138: The Real Thing - This American Life
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00:00 00:00 Transcript Share This American Life Life Partners How to Listen Episodes Recommended About Overview Staff Announcements Fellowships Jobs Music Make Radio On The Road FAQ Submissions Merch Contact Us Our Other Shows Merch Follow Us Life Partners Subscribe to our newsletter Full episode Toggle Audio and Transcript Sync Transcript | Episode #138 | August 27, 1999 138: The Real Thing Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard.
00:00 00:00 文字记录 分享此 美国生活 生活伙伴 如何收听 剧集 推荐 关于 概述 员工公告 奖学金 工作 音乐 在路上制作电台 常见问题解答 提交 商品 联系我们 我们的其他节目 商品 关注我们 生活伙伴 订阅我们的时事通讯 整集 切换音频和文字记录同步 文字记录 | 内容第 138 集 | 1999 年 8 月 27 日 138:真实的事情 注:《美国生活》是为耳朵而制作的,旨在让人们听到。
If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page.
如果可以的话,我们强烈建议您收听音频,其中包括页面上没有的情感和重点。
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
文字记录是使用语音识别软件和人工转录员结合生成的,可能包含错误。
Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
请在印刷版引用前检查相应的音频。
Prologue Ira Glass Jug Burkett is a businessman in Dallas, a Vietnam vet.
序言 艾拉·格拉斯·尤格·伯克特是达拉斯的一名商人,也是一名越南退伍军人。
And about 10 years ago, he was in charge of a campaign that was trying to build a memorial to honor Vietnam vets from Texas.
大约十年前,他负责一项运动,试图建立一座纪念碑来纪念德克萨斯州的越战老兵。
It wasn't easy.
这并不容易。
The immediate public reaction was, why should we give money for those bums?
公众的第一反应是,我们为什么要为这些流浪汉捐钱?
So Mr. Burkett started doing research so he could prove to people that most Vietnam vets are not bums.
因此,伯克特先生开始进行研究,以便向人们证明大多数越战老兵都不是流浪汉。
They have jobs.
他们有工作。
They didn't go crazy in the war.
他们并没有在战争中发疯。
They're leading utterly normal lives.
他们过着完全正常的生活。
Then, right in the middle of doing that, there was a murder here in Dallas.
然后,就在这样做的过程中,达拉斯发生了一起谋杀案。
A vagrant killed a policeman at a traffic stop.
一名流浪汉在交通站杀死了一名警察。
And the headlines basically said, Vietnam veteran goes berserk.
头条新闻基本上都在说,越战老兵发疯了。
And for a week, there were follow-up stories about how Vietnam made him do it.
一周以来,有关越南如何迫使他这么做的后续报道不断出现。
You were in the situation where this was going to hurt your fundraising efforts.
您所处的情况将损害您的筹款工作。
Well, it was hurting my fundraising.
嗯,这损害了我的筹款活动。
Every time a bad story like that appeared, I would get heckled by the people that I was trying to get money out of.
每当出现这样的坏故事时,我就会受到那些我想从中骗钱的人的质问。
Hey Burkett, I saw another one of your boys went crazy last night, kind of thing.
嘿伯克特,我昨晚看到你的另一个男孩发疯了,之类的。
Mr. Burkett is not the kind of man who sits by and idly watches things go to hell.
伯克特先生不是那种袖手旁观、袖手旁观的人。
He took action.
他采取了行动。
Anyway, I checked this particular fellow's individual military record, and it turned out he never served in Vietnam.
无论如何,我检查了这个人的个人军事记录,结果发现他从未在越南服役过。
He'd only been in the Navy three months and he got kicked out on a psychological charge.
他只在海军服役了三个月,就因心理指控而被开除。
We live in a world full of people faking this thing and that.
我们生活在一个充满了伪造这个或那个的人的世界。
And it turns out that spotting a fake Vietnam vet is one of the easier lies to get to the bottom of.
事实证明,发现一名假越战老兵是最容易查清真相的谎言之一。
Mr. Burkett started routinely checking the bona fides of anybody in the news who claimed to have served in the war.
伯克特开始例行检查新闻中任何自称曾参战的人的真实性。
He claims that he's found hundreds of fakers.
他声称他发现了数百名造假者。
He discovered some famous people fibbing about their service records to buff up their public images, like actor Brian Dennehy.
他发现一些名人为了提升自己的公众形象而谎报自己的服役记录,比如演员布莱恩·丹内利(Brian Dennehy)。
He found defendants in murder cases claiming to be war heroes hoping to beat the rap, or alternately, claiming that war made them crazy and they can't be held responsible.
