谁杀死了流行文化中的成年男性?
Sometime this spring, during the first half of the final season of “Mad Men,” the popular pastime of watching the show — recapping episodes, tripping over spoilers, trading notes on the flawless production design, quibbling about historical details and debating big themes — segued into a parlor game of reading signs of its hero’s almost universally anticipated demise. Maybe the 5 o’clock shadow of mortality was on Don Draper (fig. 1) from the start. Maybe the plummeting graphics of the opening titles implied a literal as well as a moral fall. Maybe the notable deaths in previous seasons (fictional characters like Miss Blankenship, Lane Pryce and Bert Cooper, as well as figures like Marilyn Monroe and Medgar Evers) were premonitions of Don’s own departure. In any case, fans and critics settled in for a vigil. It was not a matter of whether, but of how and when.
今年春天，《广告狂人》(Mad Men)播出了最后一季的上半部分。 回顾剧情、无意中看到剧透、交换对无懈可击的场景设计的看法、给历史细节挑错，或是讨论剧中宏大的主题，这些都是观众们最爱消遣此剧的方式。可现在，这些逐渐被一个猜谜游戏所代替：大家试图在剧情中找出主人公唐·德雷柏(Don Draper, 图1)将要死亡的征兆，而这一结局是所有人都早已料到的。也许从剧一开始德雷柏就被若隐若现的死亡阴影所笼罩;也许片头那个身着西装的男子从高处坠下的画面象征着道德的堕落;也许前几季中一些主要人物的死亡(不仅包括片中的虚构人物，比如布兰肯许普小姐[Miss Blankenship]，雷恩·普莱斯[Lane Pryce]和伯特·库伯[Bert Cooper]，还有历史真实人物比如玛丽莲·梦露[Marilyn Monroe]和民权运动人物梅加·艾弗斯[Medgar Evers])是一种前兆。不管怎么样，粉丝们和评论家们似乎开始了某种守夜活动，等待着那一刻的到来。德雷柏死期将至，这毋庸置疑，问题是何时、以何种方式。
TV characters are among the allegorical figures of our age, giving individual human shape to our collective anxieties and aspirations. The meanings of “Mad Men” are not very mysterious: The title of the final half season, which airs next spring, will be “The End of an Era.” The most obvious thing about the series’s meticulous, revisionist, present-minded depiction of the past, and for many viewers the most pleasurable, is that it shows an old order collapsing under the weight of internal contradiction and external pressure. From the start, “Mad Men” has, in addition to cataloging bygone vices and fashion choices, traced the erosion, the gradual slide toward obsolescence, of a power structure built on and in service of the prerogatives of white men. The unthinking way Don, Pete, Roger and the rest of them enjoy their position, and the ease with which they abuse it, inspires what has become a familiar kind of ambivalence among cable viewers. Weren’t those guys awful, back then? But weren’t they also kind of cool? We are invited to have our outrage and eat our nostalgia too, to applaud the show’s right-thinking critique of what we love it for glamorizing.
电视剧人物是对我们时代的某种隐喻，一个个角色体现着我们的集体焦虑和愿望。《广告狂人》的意义并不晦涩：明年春季将要播出的下半季就叫“一个时代的终结”。整个剧集对过去的描述虽然一丝不苟，却运用了一种修正主义的现代视角。最明显体现这一点，而同时又是观众最喜爱的，就是它描写了旧秩序在内部矛盾和外部压力下分崩离析。从一开始，《广告狂人》除了展示过去那个时代的陋习和时尚品味，还记录了一种权力结构遭到侵蚀和逐渐被淘汰的过程。这种权力结构建立在白人男性的特权之上并为之服务。唐、皮特(Pete)、罗杰(Roger)和其他人想当然地享用他们的职权，并毫无愧疚地滥用权位。这种态度在有线电视观众中激起了一种我们并不陌生的矛盾心情：当年的这些家伙真够可恶的，但是他们又有点酷，不是吗?该剧同时激起了我们的愤怒和怀旧之情。我们沉醉于该剧对过去那个时代迷人魅力的渲染美化，但同时又为该剧对这种美化所持的右派批判态度而叫好。
The widespread hunch that “Mad Men” will end with its hero’s death is what you might call overdetermined. It does not arise only from the internal logic of the narrative itself, but is also a product of cultural expectations. Something profound has been happening in our television over the past decade, some end-stage reckoning. It is the era not just of mad men, but also of sad men and, above all, bad men. Don is at once the heir and precursor to Tony Soprano (fig. 2), that avatar of masculine entitlement who fended off threats to the alpha-dog status he had inherited and worked hard to maintain. Walter White, the protagonist of “Breaking Bad,” struggled, early on, with his own emasculation and then triumphantly (and sociopathically) reasserted the mastery that the world had contrived to deny him. The monstrousness of these men was inseparable from their charisma, and sometimes it was hard to tell if we were supposed to be rooting for them or recoiling in horror. We were invited to participate in their self-delusions and to see through them, to marvel at the mask of masculine competence even as we watched it slip or turn ugly. Their deaths were (and will be) a culmination and a conclusion: Tony, Walter and Don are the last of the patriarchs.
《广告狂人》会以主人公的死亡结局，观众普遍都有的这一直觉可以说是多种因素造成的——这不只是叙事的内在逻辑驱使，还是一种文化期望的产物。在过去的十年间，我们的电视发生了某种深刻的变化，展开了最后阶段的反思。对于电视剧来说，这个时代对男性来说不但是狂人时代，还是衰人时代，更是坏人的时代。唐同时是托尼·索普拉诺(图2)的继承人和前辈。《黑道家族》中的索普拉诺是男性权力的化身。 他继承了老大地位并努力维持、击败化解了种种威胁。《绝命毒师》(Breaking Bad)里的主人公沃尔特·怀特(Walter White)在该剧的一开始与自己的懦弱抗争。整个世界都好像与他作对，剥夺了他的权力，可是他后来又扬眉吐气地(阴险变态地)夺回并施展了自己的权力。这些男性们可怖的一面同时又是他们的魅力所在。有时我们很难决定到底是应该力挺他们还是应该被他们吓到。剧情让我们进入并洞察他们自我欺骗的内心世界。我们赞叹他们的阳刚之力，即便我们知道那只不过是徒有其表，终将衰败或是显露其丑恶一面。他们的死亡是(将是)剧的终结，同时也提出一个结论：托尼，沃尔特和唐都是末代的男性家长。
In suggesting that patriarchy is dead, I am not claiming that sexism is finished, that men are obsolete or that the triumph of feminism is at hand. I may be a middle-aged white man, but I’m not an idiot. In the world of politics, work and family, misogyny is a stubborn fact of life. But in the universe of thoughts and words, there is more conviction and intelligence in the critique of male privilege than in its defense, which tends to be panicky and halfhearted when it is not obtuse and obnoxious. The supremacy of men can no longer be taken as a reflection of natural order or settled custom.
