watergate scandal, America strove to conjure from national malaise a feeling of patriotism. Key to the summoning of such spirit was the restorative display across the country of the Stars and Stripes, whose simple geometry masked the intensity of the psychological, political, and social turmoil seething underneath.

美國同性戀活動家吉爾伯特•貝克（Gilbert Baker）被認爲是這一標誌的發明者，當時還是上世紀 70 年代末期，而該標誌大膽設計背後的理念卻出現在 1976 年，這一年，美國舉行了慶祝獨立 200 週年的紀念活動。在 1973 年從越南戰爭撤軍及 1974 年水門事件後美國總統第一次辭職的雙重打擊下，美國力圖從全國的低迷情緒中感召愛國主義精神。當時美國在全國各地到處飄揚着星條旗，它簡單的幾何圖面下掩飾了強烈的心理、政治和社會動盪。

It was against this turbulent backdrop that San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person ever to be elected to public office in California, encouraged Baker in 1977 to devise a unique symbol for the gay community – an insignia of pride capable of affirming social independence. “Flags”, Baker has since asserted, “are about proclaiming power.” As a drag queen whose appetite for flamboyant clothes in the glam-obsessed 1970s was bigger than his wallet, Baker became a dab hand with a sewing machine – a skill he would later put to use in producing political banners. Hypnotised by the talismanic intensity of the US flag and its ability to transmute itself in art and fashion – from pricey Pop Art paintings by Jasper Johns to grungy denim patches – Baker was drawn to the deceptive simplicity of a field of stacked stripes as a symbol for many stitched together as one.

正是在這個動盪背景下，舊金山市監事哈維•米爾克（Harvey Milk），即第一個在加利福尼亞公開同性戀身份的公職人員，鼓勵貝克在 1977 年設計一個同性戀社區的獨特象徵，一種能夠肯定其社會獨立性的驕傲標誌。貝克曾斷言，“旗幟是力量的宣言。”作爲易裝皇后（即男扮女裝者），貝克對 70 年代華麗服裝的癡迷大於賺錢的誘惑，他後來成爲使用縫紉機的能手，並將這種技能用於隨後的政治旗幟生產中。從賈斯培•瓊斯（Jasper Johns）昂貴的波普藝術繪畫到破舊的牛仔布補丁，貝克着迷於美國國旗的護身符力量及其在藝術和時尚領域自我蛻變的能力，他也被這種多個堆疊條紋合爲一體的符號的迷惑性簡單藝術所深深吸引。

In contemplating how, precisely, he should reinvent that pattern, Baker was aware that any design he produced would compete in popular imagination with a painful, if resilient, logo by which the gay community had long been identified. In Nazi concentration camps, men imprisoned because of their homosexuality were marked out by a pink triangle affixed to their clothing. In the decades following the end of World War Two, gay communities around the world stripped the pink badge of its intended humiliation and defiantly re-inflected it with pride. But however heroic that reclamation of meaning may have been, in Baker’s mind the symbol was still haunted by the ghosts of Hitler and the Holocaust. The gay community, he believed, deserved a fabulous emblem entirely of its own fashioning. “We needed something beautiful,” Baker concluded, “something from us.”

在考慮如何才能準確地重新設計這一樣式的時候，貝克意識到，他的任何設計都將要與人們所熟知的同性戀社區所經歷的痛苦與堅韌不拔的想象力相符合。在納粹集中營，許多男子因爲同性戀原因被囚禁，他們的衣物上會貼有粉紅色三角形。二戰結束後的幾十年裏，世界各地的同性戀社區將帶有故意羞辱意味的粉紅色標記建成條狀，他們懷着驕傲，大膽地將其重新活用。儘管英雄主義可能已經復甦，但在貝克心裏，這個符號依舊受到希特勒和大屠殺陰影的困擾。他認爲，同性戀社區應該有一個完全自己塑造的理想標誌。貝克總結道，“我們需要一些美好的事物，它們來自我們中間。”

Blue sky thinking

藍天思路

Journalists and historians have expended a great deal of energy speculating how, exactly, the rainbow eventually suggested itself to Baker in 1978 as an appropriate phenomenon for conversion into the dimensions of a flag. A frequently cited hypothesis links the rainbow to the resplendent aura of the actress Judy Garland, long considered a gay icon (her role in the film The Wizard of Oz has yielded the colloquial slang-phrase “friend of Dorothy” as a term for a gay man), and to her famous performance of the song Over the Rainbow.

