美國已然變了 你爲何變得如此粗俗
'What's celebrity sex, Dad?' It was my 7-year-old son, who had been looking over my shoulder at my computer screen. He mispronounced 'celebrity' but spoke the word 'sex' as if he had been using it all his life. 'Celebrity six,' I said, abruptly closing my AOL screen. 'It's a game famous people play in teams of three,' I said, as I ushered him out of my office and downstairs into what I assumed was the safety of the living room.
“爸爸，什麼是名人性愛(celebrity sex)？”問這個問題的是我七歲的兒子，他正從我的肩頭看向電腦屏幕。他把“celebrity”（名人）發錯了音，但說“sex”（性愛）這個詞時就像是已經用了一輩子一樣。我迅速關掉AOL的屏幕，說道：“六個名人(Celebrity six)（譯者注：英語中“六”與“性”發音相近，因此作者故意將二者混淆，以向兒子解釋），是名人們以三人團隊形式玩的一種遊戲。”我把他帶出我的辦公室去樓下客廳，我認爲那裏是安全的。No such luck. His 3-year-old sister had gotten her precocious little hands on my wife's iPhone as it was charging on a table next to the sofa. By randomly tapping icons on the screen, she had conjured up an image of Beyonce barely clad in black leather, caught in a suggestive pose that I hoped would suggest nothing at all to her or her brother.
結果證明我想錯了。他三歲的妹妹已把她那過早發育的小手放到了我妻子的iPhone上，當時手機正放在沙發旁的桌子上充電。她亂點着屏幕上的圖標，“變出”了一張碧昂絲(Beyonce)穿着暴露黑色皮衣的圖片，我希望碧昂絲那頗具暗示意味的造型對女兒或她哥哥都不會產生任何暗示意味。And so it went on this typical weekend. The eff-word popped out of TV programs we thought were friendly enough to have on while the children played in the next room. Ads depicting all but naked couples beckoned to them from the mainstream magazines scattered around the house. The kids peered over my shoulder as I perused my email inbox, their curiosity piqued by the endless stream of solicitations having to do with one aspect or another of sex, sex, sex!
這個普通的週末就這樣度過了。孩子們在另一個房間玩耍，電視節目上出現了F開頭的那個詞，而我們原本以爲這些節目已足夠溫和。房子裏散落着的主流雜誌上，印有幾乎全裸男女的廣告在向他們打招呼。孩子們從我的肩頭盯着我查郵件，與性有這樣或那樣關係的無止境的誘惑激起了他們的好奇心。
When did the culture become so coarse? It's a question that quickly gets you branded as either an unsophisticated rube or some angry culture warrior. But I swear on my hard drive that I'm neither. My favorite movie is 'Last Tango in Paris.' I agree (on a theoretical level) with the notorious rake James Goldsmith, who said that when a man marries his mistress, he creates a job vacancy. I once thought of writing a book-length homage to the eff-word in American culture, the apotheosis of which was probably Sir Ben Kingsley pronouncing it with several syllables in an episode of 'The Sopranos.'
美國文化什麼時候變得這麼粗俗了？問出這個問題，你會迅速被貼上不懂世故的土包子或是憤怒的文化鬥士的標籤。但我用我的硬盤發誓，我兩者都不是。我最喜歡的電影是《巴黎最後的探戈》(Last Tango in Paris)。我贊同（在理論上）臭名昭著的浪子詹姆斯・戈德史密斯(James Goldsmith)，他說過，當一個男人跟他的情婦結婚時，他就創造了一個就業機會。我曾經想過寫一本書向美國文化中以F開頭的那個詞致敬，最能體現這個詞“崇高”地位的可能是本・金斯利爵士(Sir Ben Kingsley)在《黑道家族》(The Sopranos)某一集中用好幾個音節把它講出來的那一幕。I'm cool, and I'm down with everything, you bet, but I miss a time when there were powerful imprecations instead of mere obscenity -- or at least when sexual innuendo, because it was innuendo, served as a delicious release of tension between our private and public lives. Long before there was twerking, there were Elvis's gyrations, which shocked people because gyrating hips are more associated with women (thrusting his hips forward would have had a masculine connotation). But Elvis's physical motions on stage were all allusion, just as his lyrics were:
我不介意，也沒什麼意見，但我想念激烈咒罵而非赤裸裸淫穢的時光――或者至少是有性影射的時光，由於是影射，應該是作爲我們私生活和公共生活之間壓力的美好釋放。早在有電臀舞之前，就有了埃爾維斯(Elvis)的扭胯舞，人們對這種舞感到震驚，因爲扭胯更多的是和女人聯繫在一起（臀部向前推則有一種男子氣概的暗示）。但埃爾維斯在舞臺上的動作都是暗示，就像他的歌詞一樣：Touch it, pound it, what good does it do
觸摸它，敲打它，能有什麼用There's just no stoppin' the way I feel for you
沒有什麼能阻擋我對你的感覺Cos' every minute, every hour you'll be shaken
因爲每一分鐘，每個小時你都會By the strength and mighty power of my love
被我強烈和堅定的愛所震顫The relative subtlety stimulates the imagination, while casual obscenity drowns it out. And such allusiveness maintains social norms even as they are being violated -- that's sexy. The lyrics of Elvis's 'Power of My Love' gave him authority as a respected social figure, which made his asocial insinuations all the more gratifying.