提出男性家长已经死亡，并不意味着我认为男性性别至上主义已经终结，男性正在经历衰落或是女性主义的胜利触手可及。我是一个中年白人男性，但我并不愚蠢。在政治，职业和家庭领域，对女性的厌恶歧视还是根深蒂固。但是在思想和文字的范畴里，对男权的辩护往往愚昧无知，让人反感;要不就是仓惶出招，无法让人信服。与之相比，对男性特权的批判则有信念的支撑，也更加富有智慧。男性至上再也不能被看成是一种自然秩序或是既定习俗。
This slow unwinding has been the work of generations. For the most part, it has been understood — rightly in my view, and this is not really an argument I want to have right now — as a narrative of progress. A society that was exclusive and repressive is now freer and more open. But there may be other less unequivocally happy consequences. It seems that, in doing away with patriarchal authority, we have also, perhaps unwittingly, killed off all the grown-ups.
男权的式微已经持续了很多代。大多数人都把这看做是一种进步过程(我同意这个观点，但是在这篇文章里这并不是我的主要议题)。 较之以前的排外压抑，我们现在社会更为自由开放。但是对男权的批判可能还带来了不那么愉快的后果。在我看来，在试图摆脱男性家长权威的同时，我们还扼杀了所有的成人，虽然这可能是出于无意。
A little over a week after the conclusion of the first half of the last “Mad Men” season, the journalist and critic Ruth Graham published a polemical essay in Slate lamenting the popularity of young-adult fiction among fully adult readers. Noting that nearly a third of Y.A. books were purchased by readers ages 30 to 44 (most of them presumably without teenage children of their own), Graham insisted that such grown-ups “should feel embarrassed about reading literature for children.” Instead, these readers were furious. The sentiment on Twitter could be summarized as “Don’t tell me what to do!” as if Graham were a bossy, uncomprehending parent warning the kids away from sugary snacks toward more nutritious, chewier stuff.
在《广告狂人》末季上半部播完的一个多星期后，网络杂志《石板》(Slate)的记者和评论家茹丝·格雷汉姆(Ruth Graham)发表了一篇反响很大的文章，批评青少年读物在成年人中的流行。格雷汉姆指出，差不多三分之一的青少年读物是被30到44岁之间的成年人(他们中大多数并没有十来岁的孩子)购买 。她说这些成年人“居然看给孩子们写的书，他们应该为此感到害臊”。但是看到文章后，这些读者感到却是愤怒。他们在推特上的留言可以被总结为“我该做什么用不着你管!”就好像格雷汉姆是一个专横、严厉的家长，警告孩子们甜食的坏处，好让他们吃更有营养、更有嚼头的食物 。
It was not an argument she was in a position to win, however persuasive her points. To oppose the juvenile pleasures of empowered cultural consumers is to assume, wittingly or not, the role of scold, snob or curmudgeon. Full disclosure: The shoe fits. I will admit to feeling a twinge of disapproval when I see one of my peers clutching a volume of “Harry Potter” or “The Hunger Games.” I’m not necessarily proud of this reaction. As cultural critique, it belongs in the same category as the sneer I can’t quite suppress when I see guys my age (pushing 50) riding skateboards or wearing shorts and flip-flops, or the reflexive arching of my eyebrows when I notice that a woman at the office has plastic butterfly barrettes in her hair.
格雷汉姆在这场论战处于劣势，不论她的观点多么有说服力，她都无法获胜。要对具有权势地位的文化消费者们的幼稚消遣提出批评，就必然会自知或不自知地成为这么一个角色：一个喜欢责备他人的势利小人、乖戾之士。我在这里坦诚相告：我自己就是这么一个人。 当我看到我的某位同龄人拿着一本《哈利·波特》(Harry Potter)或是《饥饿游戏》(Hunger Games)时，我承认我会觉得不以为然。我并不为这种反应感到骄傲。作为一种文化批评，这种不以为然的反应跟当我看到我这个年纪(将近50岁)的老男人们玩滑板、或是穿短裤和夹趾凉拖时情不自禁露出的讥笑，或是看到办公室的女同事戴着蝴蝶形状的塑料发夹时反射性的耸眉属于同一个级别。
God, listen to me! Or don’t. My point is not so much to defend such responses as to acknowledge how absurd, how impotent, how out of touch they will inevitably sound. In my main line of work as a film critic, I have watched over the past 15 years as the studios committed their vast financial and imaginative resources to the cultivation of franchises (some of them based on those same Y.A. novels) that advance an essentially juvenile vision of the world. Comic-book movies, family-friendly animated adventures, tales of adolescent heroism and comedies of arrested development do not only make up the commercial center of 21st-century Hollywood. They are its artistic heart.
天哪，听我说了什么!算了，不用搭理我。说了这些，我并不是要为自己的这些反应辩解，我承认它们无可避免地会显得荒唐无力，脱离现实。电影评论是我的主业。在过去的15年，我看到电影公司花费了大量的财力和创造力来制作授权衍生系列电影(有一些就是根据我刚才提到青少年小说改编的)。这些电影促成推进了一个本质上来说以青少年为中心视角的世界。根据漫画改编的电影，老少咸宜的动画历险片，少年的英雄事迹和关于成长受阻的喜剧电影不但是21世纪好莱坞的主要摇钱树，他们更成了好莱坞的艺术之源。
Meanwhile, television has made it very clear that we are at a frontier. Not only have shows like “The Sopranos” and “Mad Men” heralded the end of male authority; we’ve also witnessed the erosion of traditional adulthood in any form, at least as it used to be portrayed in the formerly tried-and-true genres of the urban cop show, the living-room or workplace sitcom and the prime-time soap opera. Instead, we are now in the age of “Girls,” “Broad City,” “Masters of Sex” (a prehistory of the end of patriarchy), “Bob’s Burgers” (a loopy post-"Simpsons” family cartoon) and a flood of goofy, sweet, self-indulgent and obnoxious improv-based web videos.