他发现谋杀案中的被告声称自己是战争英雄,希望能够摆脱罪名,或者声称战争让他们发疯,他们不需要承担责任。
He found big public events misreported.
他发现重大公共事件被误报。
Do you remember the killing up in Edmond, Oklahoma?
您还记得俄克拉荷马州埃德蒙市的杀戮吗?
It was one of the first mass killings in the post office.
这是邮局发生的第一起大规模杀戮事件之一。
14 postal workers killed.
14名邮政工作人员遇难。
Well again, Vietnam veteran goes berserk story.
好吧,又是越南老兵发疯的故事。
I checked the man's military record.
我查了那个人的军事记录。
He never served in Vietnam.
他从未在越南服役。
And often, what's amazing about these cases is the outrageousness of the lies.
通常,这些案件的令人惊奇之处在于谎言的令人愤慨。
VA officials and career officers who fabricated and exaggerated among people who could easily catch them out.
退伍军人管理局官员和职业官员在容易被发现的人中捏造和夸大其词。
A soldier who is quoted extensively in the book, We Were Soldiers Once...
《我们曾经是士兵》一书中被广泛引用的一名士兵......
and Young , a history of the battle of Vietnam's Ia Drang Valley.
和Young,越南Ia Drang Valley战役的历史。
There's a man in there named Kreischer who is right in the middle of the battle.
那里有一个名叫克赖舍尔的人,他正处于战斗之中。
And of course, that thing is an oral history type thing.
当然,那件事是口述历史类型的事情。
It skips around.
它会跳来跳去。
And they're talking about being on the tree line and all this thing.
他们正在谈论在林木线上以及所有这些事情。
And Kreischer after the war actually founded their alumni group, started that.
克赖舍尔在战后实际上成立了他们的校友小组,开始了这一工作。
He then became a big fixture in the 1st Cav Division organization, ultimately became its president.
随后,他成为第一骑士分区组织的重要成员,并最终成为该组织的主席。
And somebody gave me a tip that this may not all quite be on the up and up.
有人给了我一个提示,这可能并不完全是好事。
And I got his military record.
我得到了他的军事记录。
The guy had been discharged four months before that battle.
那家伙在那场战斗前四个月就已经退伍了。
He wasn't in the battle and yet had convinced everybody who was in the battle that he was with them shoulder to shoulder.
他没有参加战斗,但却让所有参加战斗的人相信他与他们并肩作战。
He convinced the people in the same squad, the same platoon.
他说服了同一个班、同一个排的人。
He convinced the company commanders.
他说服了连长。
And not only did he convince them, they all elected him their president.
他不仅说服了他们,而且他们都选他为总统。
That's because the person who has to convince people that he is the real thing is going to do a much more aggressive job of being the real thing than the person who actually is the real thing.
这是因为,一个必须让人们相信他是真实的人,会比真正的人更加积极地做真实的工作。
You are going to know more about that battle than the people that were there.
你会比当时在场的人更了解那场战斗。
You're going to consume everything written about it.
你将会消耗关于它的所有内容。
You're going to send off for things.
你要去送东西了。
You're going to watch the documentaries.
你会看纪录片。
The guy who was there-- this was an episode that flashed by, and he went on to the next thing.
在那里的那个人——这一集一闪而过,然后他继续下一件事。
Well, today on our program, The Real Thing, stories of people drawn to some idea, some picture, some thing that they just want to be.
好吧,今天在我们的节目《真实的事情》中,讲述了人们被一些想法、一些图片、一些他们只想成为的东西所吸引的故事。
Some people doing it innocently, some less innocently, and how easy it is to slip from one to the other.
有些人是无辜地这样做的,有些人则不那么无辜,而且很容易从一种人滑到另一种人。
From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life .
来自芝加哥 WBEZ 和国际公共广播电台的《This American Life》。
I'm Ira Glass.
我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Act One of our program today, My Life With the Thrill Kill Cult, in which a woman, as part of her job, starts hanging around with some gang members and slowly finds herself changing the way she dresses, changing the way she talks, changing her cigarette brand to theirs.
我们今天的节目第一幕是《我与刺激杀戮邪教的生活》,其中一名妇女,作为工作的一部分,开始与一些帮派成员混在一起,慢慢地发现自己改变了自己的着装方式,改变了说话的方式,将自己的香烟品牌改为他们的品牌。
Act Two, Black Like Me, a story of hockey and basketball and what it means to be really black.