記者和歷史學家花費了大量精力猜測 1978 年的彩虹標誌究竟怎樣浮現在貝克的腦海中、並被他轉化爲旗幟的。一個常被引用的假設是，將彩虹標誌與女演員朱迪•嘉蘭（Judy Garland）的輝煌光環以及她著名的歌曲——“飛躍彩虹”（Over the Rainbow）聯繫起來。嘉蘭也長期被視爲同性戀偶像（根據她在《綠野仙蹤》電影中的角色，同性戀者已被通俗的稱爲“多蘿西的朋友”）。

Other writers have noted that strong bright colours (such as the green carnation Oscar Wilde wore to signify his sexual orientation) have for centuries served as shorthand for homosexuality. But in an interview that Baker gave last year to the Museum of Modern Art, after the flag’s prototype was acquired for its permanent collection, he suggested that the rationale for selecting the rainbow was more elementary than these theories assume: “It’s a natural flag”, he insists. “It’s from the sky.”

其他一些作家則注意到，幾個世紀以來，有強烈對比的顏色可以用來簡單指稱同性戀（如作家王爾德佩戴的綠色康乃馨表明了他的性取向）。但在去年，在第一面彩虹旗被永久收藏後，貝克接受現代藝術博物館的採訪時透露，他選擇彩虹標誌的理由比這些理論假設要簡單得多：“這是一面自然的旗幟，”他堅持說。“它來自於天空。”

It also has echoes in history, though its use in earlier cultural contexts around the world did not deter Baker from persevering with his sprightly spectral design. Since at least the late 15th Century, and the incorporation of the rainbow flag by the German theologian Thomas Müntzer in his reformist preachings, the symbol has been seized upon by religious and social activists to draw attention to their causes. A version was unfurled in the 16th Century during the German Peasants’ War to signify the promise of social change. In the 18th Century, the English-American revolutionary and author of the influential political tract Rights of Man, Thomas Paine, advocated for the adoption of the rainbow flag as a universal symbol for identifying neutral ships at sea. The flag has since been flown by Buddhists in Sri Lanka in the late 19th Century as a unifying emblem of their faith, by Indians annually on 31 January to commemorate the passing of the spiritual leader Meher Baba, and, since 1961, by members of international peace movements.

它在歷史上曾引起共鳴，但在世界各地早期文化背景下的使用並沒有打消貝克想保留這一風格明快的光譜型設計的念頭。至少自 15 世紀後期以來，在德國神學家托馬斯•閔采爾（Thomas Müntzer）將彩虹旗與他的改革派佈道結合起來以後，這個標誌已經被宗教和社會活動家用來提升社會對其事業的關注。其中一個公開的版本是，16 世紀德國農民戰爭期間，它被用來表示對社會變革的承諾。18 世紀，英裔美國革命家托馬斯•潘恩（Thomas Paine）主張採用彩虹旗作爲海上識別中立國船隻的通用符號。他曾撰寫有影響力的政治手冊——《人的權利》（Rights of Man)。自 19 世紀後期以來，彩虹旗被作爲佛教徒信仰的一個統一象徵在斯里蘭卡飛揚；每年 1 月 31 日，印度人會用彩虹旗紀念其精神領袖美赫巴巴（Meher Baba）的逝世；而自 1961 年以來，彩虹旗也被國際和平運動的成員廣泛使用。

Colour therapy

色彩療法

In its initial incarnation, Baker’s rainbow flag consisted of eight colours – two more than the version now recognised internationally as an emblem for the LGBT community – and each colour was assigned a symbolic meaning. A band of hot pink (representing sexuality) ran across the top of the flag in the original scheme, followed by red (which stood for life), then by orange (for healing), yellow (sunlight), green (nature), turquoise (magic), indigo (serenity), and violet (spirit) at the bottom.