与此同时，电视毫不含糊地宣告我们正处于时代前沿。不但有《黑道家族》(The Sopranos)和《广告狂人》这样的电视剧预示了男性权威的终结，在所有类别的电视剧里，我们还看到了传统意义上的成年状态正在被侵蚀。从前那些经久不衰的类别片，比如都市警匪片，客厅或办公室情景喜剧和黄金时段的肥皂剧都对这种成年状态有所描画。可是现在，充斥我们电视屏幕的是《都市女郎》 (Girls)、《宽镇日常》(Broad City)、《性爱大师》(Masters of Sex，讲述男性家长制终结之前的历史)、《开心汉堡店》(Bob’s Burgers, 一部疯疯癫癫，后《辛普森》[Simpsons]时代的家庭卡通片)和一大批傻乎乎、甜腻腻、放纵自我和令人反感的网络即兴视频。
What all of these shows grasp at, in one way or another, is that nobody knows how to be a grown-up anymore. Adulthood as we have known it has become conceptually untenable. It isn’t only that patriarchy in the strict, old-school Don Draper sense has fallen apart. It’s that it may never really have existed in the first place, at least in the way its avatars imagined. Which raises the question: Should we mourn the departed or dance on its grave?
所有这些节目都以这样或那样的方式试图表达这一点：没有人再知道如何做一个成年人了。我们之前所理解的成人状态在观念的层面上变得无法维持。这并不单单是说那种严格意义上的，老派的唐·德雷柏式的父权已经崩溃，而是意味着父权——至少是父权的具体化身们所构想的这个概念——可能压根就没有真正存在过。这就有了一个问题：我们应该哀悼父权的死亡，或是应该在它的坟墓上起舞庆祝?
Before we answer that, an inquest may be in order. Who or what killed adulthood? Was the death slow or sudden? Natural or violent? The work of one culprit or many? Justifiable homicide or coldblooded murder?
在回答这个问题之前，可能先要进行一场调查：谁或是什么杀死了成年人?死亡来得缓慢还是突然?是自然死亡还是死于暴力?凶手是一人还是多人?是情有可原的命案还是冷血谋杀?
We Americans have never been all that comfortable with patriarchy in the strict sense of the word. The men who established our political independence — guys who, for the most part, would be considered late adolescents by today’s standards (including Benjamin Franklin (fig. 3), in some ways the most boyish of the bunch) — did so partly in revolt against the authority of King George III, a corrupt, unreasonable and abusive father figure. It was not until more than a century later that those rebellious sons became paternal symbols in their own right. They weren’t widely referred to as Founding Fathers until Warren Harding, then a senator, used the phrase around the time of World War I.
严格字义上的父权向来让我们美国人觉得不那么舒服。以现今的标准看，那些创建美国政治独立的男性们大多处于青春期后期。(包括本杰明·富兰克林 [Benjamin Franklin, 图3]，从某些角度看，他可能是这帮人里最孩子气的了)。他们闹独立的一部分原因是要反抗英王乔治三世(King George III)的权威。而乔治三世代表了一个腐朽的、无法理喻的、暴虐的父亲形象。直到一个多世纪后，这些叛逆的儿子们才由于自身的建树被看成父权的象征。在 “一战”的时候，由当时的一位参议员沃伦·哈丁(Warren Harding)提出，“建国之父”这一称呼才变得家喻户晓。
From the start, American culture was notably resistant to the claims of parental authority and the imperatives of adulthood. Surveying the canon of American literature in his magisterial “Love and Death in the American Novel,” Leslie A. Fiedler suggested, more than half a century before Ruth Graham, that “the great works of American fiction are notoriously at home in the children’s section of the library.” Musing on the legacy of Rip Van Winkle and Huckleberry Finn (fig. 4), he broadened this observation into a sweeping (and still very much relevant) diagnosis of the national personality: “The typical male protagonist of our fiction has been a man on the run, harried into the forest and out to sea, down the river or into combat — anywhere to avoid ‘civilization,’ which is to say the confrontation of a man and woman which leads to the fall to sex, marriage and responsibility. One of the factors that determine theme and form in our great books is this strategy of evasion, this retreat to nature and childhood which makes our literature (and life!) so charmingly and infuriatingly ‘boyish.’ ”
从一开始，美国文化就明显地对父权和成年人的要求主张的有所抵触。在他的权威之作《美国小说的爱与死》(Love and Death in the American Novel)中，莱斯利·A·费德勒(Leslie A. Fiedler)分析了美国文学的经典之作。在早于茹丝·格雷汉姆半个世纪他就指出，“美国的经典小说有一点名声远扬，那就是把它们摆在图书馆的儿童书籍区也不会出格。”费德勒探讨了瑞普·凡·温克尔(Rip Van Winkle)和哈克贝利·芬(Huckleberry Fin, 图4)对美国文学的影响。他把他的观点加以扩大引申，做出了一个对美国国民特性的统括总结(这一总结直到现在还站得住脚)：“美国小说里典型的男性主人公是一个不停奔波的角色，他不是被追赶入林中就是被驱逐到海上河上，或是加入战争。他想方设法逃避‘文明’。而‘文明’意味着两性相遇而水到渠成的性爱，婚姻和责任。我们伟大的作品里决定主题和形式的因素之一就是这种逃避策略。这种向自然和童年的回归给了我们的文学(和生活)一种既让人着迷，又让人恼火的男孩子气。 ”
Huck Finn is for Fiedler the greatest archetype of this impulse, and he concludes “Love and Death” with a tour de force reading of Twain’s masterpiece. What Fiedler notes, and what most readers of “Huckleberry Finn” will recognize, is Twain’s continual juxtaposition of Huck’s innocence and instinctual decency with the corruption and hypocrisy of the adult world.