含蓄的暗示會刺激人的想像，而隨隨便便的淫穢會將想像力淹沒。即使正在侵害着社會規範，但這種暗示仍維持着社會規範的存在――這很性感。埃爾維斯的《我的愛的力量》(Power of My Love)的歌詞給了他成爲受人尊敬的公衆人物的權威，從而讓他對社會的各種暗諷愈加令人愉悅。The same went, in a later era, for the young Madonna: 'Two by two their bodies become one.' It's an electric image because you are actively engaged in completing it. Contrast that with the aging Madonna trash-talking like a kid:
後來，年輕的麥當娜(Madonna)也是如此：“成雙成對的，他們的身體合二爲一。”這是一個鮮活的畫面，因爲你在積極地完成它。這和上了年紀的麥當娜像孩子一樣的廢話形成了鮮明對比：Some girls got an attitude
有些女孩喜歡擺架子Fake t--- and a nasty mood
有一對假胸還有糟糕的情緒Hot s--- when she's in the nude
脫光的時候性感火辣(In the naughty naked nude)
（調皮地脫光光）It's the difference between locker-room talk and the language of seduction and desire. As Robbie Williams and the Pet Shop Boys observed a few years ago in their song 'She's Madonna': 'She's got to be obscene to be believed.'
這就像是偷偷講黃色八卦和赤裸裸勾引慾望的區別。正如羅賓・威廉姆斯(Robbie Williams)和“寵物店男孩”(Pet Shop Boys)幾年前在《她是麥當娜》(She's Madonna)裏所唱的：“她變得粗俗得讓人難以置信。”Everyone remembers the Rolling Stones' 'Brown Sugar,' whose sexual and racial provocations were perfectly calibrated for 1971. Few, if any, people can recall their foray into explicit obscenity two years later with 'Star Star.' The earlier song was sly and licentious; behind the sexual allusions were the vitality and energy to carry them out. The explicitness of 'Star Star' was for bored, weary, repressed squares in the suburbs, with their swingers parties and 'key clubs.'
大家都記得滾石(Rolling Stones)的《Brown Sugar》，裏面關於性和種族歧視的挑 語言堪稱爲1971年量身打造。很少有人能回想起兩年後他們在《Star Star》中對露骨污穢內容的嘗試。第一首歌是狡猾而放縱的，性暗示背後展現的是活力和能量。《Star Star》的直白是給郊區那些無趣、疲倦、壓抑的土包子們聽的，與之伴隨的還有他們的性伴交換派對和“鑰匙俱樂部”(key clubs)。Just as religious vows of abstinence mean nothing without the temptations of desire -- which is why St. Augustine spends so much time in his 'Confessions' detailing the way he abandoned himself to the 'fleshpots of Carthage' -- violating a social norm when the social norm is absent yields no real pleasure. The great provocations are also great releases because they exist side by side with the prohibitions that they are provoking. Once you spell it all out, the tension between temptation and taboo disappears.
就像沒有慾望誘惑時，節慾宗教誓言便毫無意義一樣――這就是爲什麼 奧古斯汀(St. Augustine)會花那麼多時間在他的《告白》(Confessions)中詳細描述他是如何屈服於“迦太基的奢侈生活”的――在社會規範缺失時，侵犯它也不會有真正的快感。好的挑 也是好的釋放，因爲它們和被挑 的禁忌是相輔相成的。一旦直白地講出來，誘惑和禁忌之間的張力就消失了。The open secret of violating a taboo with language that -- through its richness, wit or rage -- acknowledges the taboo is that it represents a kind of moralizing. In fact, all the magnificent potty mouths -- from D.H. Lawrence to Norman Mailer, the Beats, the rockers, the proto-punks, punks and post-punks, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, Patti Smith, and up through, say, Sarah Silverman and the creators of 'South Park' -- have been moralizers. The late Lou Reed's 'I Wanna Be Black' is so full of racial slurs, obscenity and repugnant sexual imagery that I could not find one meaningful phrase to quote in this newspaper. It is also a wryly indignant song that rips into the racism of liberals whose reverence for black culture is a crippling caricature of black culture.