第二幕,像我一样的黑人,一个关于曲棍球和篮球的故事以及真正的黑人意味着什么。
Act Three, Drawl, what's it mean to talk like a real southerner, and why one multimillion dollar industry can't seem to figure it out.
第三幕,慢吞吞,像一个真正的南方人那样说话意味着什么,以及为什么一个价值数百万美元的行业似乎无法弄清楚这一点。
Act Four, Real Love, an illustration from Sandra Loh of the rule that if it seems too good to be true, well, maybe it isn't.
第四幕,真正的爱,桑德拉·罗(Sandra Loh)对这一规则的阐释:如果事情看起来好得令人难以置信,那么,也许事实并非如此。
Stay with us.
留在我们身边。
Act One.
第一幕。
Act One of our show today is the story of somebody who tried to get closer to the real thing and tried, and why in the end it did not go too well.
我们今天节目的第一幕讲述了一个人试图接近真实事物并尝试过的故事,以及为什么最终进展不顺利。
Kelly McEvers was a newspaper writer here in Chicago and started to get interested in stories that she was hearing about girl gang members.
凯莉·麦克埃弗斯 (Kelly McEvers) 是芝加哥的一名报纸撰稿人,她开始对她听到的有关女孩帮成员的故事感兴趣。
Now, she was somebody who did not know much about the gang world.
现在的她,已经是一个对黑帮世界不太了解的人了。
But she got an assignment and tried to get closer to the real thing.
但她接到了一项任务,并试图更接近真实的事情。
I bought a $50 car.
我买了一辆50美元的汽车。
It was a beat-up 1983 Dodge Shadow.
那是一辆破旧的 1983 款道奇 Shadow。
And I started just sort of riding around the neighborhood.
我开始在附近骑车。
I'd had a couple social workers through friends who'd said, if you stop by this one corner and ask for so-and-so, maybe he'll help you meet so-and-so.
我通过朋友认识了几位社会工作者,他们说,如果你在这个角落停下来询问某某,也许他会帮助你见到某某。
So that's how I did it.
我就是这么做的。
I'd go in the afternoons in my $50 car and just sort of drive around and ask for people.
下午我会开着我的 50 美元的车去,只是开着车到处找人。
And my first good connection was two twins, a set of twins, over in the Humboldt Park area.
我的第一个良好联系是两个双胞胎,一对双胞胎,在洪堡公园地区。
I drove up in my car and they thought I was a custy.
我开着车过来,他们以为我是个保安。
A custy meaning?
亲切的意思?
Kelly Mcevers Meaning someone who wants to purchase drugs.
Kelly Mcevers 意思是想要购买毒品的人。
Custy, short for customer, I guess.
我猜,Custy 是“顾客”的缩写。
So they came running up to my car.
于是他们就跑到我的车前。
And they're like, you straight?
他们就像,你是直的吗?
You straight?
你直吗?
What you need?
你需要什么?
What you want?
你想要什么?
And I was like, well, that's not really what I'm doing here.
我当时想,好吧,这并不是我在这里做的事情。
I'm a friend of so-and-so's and I'm a reporter and I want to know about girls.
我是某某的朋友,我是一名记者,我想了解女孩的情况。
And they said, oh, you want to know about girls?
他们说,哦,你想了解女孩吗?
And they jumped in my car and we went riding around.
他们跳上我的车,我们就到处骑车。
And that's how it got started.
事情就是这样开始的。
And so at first when you were hanging around with them, you kept a little glossary for yourself?
所以一开始当你和他们一起闲逛时,你为自己保留了一些词汇表?
Yeah.
是的。
It was pretty academic.
这非常学术化。
I tried to write down all of the strange words that they said that I didn't understand, and then, of course, use them in a sentence as well.
我尝试写下他们说的所有我不明白的奇怪单词,然后当然也将它们用在句子中。
I know.
我知道。
Ira Glass What would you do when you would just hang out with them?
当你和他们一起出去玩时,艾拉·格拉斯(Ira Glass)你会做什么?
Hanging out is a lot of driving around and seeing who's where and who's doing what with whom, and then going to the next spot and gossiping about what you saw at the last spot.
出去玩就是开车到处走走,看看谁在哪里,谁和谁一起做什么,然后去下一个地点,八卦你在上一个地点看到的东西。
They're 17 years old.
他们今年17岁。
There's really not that much going on.
确实没有那么多事情发生。
They don't go to school.
他们不去学校。
They don't work.
他们不工作。
There's just not a lot to talk about except each other.
除了彼此之间,没什么可说的。
And there was always someone fighting with someone.
而且总是有人与某人打架。
There was always some sort of drama going on.