Huck’s “Pap” is a thorough travesty of paternal authority, a wretched, mean and dishonest drunk whose death is among the least mourned in literature. When Huck drifts south from Missouri, he finds a dysfunctional patriarchal order whose notions of honor and decorum mask the ultimate cruelty of slavery. Huck’s hometown represents “the world of belongingness and security, of school and home and church, presided over by the mothers.” But this matriarchal bosom is as stifling to Huck as the land of Southern fathers is alienating. He finds authenticity and freedom only on the river, in the company of Jim, the runaway slave, a friend who is by turns Huck’s protector and his ward.
哈克的“老爸”这一形象是对父权的彻底嘲讽。他是个卑劣、刻薄、狡诈的酒鬼。文学作品中一些人物的过世丝毫引不起人们的哀悼之心，哈克父亲就是其中一位。哈克从密苏里流浪到南方。在那里，他看到的是一个有缺陷的父权秩序。这种秩序企图用荣誉和礼节来掩盖奴隶制的极端残酷。哈克的故乡代表了一个“提供归属感和安全感的世界。生活围绕着由母亲们统领主持的学校，家庭和教会。”南方的父亲们使哈克感到疏离，而母系的温柔乡却又使他感到窒息。只有在河上，与逃跑的奴隶朋友吉姆(Jim)一起，他才找到了真实和自由。吉姆是哈克的保护者，而有时哈克还扮演了他的监护人的角色。
The love between this pair repeats a pattern Fiedler discerned in the bonds between Ishmael and Queequeg in “Moby-Dick” and Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels (which Twain famously detested). What struck Fiedler about these apparently sexless but intensely homoerotic connections was their cross-cultural nature and their defiance of heterosexual expectation. At sea or in the wilderness, these friends managed to escape both from the institutions of patriarchy and from the intimate authority of women, the mothers and wives who represent a check on male freedom.
费德勒注意到，哈克与吉姆之间的友爱在美国文学中成了一个模式。这种友情还存在于《白鲸》(Moby-Dick)中的以实玛利(Ishmael)和魁魁格(Queequeg)、詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库柏(James Fenimore Cooper)的《皮袜子》(Leatherstocking)系列小说(尽人皆知这部作品遭到吐温的憎恶)中的纳提·邦波(Natty Bumppo)和钦卡奇可(Chingachgook)之间。这些人物之间并无性爱发生，但是他们的关系却展示了一种强烈的同性之爱。让费德勒印象深刻的是这种关系跨越文化，并挑战了异性恋爱观。 这些朋友们漂泊在大海上，荒野中，他们不但成功逃脱了父权制度，还摆脱了女人们通过亲密关系树立的权威——在他们看来，母亲们和妻子们象征着对男人自由的约束。
Fiedler saw American literature as sophomoric. He lamented the absence of books that tackled marriage and courtship — for him the great grown-up themes of the novel in its mature, canonical form. Instead, notwithstanding a few outliers like Henry James and Edith Wharton, we have a literature of boys’ adventures and female sentimentality. Or, to put it another way, all American fiction is young-adult fiction.
费德勒认为美国文学幼稚不更事。他哀叹美国文学少有关于婚姻和恋爱的作品 。对他来说，只有涉及这些宏大的成人主题的小说才能成为成熟的经典之作。可是，除了像亨利·詹姆斯(Henry James)和伊迪斯·沃尔顿(Edith Wharton)这样的少数例外，美国文学要么是男孩子们的历险经历，要么就是关于女性的多愁善感。换句话说，所有的美国小说都是青少年文学。
The elevation of the wild, uncivilized boy into a hero of the age remained a constant even as American society itself evolved, convulsed and transformed. While Fiedler was sitting at his desk in Missoula, Mont., writing his monomaniacal tome, a youthful rebellion was asserting itself in every corner of the culture. The bad boys of rock ‘n’ roll and the pouting screen rebels played by James Dean and Marlon Brando proved Fiedler’s point even as he was making it. So did Holden Caulfield, Dean Moriarty, Augie March and Rabbit Angstrom — a new crop of semi-antiheroes in flight from convention, propriety, authority and what Huck would call the whole “sivilized” world.
把野蛮的、未开化的男孩子提升到时代英雄的地位， 这是美国文化中的常事。即使当美国社会自身经历发展，动荡和变革时，也还是如此。当费德勒坐在他位于蒙大拿州密苏拉的书桌前撰写他那偏执的著作时，一场年轻气盛的叛逆运动正如火如荼的开展，渗透了文化生活的各个角落。摇滚乐队的坏男孩们、詹姆斯·迪恩(James Dean)和马龙·白兰度(Marlon Brando)在银幕上塑造的郁郁寡欢的叛逆形象都证实了费德勒此时正在梳理阐述的观点。同样证明了他的观点还有霍尔顿·考尔菲德 (Holden Caulfield，《麦田里的守望者》里的主人公——译注)，迪恩· 莫里亚蒂(Dean Moriarty，杰克·凯鲁亚克《在路上》 的主人公——译注)，奥吉·玛琪(Augie March，索尔·贝娄《奥吉·玛琪历险记》中的主人公——译注)和哈利·安斯特罗姆(Rabbit Angstrom， 约翰·厄普代克《兔子四部曲》中的主人公——译注) 。这些角色逃离习俗、礼仪、权威和哈克所说的“瘟明”(sivilized)世界，是新涌现的一批并不完全彻底的反英雄人物。
From there it is but a quick ride on the Pineapple Express to Apatow. The Updikean and Rothian heroes of the 1960s and 1970s chafed against the demands of marriage, career and bureaucratic conformity and played the games of seduction and abandonment, of adultery and divorce, for high existential stakes, only to return a generation later as the protagonists of bro comedies. We devolve from Lenny Bruce to Adam Sandler, from “Catch-22” to “The Hangover,” from “Goodbye, Columbus” to “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin.”
