好莱坞为什么钟情在电影里摧毁加州

California Dream Under Attack in All Manner of Cinematic Imaginings

好莱坞为什么钟情在电影里摧毁加州

LOS ANGELES — Here it comes again: The California Apocalypse.

洛杉矶——加州大末日又来了。

As if motionless freeways, sky-high taxes and calamitous drought weren’t enough, Warner Bros. and its New Line Cinema unit have chosen this worrisome moment to unveil “San Andreas,” the latest cinematic assault on an increasingly fragile California dream.

好像水泄不通的高速公路、高昂的税款和灾难性的干旱还不够，华纳兄弟公司(Warner Bros.)以及它旗下的新线电影公司(New Line Cinema)特意选择这个令人不安的时刻放映《末日崩塌》(San Andreas)，脆弱的加州梦又遭到新一波的影院攻击。

How big is the Big One in “San Andreas”?

《末日崩塌》里的大灾难到底有多大?

“Even though it’s happening here in California, you will feel it on the East Coast,” promises a seismic expert, played in the film by Paul Giamatti. We have just seen the Hoover Dam disintegrate in a mere foreshock.

“虽说是发生在加利福尼亚，但你会觉得好像是东海岸的事，”影片中保罗·吉亚马提(Paul Giamatti)饰演的地震专家说。我们在预告片中看到胡佛大坝(Hoover Dam)在前震中就已经土崩瓦解。

Office towers crumble into dust. Yes, that is a tidal wave breaking over the Golden Gate Bridge. No, those aren’t the Mamas and the Papas chanting “California Dreamin’ ” through a trailer for the film: This version, a creepy dirge, is from Robot Koch and Delhia de France, and they’re not yearning to get here.

一栋栋办公大楼化为齑粉。没错，巨浪也冲垮了金门大桥(Golden Gate Bridge)。不不，预告片里没有“妈妈与爸爸”(Mamas and the Papas)唱着《加利福尼亚之梦》(California Dreamin)：这一回，我们听到的是一曲令人不寒而栗的挽歌，来自罗伯特·科赫(Robot Koch)与德莉娅·德·弗朗斯(Delhia de France)，他们可并不希望到加州去。

“San Andreas,” an earthquake action-adventure film that opens on Friday, is directed by Brad Peyton (best known for the action-fantasy “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”) and counts Carlton Cuse (of ABC’s “Lost”) among its writers. Dwayne Johnson stars as a Los Angeles Fire Department rescue chopper pilot on a mission.

《末日崩塌》是一部地震冒险片，将于本周五上映，导演布拉德·佩顿(Brad Peyton)最著名的影片是《地心历险记2：神秘岛》(Journey 2: The Mysterious Island)。ABC台《迷失》(Lost)的编剧卡尔顿·库斯(Carlton Cuse)出任该片的编剧之一。道恩·强森(Dwayne Johnson)饰演洛杉矶消防队中一位执行任务的救生直升机飞行员。

The film is the latest in a long Hollywood tradition of making the rest of the world feel better by reveling in California’s slide toward its postapocalyptic worst.

这部新作延续了好莱坞久远以来的传统：让加利福尼亚陷入末日天灾，以此让这个世界的其他地方觉得好过一点儿。

It’s no accident that Warner’s “San Andreas” trailer features a collapsing “Hollywood” sign: Movieland is often the first to go in these fables.

《末日崩塌》的预告片中出现了好莱坞山上“好莱坞”招牌垮掉的场景，这绝非偶然：在这样的末世寓言中，电影王国通常是最早覆灭的地方。

“Audiences get a reflexive thrill in seeing Hollywood — the place that created the movie they’re watching — get decimated,” noted Ken Feil, an Emerson College professor who in 2005 published “Dying for a Laugh: Disaster Movies and the Camp Imagination” (Wesleyan University Press).

“看到为他们带来这部影片的好莱坞遭到毁灭，观众们会有感同身受的颤栗之感，”艾默生学院教授肯·费尔(Ken Feil)说，他的著作《为笑声而死：灾难片与坎普想象》(Dying for a Laugh: Disaster Movies and the Camp Imagination, Wesleyan University Press )于2005年出版。

Mr. Feil was referring to a theory put forth about the disaster genre by Pauline Kael in her review in The New Yorker of “Earthquake,” released by Universal Pictures in 1974.

费尔指的是保琳·卡伊尔(Pauline Kael)为《纽约客》撰写的《大地震》(Earthquake)影评，该片由环球影业于1974年发行。

In that film, Charlton Heston jogs by the Hollywood sign as things get rolling, and Geneviève Bujold plays an actress whose workday is ruined by a warning tremor. But Ms. Kael’s dictum might as easily have applied to Paramount’s “The Day of the Locust,” which in 1975 found the beginning of the end in a flaming riot during a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, or Columbia Pictures’s “This Is the End,” from 2013, in which the world ended, more or less, at James Franco’s house.