貝克最初的彩虹旗設計由八種顏色組成，比目前國際上公認的同性戀、雙性戀及變性者（LGBT）社區象徵版本要多出兩種顏色，並且每一種顏色都被賦予一個象徵意義。根據最初的方案，亮粉色彩帶（代表性）穿過旗幟的頂部，下面依次爲紅色（代表生命）、橙色（代表癒合）、黃色（代表陽光）、綠色（代表自然）、天青色（代表魔力）、靛藍色（代表寧靜）和底部的紫色（代表精神）。

Displayed for the first time in the United Nations Plaza in downtown San Francisco in June 1978, this eight-striped version was produced by a team of 30 volunteers commandeering the washing machines of a public laundromat in order to rinse the dye from the fabric and the wide attic space of a gay community centre, where the individual strips were ironed and sewn together. This is the version that Harvey Milk would have known, if all too briefly, in the few short months before he and the Mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone, were shot to death in City Hall on 27 November by a deranged former colleague of Milk’s.

1978 年 6 月，八色彩虹旗第一次在舊金山市中心的聯合國廣場上展示。這面八色彩虹旗是由 30 名志願者共同製成，他們佔領了一個公共洗衣店的洗衣機，用來沖洗布料上的染料，並在一個同性戀社區中心寬敞的閣樓間內，將單個的布條熨平並縫製在一起。哈維•米爾克（Harvey Milk）本應有機會見到這一版本，儘管時間短暫。就在八色彩虹旗出現幾個月之後的 11 月 27 日，他和舊金山市長喬治•莫斯康尼（George Moscone）在市政廳被米爾克的一個瘋狂的前同事射殺身亡。

Demand for the rainbow flag accelerated in the aftermath of the murders for display at gay pride parades and at events organised in honour of the slain champion of LGBT rights. For a variety of practical reasons, Baker was forced to whittle the design down, first by dropping the top band of hot pink (a pigment that proved difficult to source) and then turquoise (inclusion of which, for reasons of symmetry, made displaying the flag as a vertically-hung banner from lampposts awkward). In the 38 years since Baker offered his invention as a universal symbol of gay pride, proliferation of its prismatic joy has been impressively steady. In 1994, a mile-long version of the flag, which streamed through the streets of New York to mark the 25-year anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village (a crucial moment in the gay liberation movement), set a record for the longest flag ever produced and helped plant the symbol permanently in social consciousness.

在謀殺案餘波的同性戀驕傲遊行中，在對被殺害的 LGBT 權利支持者組織的紀念活動中，對於彩虹旗的展示需求在急劇升溫。由於各種實際原因，貝克被迫簡化設計，首先去掉了頂部的亮粉色彩帶（被證明是缺少顏料來源），然後去掉了天青色（出於對稱原因，爲了便於將旗幟垂直掛在路燈柱上）。自從貝克提供自己的發明作爲同性戀驕傲的通用象徵以來，已過去 38 年，但它所帶來的棱鏡般的喜悅卻與日俱增。1994 年，爲了紀念 1969 年發生在格林尼治村的石牆暴動（同性戀解放運動的一個關鍵時刻）25 週年，一面長達一英里的彩虹旗在紐約街頭涌動，它創造了最長旗幟的記錄，並幫助這個象徵標誌在社會意識中生根。

Now the flag is everywhere. On 12 June, it was waved by marchers in the first major gay pride rally ever held in Ukraine. Between 24 and 26 June, the flag will be flown for the first time above the UK Parliament to celebrate the London pride weekend. In 2015, Facebook introduced a rainbow filter afterthe US Supreme Court decision ruling that same-sex marriage was legal nationwide. But the backlash to that in Russia and the Middle East, and events in Orlando, are reminders that this is not just a flag for celebration. Though ostensibly ebullient in its design, Baker’s creation is nevertheless threaded by perseverance and tinged by pain. “Flags”, he is said to have exclaimed on the 20th anniversary of the symbol’s birth, “are torn from the soul of the people.”

目前，彩虹旗已出現在世界的各個角落。6 月 12 日，在烏克蘭有史以來第一次重大的同性戀驕傲遊行中，彩虹旗被遊行者揮動。6 月 24 日到 26 日，它首次在英國國會上空飛揚，用來慶祝倫敦的同性戀驕傲週末。2015 年， 在美國最高法院判決裁定同性婚姻合法後，Facebook 推出了彩虹濾鏡功能。但彩虹旗在俄羅斯和中東受到強烈抵制，加上奧蘭多事件，這些都在提醒大衆，彩虹旗並不僅僅只是慶祝的標誌。雖然彩虹旗設計在表面上讓人感覺熱情洋溢，但貝克的作品仍然代表着百折不撓和痛苦的憂傷。貝克在該標誌誕生 20 週年的時候宣稱，“旗幟是從人的靈魂中扯下來的”。