从这些小说这里，美国文化顺理成章地发展到了贾得·阿帕图(Judd Apatow)的电影，快得就好像搭上了菠萝快车(阿帕图制片的一部电影叫Pineapple Express——译注)。厄普代克和菲利普·罗斯写于60和70年代作品里的主人公们反抗婚姻，职业对他们提出的要求，拒绝遵循官僚体制。他们以自己的存在为赌注，玩着引诱和抛弃，通奸和离婚的游戏。一代之后，他们又出现在我们的文化中，成了哥们儿喜剧电影中的主人公。美国文化一路退化，莱尼·布鲁斯 (Lenny Bruce)退化成了亚当·桑德勒(Adam Sandler)，《第22条军规》(Catch-22)成了《宿醉》(The Hangover)，《再见哥伦布》(Goodbye, Columbus)成了《四十岁的老处男》(The Forty-Year-Old Virgin)。
But the antics of the comic man-boys were not merely repetitive; in their couch-bound humor we can detect the glimmers of something new, something that helped speed adulthood to its terminal crisis. Unlike the antiheroes of eras past, whose rebellion still accepted the fact of adulthood as its premise, the man-boys simply refused to grow up, and did so proudly. Their importation of adolescent and preadolescent attitudes into the fields of adult endeavor (see “Billy Madison,” “Knocked Up,” “Step Brothers,” “Dodgeball”) delivered a bracing jolt of subversion, at least on first viewing. Why should they listen to uptight bosses, stuck-up rich guys and other readily available symbols of settled male authority?
但是这些男人孩们的荒唐滑稽之举并不只是对过去的重演。从他们赖在沙发上说的玩笑话里，我们能觉察到一些新东西，一些加速成人状态走向最后危机的东西。过去的反英雄人物们虽然叛逆，但是接受成人状态这个事实是他们叛逆的前提。而如今的这些男人孩们就是拒绝长大，并且以此为傲。他们用着青少年的态度干着成人的事(参见《阿呆闯学堂》[Billy Madison)、《一夜大肚》[Knocked Up]、《烂兄烂弟》[Step Brothers]和《疯狂闪避球》[Dodgeball])，体现了一种让人为之一振的叛逆感，至少在看第一遍这些电影时我们是这么想的。就是啊，他们为什么要听从拘谨的上司、自以为是的有钱人和其他一些滥俗的代表根深蒂固的男性权威的角色?
That was only half the story, though. As before, the rebellious animus of the disaffected man-child was directed not just against male authority but also against women. In Sandler’s early, funny movies, and in many others released under Apatow’s imprimatur, women are confined to narrowly archetypal roles. Nice mommies and patient wives are idealized; it’s a relief to get away from them and a comfort to know that they’ll take care of you when you return. Mean mommies and controlling wives are ridiculed and humiliated. Sexually assertive women are in need of being shamed and tamed. True contentment is only found with your friends, who are into porn and “Star Wars” and weed and video games and all the stuff that girls and parents just don’t understand.
但是，这只是故事的一半。就像之前文学作品中的人物一样，不服气的男人孩们(man-child)的叛逆敌意针对的不单单是男性权威，还有女性。在桑德勒早期的搞笑电影和他的许多由阿帕图制片的电影中，女性被限制于一些典型角色。亲切的母亲和耐心的妻子被理想化。离开她们是一种解脱，但是知道当你浪子回头时，她们会照顾你，这同时又是一种欣慰。刻薄的母亲和有控制欲的妻子在这些电影中遭到嘲笑和羞辱，而对性有明确要求的女性则需要被驯服并让她们知道羞耻。真正的满足感只能是和朋友们在一起时才能产生。男人孩和他的朋友们都喜爱色情电影、《星球大战》、大麻、电子游戏以及所有女人们和父母们不能理解的东西。
The bro comedy has been, at its worst, a cesspool of nervous homophobia and lazy racial stereotyping. Its postures of revolt tend to exemplify the reactionary habit of pretending that those with the most social power are really beleaguered and oppressed. But their refusal of maturity also invites some critical reflection about just what adulthood is supposed to mean. In the old, classic comedies of the studio era — the screwbally roller coasters of marriage and remarriage, with their dizzying verbiage and sly innuendo — adulthood was a fact. It was inconvertible and burdensome but also full of opportunity. You could drink, smoke, flirt and spend money. The trick was to balance the fulfillment of your wants with the carrying out of your duties.
在最糟糕的情况下，哥们儿喜剧片是同性恋憎恶恐惧症和丝毫没有创意的种族定型的肮脏杂烩。它的反叛立场是保守势力的一种惯用手段—这些最有社会权势的人却假装是被围困，被欺压的群体。但是这些电影对成长的抗拒又让观众对成人状态到底是什么产生了批判思考。在过去制品厂时代的经典喜剧电影里，那像疯狂过山车似的结婚、复婚，让人晕头转向的冗词赘语和心照不宣的暗示都说明了成年人状态是一个事实。这状态不可逆，职责繁重，但也提供了许多机会。成年人可以喝酒、抽烟、打情骂俏，还有钱可花。诀窍就是在满足欲求和履行职责之间找到平衡。
The desire of the modern comic protagonist, meanwhile, is to wallow in his own immaturity, plumbing its depths and reveling in its pleasures. Sometimes, as in the recent Seth Rogen movie “Neighbors,” he is able to do that within the context of marriage. At other, darker times, say in Adelle Waldman’s literary comedy of manners, “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.,” he will remain unattached and promiscuous, though somewhat more guiltily than in his Rothian heyday, with more of a sense of the obligation to be decent. It should be noted that the modern man-boy’s predecessors tended to be a lot meaner than he allows himself to be.
而现代喜剧主人公的心愿却是沉迷深陷于自己的不成熟，并以此为乐。有时，比如在赛斯·罗根(Seth Rogen)的新片《邻居》(Neighbors)中，他虽然已经成家，却也能如此照做 。另一些作品则要黑暗一些。比如在阿黛尔·沃德曼(Adelle Waldman)的小说《内森尼尔的情事》(The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.)中，他直到结尾还是孤身一人， 并没有摆脱滥交的生活方式，虽然与罗斯全盛期小说中的主人公相比，他更加感到了内疚，更加觉得自己有责任做一个正派的人。需要指出的是，现代男人孩的不堪还是有自己的底限的。而他的前辈们比他还要不堪的多。
But they also, at least some of the time, had something to fight for, a moral or political impulse underlying their postures of revolt. The founding brothers in Philadelphia cut loose a king; Huck Finn exposed the dehumanizing lies of America slavery; Lenny Bruce battled censorship. When Marlon Brando’s Wild One was asked what he was rebelling against, his thrilling, nihilistic response was “Whaddaya got?” The modern equivalent would be “. . .”