在《大地震》中，灾难开始之初，查尔顿·海斯顿(Charlton Heston)跑步经过好莱坞标志，詹妮薇芙·布卓(Geneviève Bujold)饰演的女演员的工作被可怕的大地颤栗打断。但卡伊尔的观点可能更适用于派拉蒙1975年的《蝗虫之日》(The Day of the Locust)，最终的灾难结局始于格劳曼中国剧场一场首映式上的暴乱;它也适用于哥伦比亚公司2013年的《世界末日》(This Is the End)，片中世界的终结多少都是始于詹姆斯·弗兰科(James Franco)的家中。

Movie culture, said Mr. Feil, “seems to embody a kind of disposability, venality and manipulation that both personifies catastrophe and causes it.”

费尔说，电影文化“似乎能够造成一种用后即抛的感觉，乃至一种腐败，一种操纵，它把灾难及其成因都人格化了”。

The urge to level those who live too well, or too wantonly, of course predates film: The Bible gave us Sodom and Gomorrah, inspiration for an Austrian silent blockbuster, “Queen of Sin and the Spectacle of Sodom and Gomorrah,” by the director Michael Curtiz in 1922.

人们总想把过得太好或者太放荡的人拉下马，这种渴望显然是早于电影出现的：《圣经》就给了我们索多玛和蛾摩拉的例子，1922年的奥地利默片大片《索多玛与蛾摩拉》(Queen of Sin and the Spectacle of Sodom and Gomorrah)就是以此为灵感产生的，导演是迈克尔·柯蒂斯(Michael Curtiz)。

Watching seemingly successful people punished by earthquakes, sudden illnesses or bad luck “is literally calming down the people’s anger (that they are less fortunate) and a perverse form of healing the tormented souls,” John-Stewart Gordon, a professor of anthropology and ethics at the University of Cologne in Germany, said in an email.

看到看似成功的人们遭到地震、突如其来的疾病或噩运惩罚，“实际上等于平复了人们(关于自身不怎么走运)的焦虑，是一种治疗不安灵魂的变态疗法，”德国科隆大学人类学与伦理学教授约翰-斯图尔特·戈登(John-Stewart Gordon)在接受电子邮件采访时说。

The suffering in Nepal is human; this is cinematic.

尼泊尔的苦难让人同情;但我们现在说的是电影。

California’s earliest filmic leveling dates at least to 1906, when primitive newsreel footage captured falling buildings and smoking rubble immediately after the April 18 earthquake in San Francisco, then a gilded capital of sin, known for its Barbary Coast red-light district. “There were ruins on every hand,” read a perhaps gleeful card on one such film, now posted by the Library of Congress.

加利福尼亚最早在电影中实现这种“抚平”至少可以追溯到1906年，当时最原始的新闻短片镜头捕捉到了4月18日旧金山地震中倒塌的建筑与冒烟的残骸，那个时候它拥有巴巴利湾红灯区，堪称纸醉金迷的罪恶之都。“到处都是废墟，”一部国会图书馆发布的电影里，有人在一张卡片上以或许有些幸灾乐祸的口气写道。

Destruction by earthquake reached feature length in 1936, with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “San Francisco.” The melodrama starred Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Jeanette MacDonald; but the morally tinged destruction of San Francisco’s liquor-soaked hangouts was the sell.

1936年，在米高梅(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)的《火烧旧金山》(San Francisco)之后，地震灾害题材成了长片。这部情节剧由克拉克·盖博(Clark Gable)、斯宾塞·屈赛(Spencer Tracy)和珍妮特·麦克唐纳(Jeanette MacDonald)主演，不过旧金山那些花天酒地的流氓巢穴最终恶有恶报才是最大的卖点。

“An earthquake, noisy and terrifying and so realistic that the customers will be dodging the falling buildings and mentally hurdling the crevices that yawn in the studio’s streets” awaited viewers, assured Variety in its review.

“喧嚣恐怖的地震非常真实，观影者们会忍不住躲避倒下来的建筑，在心里跳过制片厂外街头草坪上的裂隙，”《综艺》(Variety)在影评中向读者们保证。

In “Earthquake,” Universal upped the ante with a Sensurround system that emitted low-frequency vibrations meant to make the audience feel as queasy as the people on screen. With computer-generated imagery, “San Andreas” can now rend the earth with startlingly wide fissures, crumple skyscrapers and send Mr. Johnson’s speedboat over that tidal wave in ways that Mark Robson, who directed “Earthquake,” could only imagine.

在《大地震》里，环球影业提高了规模，使用环绕声系统，制造一种低频震动，令观众和片中的人物一样感到恶心难受。《末日崩塌》里使用了电脑图像，制造出大地上惊人的巨大裂隙，坍塌的摩天大楼，为强森的高速游艇之后添上《大地震》的导演马克·罗布森(Mark Robson)难以想象的滔天巨浪。

(Mr. Peyton and company also recorded seismic sounds of the San Andreas fault, and incorporated them in a score by Andrew Lockington.)