用承認禁忌存在的語言――通過豐富的語義、機智或憤怒――來違反某個禁忌，公開的祕密在於它代表着某種道德說教。事實上，所有那些滿嘴髒話的大人物――從D.H.勞倫斯(D.H. Lawrence)到諾曼・梅勒(Norman Mailer)，到the Beats樂隊、搖滾歌手、原型朋克、朋克和後朋克，理查德・普萊爾(Richard Pryor)、山姆・金尼遜(Sam Kinison)、帕蒂・史密斯(Patti Smith)，再近一點有莎拉・西爾弗曼(Sarah Silverman)和《南方公園》(South Park)的製作人――都是說教者。已故的路・瑞德(Lou Reed)的《我想回去》(I Wanna Be Black)充斥着種族歧視語、污言穢語和令人厭惡的性畫面，我甚至無法從中找到一句有意義的話在這裏進行引述。這也是一首帶有挖苦式憤怒的歌，猛烈抨擊了自由主義者的種族主義，他們對黑人文化的崇敬是黑人文化的一副扭曲的諷刺畫。Though many of these vulgar outlaws were eventually warily embraced by the mainstream, to one degree or another, it wasn't until long after their deaths that society assimilated them, still warily, and sometimes not at all. In their own lifetimes, they mostly existed on the margins or in the depths; you had to seek them out in society's obscure corners. That was especially the case during the advent of new types of music. Swing, bebop, Sinatra, cool jazz, rock 'n' roll -- all were specialized, youth-oriented upheavals in sound and style, and they drove the older generation crazy.
儘管這些粗俗之徒中有很多人最終都在一定程度上被主流文化小心翼翼地接受了，但直到他們離世後很久，社會纔對其進行吸收，依然是小心翼翼，有時甚至根本就沒吸收。他們在有生之年大都存在於邊緣地帶或藏在深處；你得在社會的昏暗角落裏找尋。在新的音樂類型出現時尤其如此。搖擺樂(swing)、咆勃爵士樂(bebop)、Sinatra、冷爵士(cool jazz)、搖滾――這些音樂都在聲音和風格上更加專門化並且以年輕人爲主導，它們讓老一代人抓狂。These days, with every new ripple in the culture transmitted, commented-on, analyzed, mocked, mashed-up and forgotten on countless universal devices every few minutes, everything is available to everyone instantly, every second, no matter how coarse or abrasive. You used to have to find your way to Lou Reed. Now as soon as some pointlessly vulgar song gets recorded, you hear it in a clothing store.
如今，每隔幾分鐘就有一股新的文化浪潮在無數平臺上傳播、被評論、被分析、被模仿、被混雜和被遺忘，每個人時刻都能立即接觸到所有東西，無論這些東西有多麼粗俗或粗糙。以前得想法設法才能找到路・瑞德，而現在一旦某一首空洞粗俗的歌曲被錄製，在服裝店就能聽到。The shock value of earlier vulgarity partly lay in the fact that a hitherto suppressed impulse erupted into the public realm. Today Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and the rest have made impulsiveness a new social norm. No one is driving anyone crazy with some new form of expression. You're a parent and you don't like it when Kanye West sings: 'I sent this girl a picture of my d---. I don't know what it is with females. But I'm not too good with that s---'? Shame on you.
早期粗俗內容之所以如此有衝擊力，部分原因在於當時被壓抑已久的衝動爆發進入了公共領域。而如今，Twitter、Snapchat、Instagram及其他社交網站已經讓衝動變成了一種新的社會常規。沒有誰會再爲新的表達形式感到抓狂。當已爲人父母的你聽到坎耶・韋斯特(Kanye West) 唱“我給這個女孩發了一張我‘小弟弟’的照片。我不知道女人會感覺怎麼樣。但我跟那個賤人的感覺不怎麼樣”的時候，你表示不喜歡，那我真替你臉紅。The fact is that you're hearing the same language, witnessing the same violence, experiencing the same graphic sexual imagery on cable, or satellite radio, or the Internet, or even on good old boring network TV, where almost explicit sexual innuendo and nakedly explicit violence come fast and furious. Old and young, high and low, the idiom is the same. Everything goes.