但前辈们却有奋斗的目标——至少这是他们生活的一部分。他们的反叛立场基于道德或是政治观念。费城的独立战友们赶走了一位国王;哈克·芬揭穿了美国奴隶制度没有人道的谎言;莱尼·布鲁斯挑战审查制度。当有人问马龙·白兰度饰演的飞车党大佬为什么叛逆时，他的虚无主义的回答激动人心：“你究竟有什么?”而让现代男人孩回答这个问题，答案可能会是：“…...”。
Maybe nobody grows up anymore, but everyone gets older. What happens to the boy rebels when the dream of perpetual childhood fades and the traditional prerogatives of manhood are unavailable? There are two options: They become irrelevant or they turn into Louis C. K. (fig. 5). Every white American male under the age of 50 is some version of the character he plays on “Louie,” a show almost entirely devoted to the absurdity of being a pale, doughy heterosexual man with children in a post-patriarchal age. Or, if you prefer, a loser.
可能不再有人长大，可是所有人都要变老。当永远童年的梦想消逝，而传统意义上男性特权又不可及时，男孩叛逆者们该怎么办呢?他们有两条出路：他们要不然被时代遗忘，要不就变成喜剧艺人路易斯·C·K(Louis C. K., 图5)。每个50岁以下的美国男性白种人都能在他《路易不容易》(Louie)里面的角色身上找到自己的影子。这整部剧差不多都是讲在后父权时代， 做一个苍白虚弱、有孩子的异性恋男人是多么的愚蠢荒诞 。如果你喜欢简单的概括，那这就是关于一个衰人的剧。
The humor and pathos of “Louie” come not only from the occasional funny feelings that he has about his privileges — which include walking through the city in relative safety and the expectation of sleeping with women who are much better looking than he is — but also, more profoundly, from his knowledge that the conceptual and imaginative foundations of those privileges have crumbled beneath him. He is the center of attention, but he’s not entirely comfortable with that. He suspects that there might be other, more interesting stories around him, funnier jokes, more dramatic identity crises, and he knows that he can’t claim them as his own. He is above all aware of a force in his life, in his world, that by turns bedevils him and gives him hope, even though it isn’t really about him at all. It’s called feminism.
《路易不容易》的幽默和伤感不但来自于路易有时对于自己所拥有特权的滑稽感受——包括能在城市里相对安全地穿行以及可以指望能和相貌远在自己之上的女人上床——还来自于他自知这些特权的概念和想象基础已经瓦解。他是大家的注意力中心，但是对于这一点他却不是十分自在。他怀疑在他周围还有别的更有趣的故事、更幽默的笑话、更戏剧化的身份危机，而这些他都无法据为己有。最重要的是，他意识到在他的生活和世界里有一股力量，时而折磨着他，又时而给他希望，尽管这力量实际上根本就没把他放在眼里。这就是女性主义。
Who is the most visible self-avowed feminist in the world right now? If your answer is anyone other than Beyoncé (fig. 6), you might be trying a little too hard to be contrarian. Did you see her at the V.M.A.'s, in her bejeweled leotard, with the word “feminist” in enormous illuminated capital letters looming on the stage behind her? A lot of things were going on there, but irony was not one of them. The word was meant, with a perfectly Beyoncé-esque mixture of poise and provocation, to encompass every other aspect of her complicated and protean identity. It explains who she is as a pop star, a sex symbol, the mother of a daughter and a partner in the most prominent African-American power couple not currently resident in the White House.
谁是现在世界上最受瞩目的自封女性主义者?如果你的答案不是碧昂斯(Beyoncé, 图6)，那你太费劲想要独树一帜了。你看到她在MTV音乐录音带大奖典礼上的表演了吗?她穿着一件点缀着珠宝的紧身连身衣，在她身后的舞台上浮现出来“女性主义者”这几个硕大的、 闪闪发光的大写字母。碧昂斯想要表达的东西很多，但是在这里她绝对没有任何讽刺意味。 “女性主义者”完美体现了碧昂斯一贯的自信和挑衅，这个词涵盖了她复杂多变身份的方方面面——她是流行巨星、性感符号、一个女儿的母亲、一位妻子——她和她的丈夫是白宫之外最有势力的美国黑人夫妻。
And while Queen Bey may be the biggest, most self-contradicting, most multitude-containing force in popular music at the moment, she is hardly alone. Taylor Swift recently described how, under the influence of her friend Lena Dunham, she realized that “I’ve been taking a feminist stance without saying so,” which only confirmed what anyone who had been listening to her smart-girl power ballads already knew. And while there will continue to be hand-wringing about the ways female singers are sexualized — cue the pro and con think pieces about Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea, Lady Gaga, Kesha and, of course, Madonna, the mother of them all — it is hard to argue with their assertions of power and independence. Take note of the extent and diversity of that list and feel free to add names to it. The dominant voices in pop music now, with the possible exception of rock, which is dad music anyway, belong to women. The conversations rippling under the surfaces of their songs are as often as not with other women — friends, fans, rivals and influences.