佩顿与公司还录制了圣安德烈断层地震的声音，把它结合到安德鲁·洛金顿(Andrew Lockington)创作的配乐中去。

“We haven’t had a major quake in many years, and that scares me,” acknowledged Mr. Peyton, who is from Newfoundland, Canada, and is not eager to share the fate his movie dishes out. “This is as close as I want to come.”

“我们已经多年没有经历过大地震了，这让我觉得很可怕，”佩顿承认，他来自加拿大的纽芬兰，他可不愿意经历自己电影里的事情。“其实它就近在眼前。”

But filmmakers never stopped imagining the end of California, or parts of it, whether by giant ants, as in “Them!” (1954); pod people, as in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956); birds, as in “The Birds” (1963); or Japanese bombardment, plus John Belushi, as in “1941” (1979). There were more earthquakes, as in “Short Cuts” (1993) and “Escape From L.A.” (1996); a volcano, triggered by ill-advised subway construction, in “Volcano” (1997); falling frogs in “Magnolia” (1999); and armed aliens in “Battle: Los Angeles” (shot in Louisiana in 2009, and released in 2011).

但是电影拍摄者们一直都在想象加利福尼亚的终结，至少也是它的部分终结，比如在1954年的《X放射线》(Them!)里被巨大的蚂蚁毁灭;在 1956年的《天外魔花》(Invasion of the Body Snatchers)里被豆荚人毁灭;在1963年的《群鸟》(The Birds)里被鸟毁灭;在1979年的电影《1941》里被日本炸弹外加约翰·贝鲁希(John Belushi)毁灭。还有更多地震，诸如1993年的《银色，性，男女》(Short Cuts)和1996年的《洛杉矶大逃亡》(Escape From LA);在1997年的《活火熔城》(Volcano)里，错误修建的地铁导致火山爆发;1999年的《木兰花》(Magnolia)里，青蛙雨从天而降;《洛杉矶之战》(Battle: Los Angeles)里则是外星人武装入侵(该片于2009年在路易斯安那摄制，2011年上映)。

In “Miracle Mile,” an indie thriller written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt in 1988, it rained nuclear bombs on a date gone wrong between Mare Winningham and Anthony Edwards. Ground zero was the mid-Wilshire tower in the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles that now houses The New York Times bureau: For those who live here, it gets personal.

1988年的《末日终结者》(Miracle Mile)是一部独立惊悚片，由史蒂夫·德·加奈特(Steve De Jarnatt)编剧并执导，片中在梅尔·温宁汉姆(Mare Winningham)与安东尼·爱德华兹(Anthony Edwards)约会诸事不顺的一天里，原子弹从天而降。洛杉矶米拉克迈尔区的中央威尔士塔如今是《纽约时报》驻洛杉矶分社所在地，它也在片中被夷为平地，对于那里的人们来说，这是一种报复。

(New York has suffered its share of movie damage, though it is usually not seismic. Apes and meteors often play a role, as in “King Kong,” from 1933, or “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” (both from 1998).

纽约也在电影中被毁灭过不少次，不过通常没有地震，而是由巨猿和天象完成这一工作，比如1933年的《金刚》(King Kong)，以及1998年的《世界末日》(Armageddon)和《天地大冲撞》(Deep Impact)。

More than a few of the California films settled scores with a place that seemed to have it too good. In “San Andreas,” overcompensated Northern California techies get their comeuppance as tsunami-tossed ships, trolleys and office furniture crash through some of the most expensive real estate on the planet.

不少关于加利福尼亚的电影对这个看似得天独厚的地方做了清算。在《末日崩塌》里，北加州酬劳过高的技术人员终于遭到了报应，海啸掀翻了他们的船只与车辆，办公家具从这个星球上最昂贵的一些房产中被席卷而出。

Salvation is low-tech: It comes in the form of land lines, hot-wired cars and raw nerve. Others might say Californians have done enough damage here, without Hollywood’s help.

低科技成了救星：包括陆地运输线、热线汽车与敏感的性格。其他人可能会说，就算没有好莱坞的帮忙，加利福尼亚人自己搞的破坏也已经够多的了。

Chuck DeVore, a former California Republican state assemblyman who is now vice president for policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, lists prohibitive housing costs, rising taxes and overbearing bureaucracy as contributors, in his view, to a paradise almost lost.

查克·德沃尔(Chuck DeVore)是前加利福尼亚共和党州议员，现任得克萨斯州公共政策基金会政策部副总裁，他认为，限制住房成本、增税与专横的官僚制度都导致了加利福尼亚不再是人间天堂。

“If I didn’t think so, I guess I wouldn’t be in Texas,” he said.

“若不是这么想，现在我也不会来得克萨斯了，”他说。