事實是，你會聽到同樣的語言，看到同樣的暴力，會在電視、電臺、網上甚至在無聊的懷舊頻道上看到同樣的性畫面，近乎赤裸裸的性暗示和暴力迅速激烈地襲來。無論是上了年紀的人還是年輕人，高聲還是低吟，說的話都一樣。什麼都一樣。Graphic references to sex were once a way to empower the individual. The unfair boss, the dishonest general, the amoral politician might elevate themselves above other mortals and abuse their power, but everyone has a naked body and a sexual capacity with which to throw off balance the enforcers of some oppressive social norm. That is what Montaigne meant when he reminded his readers that 'both kings and philosophers defecate.' Making public the permanent and leveling truths of our animal nature, through obscenity or evocations of sex, is one of democracy's sacred energies. 'Even on the highest throne in the world,' Montaigne writes, 'we are still sitting on our asses.'
對性的形象暗示曾經是賦予人權力的一種方式。不公的老闆、不誠實的將軍、無道德感的政客可能會把自己提到高於其他普通人的高度上並且濫用權力，但人人都有一個裸露的身體和擾亂社會規範執行者的性能力。這正是蒙田(Montaigne)在提醒讀者“國王和哲學家都要排便”時所要表達的意思。通過淫穢粗俗或性喚起，將人類之動物本性這一事實永恆而赤裸地公之於衆，是民主的一種神 能量。蒙田寫道：“即使是世界上最高的寶座，也是被屁股坐着的。”But we've lost the cleansing quality of 'dirty' speech. Now it's casual, boorish, smooth and corporate. Everybody is walking around sounding like Howard Stern. The trash-talking Jay-Z and Kanye West are superwealthy businessmen surrounded by bodyguards, media consultants and image-makers. It's the same in other realms, too. What was once a cable revolution against treacly, morally simplistic network television has now become a formulaic ritual of 'complex,' counterintuitive, heroic bad-guy characters like the murderous Walter White on 'Breaking Bad' and the lovable serial killer in 'Dexter.' And the constant stream of Internet gossip and brainless factoids passing themselves off as information has normalized the grossest references to sex and violence.
然而“髒話”已經喪失了 化我們的能力。現在它們已變得隨便、粗魯、流暢和官方。每個人說話都像是霍華德・斯特恩(Howard Stern)。廢話連篇的Jay-Z和坎耶・韋斯特都是超級有錢的商人，被保鏢、媒體顧問和形象製作人團團包圍。其他行業也是一樣。曾經針對甜膩的、道德單純化節目的電視革命現在成了“複雜的”、違背常理的、充滿英雄色彩的壞人角色的公式化慣例，比如《絕命毒師》(Breaking Bad)裏殘忍的沃特・懷特(Walter White)和《嗜血法醫》(Dexter)裏討人喜歡的連環殺手。無休止的網上八卦和愚蠢傳聞被僞裝成有用的信息，讓最噁心的提及性和暴力的內容變成了正常。Back in the 1990s, growing explicitness and obscenity in popular culture gave rise to the so-called culture wars, in which the right and the left fought over the limits of free speech. Nowadays no one blames the culture for what the culture itself has become. This is, fundamentally, a positive development. Culture isn't an autonomous condition that develops in isolation from other trends in society.
回首1990年代，流行文化中露骨和淫穢內容的增多導致了所謂文化戰爭的產生，左翼和右翼羣體就自由言論的界限展開了爭論。現在沒有人會因爲文化本身的演進而批評文化。這從根本上來說是一種積極的發展。文化並不是孤立於社會上其他趨勢自主發展的東西。The JFK assassination, the bloody rampage of Charles Manson and his followers, the incredible violence of the Vietnam War -- shocking history-in-the-making that was once hidden now became visible in American living rooms, night after night, through new technology, TV in particular. Culture raced to catch up with the straightforward transcriptions of current events.