碧昂斯女王可能是现在流行音乐界最强大、最自相矛盾、最包容众生的一股力量。但是她并不是孤身一人。泰勒·斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)最近提到过在她的好友莉娜·杜汉姆(Lena Dunham)的影响下，她意识到“我一直就站在女性主义的立场上，尽管我没有明说”。她的民谣标榜让聪明女孩从中汲取力量，她的这番话只不过印证了听她歌的人早就知道的一件事。虽然大家对女性歌手被性感化会一直感到痛心疾首——这从赞扬或贬损妮琪·米娜(Nicki Minaj)、凯蒂·佩里(Katy Perry)、麦莉·赛勒斯(Miley Cyrus)、伊基·阿塞莉娅(Iggy Azalea)、Lady Gaga、凯莎(Kesha ) 和所有这些人的老祖宗麦当娜(Madonna)的评论文章中可见一斑——但是很难否认这些女性艺人对权力和独立的主张。刚才的名单可谓包罗万象，但是还可以再加进去很多名字。现今的流行音乐的主导声音属于女性。摇滚可能是个例外，但摇滚本来就是老男人的音乐。流动在她们音乐旋律之下的往往是跟别的女性的对话——和朋友、粉丝、对手和影响自己的人。
Similar conversations are taking place in the other arts: in literature, in stand-up comedy and even in film, which lags far behind the others in making room for the creativity of women. But television, the monument valley of the dying patriarchs, may be where the new cultural feminism is making its most decisive stand. There is now more and better television than there ever was before, so much so that “television,” with its connotations of living-room furniture and fixed viewing schedules, is hardly an adequate word for it anymore. When you look beyond the gloomy-man, angry-man, antihero dramas that too many critics reflexively identify as quality television — “House of Cards,” “Game of Thrones,” “True Detective,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “The Newsroom” — you find genre-twisting shows about women and girls in all kinds of places and circumstances, from Brooklyn to prison to the White House. The creative forces behind these programs are often women who have built up the muscle and the résumés to do what they want.
同样的对话也发生在别的艺术形式中：文学、单人脱口秀，甚至在电影中——而在包容女性创作方面，电影一直大大落后于其它形式。但是新的文化女性主义却是在电视这一垂死的男性家长的纪念谷里宣告了自己的鲜明立场。较之以前，现在的电视节目种类繁多，制作精良，以至于“电视”这个词再也不只是意味着客厅家具和固定节目表。许多评论家条件反射般的把关于抑郁的男人、愤怒的男人和反英雄角色的剧集奉为上佳之作，比如《纸牌屋》(House of Cards)、《权力的游戏》(Game of Thrones)、《真探》(True Detective)、《大西洋帝国》(Boardwalk Empire)和《新闻编辑室》(The Newsroom)。但是除了这些，还有很多以女性为主角的电视剧，讲述了从布鲁克林到监狱到白宫等各种地点状态下的女人和女孩们的故事 。这些节目幕后的创作人员往往是女性，她们积攒了实力和资历，可以不受牵制，依照自己的想法行事。
Many people forget that the era of the difficult TV men, of Tony and Don and Heisenberg, was also the age of the difficult TV mom, of shows like “Weeds,” “United States of Tara,” “The Big C” and “Nurse Jackie,” which did not inspire the same level of critical rapture partly because they could be tricky to classify. Most of them occupied the half-hour rather than the hourlong format, and they were happy to swerve between pathos and absurdity. Were they sitcoms or soap operas? This ambiguity, and the stubborn critical habit of refusing to take funny shows and family shows as seriously as cop and lawyer sagas, combined to keep them from getting the attention they deserved. But it also proved tremendously fertile.
许多人忘了这一点：托尼、唐和海森堡(Heisenberg,《绝命毒师》里主人公的别称——译注)这些电视里麻烦男人的时代同时也是电视里麻烦母亲的时代。像《单身毒妈》(Weeds)、《倒错人生》(United States of Tara)、《如果还有明天》(The Big C)和《护士当家》(Nurse Jackie)这样的剧没有让剧评家们同样欣喜若狂。这其中一部分原因是这些剧很难被划分到某个类别。它们不同于一小时剧集的模式，大多数一集只有半个小时。它们乐于在悲怆和荒唐两级之间游走 。它们究竟是情景喜剧还是肥皂剧?这种模棱两可，加上评论家们的固执——他们拒绝像看待警匪片和律政片那样严肃看待滑稽节目和家庭节目，使这些剧没有受到应有的重视。但同时，这些剧的模棱两可又给了它们巨大的发展空间。
The cable half-hour, which allows for both the concision of the network sitcom and the freedom to talk dirty and show skin, was also home to “Sex and the City,” in retrospect the most influential television series of the early 21st century. “Sex and the City” put female friendship — sisterhood, to give it an old political inflection — at the center of the action, making it the primary source of humor, feeling and narrative complication. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and its spinoffs did this in the 1970s. But Carrie (fig. 7) and her girlfriends could be franker and freer than their precursors, and this made “Sex and the City” the immediate progenitor of “Girls” and “Broad City,” which follow a younger generation of women pursuing romance, money, solidarity and fun in the city.
有线电视的半小时模式使节目可以像公共台情景喜剧那样简洁，同时又有讲脏话和裸露的自由。《欲望都市》(Sex and the City)就是这样。回想起来，《欲望都市》是21世纪早期最有影响力的电视剧了。这部剧以女性之间的友谊——“姐妹之情”听上去更有一种旧时代的政治意味——为剧情中心。这种友谊是剧中幽默、情感和叙事曲折的主要源泉。在70年代，玛丽·泰勒·摩尔秀(The Mary Tyler Moore Show)和它的一系列衍生节目也做到了这一点。但是凯莉(Carrie, 图7)和她的女友们比她们的前辈们更直率、更无所顾忌。这使得《欲望都市》成为《都市女郎》(Girls)和《宽镇日常》理所当然的前辈。这两部新剧讲述了年轻一代的女性们如何在都市里寻找爱情、财富、友情和乐趣。
Those series are, unambiguously, comedies, though “Broad City” works in a more improvisational and anarchic vein than “Girls.” Their more inhibited broadcast siblings include “The Mindy Project” and “New Girl.” The “can women be funny?” pseudo-debate of a few years ago, ridiculous at the time, has been settled so decisively it’s as if it never happened. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Amy Schumer, Aubrey Plaza, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes: Case closed. The real issue, in any case, was never the ability of women to get a laugh but rather their right to be as honest as men.
这两部剧毫无疑问都是喜剧，虽然《宽镇日常》比《都市女郎》更加给人一种即兴、没有章法的感觉。类似它们但更拘谨一点的电视节目还有《明迪烦事多》 (The Mindy Project)和《俏妞报到》(New Girl)。“女人能幽默吗?”这个几年前的伪命题讨论在当时就显得很荒谬， 现在这讨论已经盖棺定论，好像从来就没发生过。 蒂娜·菲(Tina Fey)、艾米·波勒(Amy Poehler)、艾米·舒摩尔(Amy Schumer)、奥布瑞·普拉扎(Aubrey Plaza)、萨拉·西尔弗曼(Sarah Silverman)和旺达·塞克斯(Wanda Sykes )——这些都是上面那个问题的答案。其实，真正的问题从来不是女人们能否博人一笑，而是她们有没有权利像男人们一样坦诚。
And also to be as rebellious, as obnoxious and as childish. Why should boys be the only ones with the right to revolt? Not that the new girls are exactly Thelma and Louise. Just as the men passed through the stage of sincere rebellion to arrive at a stage of infantile refusal, so, too, have the women progressed by means of regression. After all, traditional adulthood was always the rawest deal for them.
除了坦诚，她们也能像男人一样叛逆、令人讨厌和幼稚吗?谁说只有男孩们才能反叛?我并不是说新一代女孩就是《末路狂花》一模一样的翻版。就像男人们从真心实意的叛逆退化到幼稚的不接受现实，女人们的进化其实也是一个退化过程。毕竟，传统意义上的成年人状态对她们来说太不公平 。
Which is not to say that the newer styles of women’s humor are simple mirror images of what men have been doing. On the contrary. “Broad City,” with the irrepressible friendship of the characters played by Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson at its center, functions simultaneously as an extension and a critique of the slacker-doofus bro-posse comedy refined (by which I mean exactly the opposite) by “Workaholics” or the long-running web-based mini-sitcom “Jake and Amir.” The freedom of Abbi and Ilana, as of Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna and Jessa on “Girls” — a freedom to be idiotic, selfish and immature as well as sexually adventurous and emotionally reckless — is less an imitation of male rebellion than a rebellion against the roles it has prescribed. In Fiedler’s stunted American mythos, where fathers were tyrants or drunkards, the civilizing, disciplining work of being a grown-up fell to the women: good girls like Becky Thatcher, who kept Huck’s pal Tom Sawyer from going too far astray; smothering maternal figures like the kind but repressive Widow Douglas; paragons of sensible judgment like Mark Twain’s wife, Livy, of whom he said he would “quit wearing socks if she thought them immoral.”
这并不是说女人们新的幽默风格是对男性的简单模仿。相反，在《宽镇日常》里，由伊拉娜·格雷泽(Ilana Glazer)和艾比·雅各布森(Abbi Jacobson)饰演的两位角色之间的深厚友情是全剧的中心。这友情同时延展并批判了懒鬼蠢汉扎堆的哥儿们喜剧。《工作狂》(Workaholics) 和在网络上一直播出的迷你情景喜剧《杰克和阿米尔》(Jake and Amir)正在把哥儿们喜剧发扬光大(我是在说反话)。伊拉娜和艾比的自由，还有《都市女郎》里的汉娜(Hannah)、玛尼(Marnie)、芍珊娜 (Shoshanna)和杰萨(Jessa)的自由，是可以自由地愚蠢、自私、不成熟;自由地探索两性关系，自由地爱恨。她们的叛逆不是对男性叛逆的模仿，而是对她们所被指定的社会角色的叛逆。费德勒认为成长受阻是美国文学的一大主题。在美国文学作品中，父亲是暴君和酒鬼，作为一个成年人维持文明秩序的任务则落到了女性身上。在美国文学中有像贝琪·撒切尔(Becky Thatcher)这样的好姑娘，她牵制住哈克的朋友汤姆·索亚(Tom Sawyer)，防止他误入歧途得太远;还有像道格拉斯寡妇(Widow Douglas)那样善良但却管得太多，让人透不过气来的母亲形象;还有像马克·吐温的妻子丽薇(Livy)那样通晓事理的典范—关于他的妻子，吐温说过这么一句话：“如果她说穿袜子是不道德的行为，那我就会再也不穿。”
Looking at those figures and their descendants in more recent times — and at the vulnerable patriarchs lumbering across the screens to die — we can see that to be an American adult has always been to be a symbolic figure in someone else’s coming-of-age story. And that’s no way to live. It is a kind of moral death in a culture that claims youthful self-invention as the greatest value. We can now avoid this fate. The elevation of every individual’s inarguable likes and dislikes over formal critical discourse, the unassailable ascendancy of the fan, has made children of us all. We have our favorite toys, books, movies, video games, songs, and we are as apt to turn to them for comfort as for challenge or enlightenment.
通过这些女性人物和她们的近代后辈们，还有电视上那些不堪一击、穷途末路的男性家长们，我们可以看出，做为一个美国成年人，意味着总是沦为别人成长故事中的符号性人物。这可不是生活之道。在一个把人生第二春视为最大价值的文化中，这无异于一种道德死亡。而现在我们能避免这一命运。粉丝势力的稳固壮大，以及个人不容争辩的喜好憎恶盖过正式的评论话语， 让我们每一个人都成了孩子。我们有最喜爱的玩具、书籍、电影、电玩和歌曲。我们需要慰藉时会想到这些娱乐，在需要挑战和启迪时也同样如此。
Y.A. fiction is the least of it. It is now possible to conceive of adulthood as the state of being forever young. Childhood, once a condition of limited autonomy and deferred pleasure (“wait until you’re older”), is now a zone of perpetual freedom and delight. Grown people feel no compulsion to put away childish things: We can live with our parents, go to summer camp, play dodge ball, collect dolls and action figures and watch cartoons to our hearts’ content. These symptoms of arrested development will also be signs that we are freer, more honest and happier than the uptight fools who let go of such pastimes.
青少年文学只不过是最小的一方面。现在我们有可能把成年人状态想象成一种永远青春的状态。童年曾经是一种有限自主和推迟享乐(“等到你长大了。”)的阶段，现在是永远的自由和快乐。成人们不用放弃孩童之事：我们住在父母家，去夏令营，玩闪避球，收集娃娃和动作人偶，随心所欲地看卡通片。这些成长受阻的症状也是我们比那些放弃这些消遣的古板傻瓜们更自由、更诚实、更幸福的标志。