約翰・肯尼迪(JFK)被暗殺、查爾斯・曼森(Charles Manson)及其追隨者的血腥屠殺、越南戰爭(Vietnam War)駭人聽聞的暴力――曾經不爲人知的令人震驚的事件，現在出現在了美國家庭的客廳裏。通過新科技，尤其是電視機，人們每晚都能看到。文化加速趕上了直截了當記錄時事的速度。And, of course, the tendency of the media, as old as Lord Northcliffe and the first mass-circulation newspapers, to attract business through sex and violence only accelerated. Normalized by TV and the rest of the media, the counterculture of the 1970s was smoothly assimilated into the commercial culture of the 1980s. Recall the 15-year-old Brooke Shields appearing in a commercial for Calvin Klein jeans in 1980, spreading her legs and saying, 'Do you know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.' From then on, there was no going back.
當然，那些像諾思克利夫勳爵(Lord Northcliffe)和首批大規模發行的報紙一樣古老的媒體，他們通過性和暴力來吸引業務的癖好有增無減。被電視及其他媒體正常化後，1970年代的反主流文化順利地融入了1980年代的商業文化。回想當時15歲的布魯克・希爾茲(Brooke Shields)出現在1980年Calvin Klein牛仔褲廣告中，她張開雙腿說道：“知道我和我的Calvin之間有什麼東西嗎？什麼都沒有。”從那以後便一發不可收拾。Today, our cultural norms are driven in large part by technology, which in turn is often shaped by the lowest impulses in the culture. Behind the Internet's success in making obscene images commonplace is the dirty little fact that it was the pornography industry that revolutionized the technology of the Internet. Streaming video, technology like Flash, sites that confirm the validity of credit cards were all innovations of the porn business. The Internet and pornography go together like, well, love and marriage. No wonder so much culture seems to aspire to porn's depersonalization, absolute transparency and intolerance of secrets.
如今，我們的文化規範在很大程度上受到科技的推動，而科技常常源自文化中最低層次的衝動。互聯網成功將淫穢圖片變成司空見慣的東西，這背後是色情行業將互聯網科技徹底改革的骯髒事實。流媒體視頻、Flash等技術、還有驗證信用卡有效性的網站都是色情業的創新產品。互聯網和色情業就像是愛和婚姻的關係。難怪會有那麼多的文化會渴望實現色情片的去人性化和絕對透明，不允許祕密的存在。An essay like this typically ends with a set of prescriptions to solve the problem laid out in the previous paragraphs. But when the culture of vulgarity is produced by so many different factors -- commercial, economic, social, aesthetic -- there is no end in sight. One can only hope that, as happens so often in America, restless impatience with the status quo will carry the day and the pendulum will swing to the other side -- not toward censorship and repression but toward the sacred power of sexual self-assertion and outlaw imprecations.
這樣一篇文章，一般會以列出一套解決前文所述問題的方案爲結尾。但是當粗俗文化的產生源自諸多不同因素時――商業、經濟、社會、美學――目前還看不到解決辦法。我們只能希望，人們對現狀的焦躁和不耐煩最終會戰勝一切，天平會傾向另一邊――並非是向審查和壓制傾斜，而是向性的自我肯定的神 力量以及對法外之徒的譴責之情傾斜。在美國，人們常常只能抱有這樣的希望。From Miley Cyrus's brilliant, purposeful, repeated travesties of her wholesome image -- 'This is what culture is really about now,' she seems to be saying -- to songs by Eminem, Lady Gaga, Kanye West and others that express disgust with their own celebrity and wealth, pop culture itself seems to yearn for a time when obscenity and graphic sexual images were morally potent rather than merely titillating and profitable. So maybe there is hope, and we will find, after all, some relief from the relentless hum of casual coarseness and vulgarity.
從麥莉・賽勒斯(Miley Cyrus)刻意重複塑造的耀眼健康形象――她似乎在說：“這纔是當前文化的本質”――到艾米納姆(Eminem)、蕾迪・卡卡(Lady Gaga)、坎耶・韋斯特及其他對自己的名氣和財富表達厭惡的人，流行文化本身似乎也在懷念那個曾經的年代，那時污穢和性畫面具備精神性的強大能量，而不僅僅能用來挑逗觀衆並從中牟利。所以或許還是有希望的，我們最終能部分擺脫粗俗低級的無休止吟唱。Or maybe not. I'll still be keeping my finger on the off-button of whatever device I happen to be using in case my children happen by. Celebrity Six is a game I hope they never learn to enjoy, even as adults.
不過也很難說。無論使用什麼設備，我都會準備着隨時立刻關閉它們，以防我的孩子碰巧路過看到。我希望“六個名人”是一個他們永遠都不會想要玩的遊戲，即便長大成人後也不會。