总有一些戏剧性的事情在上演。
At any given time in the day, some girl was mad at somebody else.
在一天中的任何特定时间,某个女孩都会生别人的气。
And it was more that it was different than anything I'd ever known than it being really this criminally exciting experience that I thought it was going to be.
更重要的是,它与我所知道的任何事情都不同,而不是我认为这确实是一次令人兴奋的犯罪经历。
Well, it sounds like the excitement was simply the excitement of being in high school, even though they weren't in high school.
嗯,听起来兴奋就是高中时的兴奋,尽管他们没有上高中。
But basically, it was the excitement of being 17.
但基本上,这是 17 岁的兴奋。
Slowly-- and I don't know when this started to happen, because I really wasn't conscious of it.
慢慢地——我不知道这是什么时候开始发生的,因为我真的没有意识到这一点。
The only reason I know it happened is because my friends tell me now.
我知道这件事发生的唯一原因是因为我的朋友现在告诉我。
I started to dress a little bit differently.
我开始穿得有点不同。
I started wearing lots of sports T-shirts and jeans and sweatpants and platform shoes, and pulling my hair back, and wearing darker lipstick, and just starting to fit in-- trying to fit in-- all for the sake of the story of course, in my mind at the time.
我开始穿很多运动T恤、牛仔裤、运动裤和厚底鞋,把头发向后梳,涂上深色的口红,然后开始融入——试图融入——当然,这一切都是为了故事,在我当时的脑海里。
How were you talking?
你说得怎么样?
Kelly Mcevers Just a little bit with an edge.
凯莉·麦克弗斯 (Kelly Mcevers) 只是有一点优势。
"Hey, Kelly.
“嘿,凯莉。
Whassup?
什么事?
How you doin' Pista?
你怎么样?皮斯塔?
Oh, what's goin' on?" You know, just a little bit.
噢,这是怎么回事?”你知道,只是一点点。
Maybe that sounds like a lot.
也许这听起来很多。
But if you're standing around with a group of people, you want to sort of fit in.
但如果你和一群人站在一起,你就会想要融入其中。
A little bit of that, a little bit of "damn," you know.
一点点,一点点“该死的”,你知道。
"Oh, look at him.
“哦,看看他。
He's fine." You know, maybe not "foyne." I wouldn't say it like that.
他很好。”你知道,也许不是“foyne”。我不会那样说。
But just a little, "fine." You know, something.
但只是一点点,“好吧”。你知道,有什么。
And definitely sort of a little more head movement and gesturing that I wouldn't do before.
当然,我以前不会做更多的头部运动和手势。
At one point, you took them to this restaurant Leo's?
有一次,你带他们去了 Leo’s 餐厅?
Yeah.
是的。
Ira Glass OK, this is this sort of hipster restaurant here in Chicago.
Ira Glass 好吧,这就是芝加哥的时髦餐厅。
And so what happens?
那么会发生什么呢?
I'm sort of doing an interview with them.
我正在对他们进行采访。
But it just turns into very funny conversation.
但这只是变成了非常有趣的谈话。
They're very loud and opinionated.
他们声音很大,固执己见。
And at one point, a young woman who looks like a rock star says to Linda, this girl that I'm interviewing, "Is anyone using that chair?"
有一次,一位看起来像摇滚明星的年轻女子对我正在采访的琳达说:“有人用那把椅子吗?”
And she's like, "Yeah, my foot." And she's just kidding really.
她说:“是的,我的脚。”她真的只是在开玩笑。
But this girl's very upset and sort of offended.
但这女孩非常沮丧并且有点被冒犯了。
And she's like, "No, no, no, you can have my chair.
她说:“不,不,不,你可以坐我的椅子。
I'm just kidding.
我只是开玩笑。
I'm just kidding, honey."
我只是开玩笑,亲爱的。”
And she's like, "Yeah, whatever.
她就像,“是的,无论如何。
It's OK," or something.
没关系,”什么的。
Like, "I don't need your chair anyway." And it was so funny to me.
就像,“无论如何我不需要你的椅子。”这对我来说太有趣了。
Because I got to be on their side of it.
因为我必须站在他们一边。
I was with them as they were fighting with someone who normally would be me, I guess.
我和他们在一起,因为他们正在和通常是我的人打架,我猜。
So how far did it go?
那么它走了多远?
Kelly Mcevers I was working with a photographer.
Kelly Mcevers 我正在和一位摄影师一起工作。
And she had just come on as a photographer from another city and was really trying to make a good impression and was trying to be very professional about the whole thing.
她刚刚从另一个城市成为一名摄影师,真的很想给人留下好印象,并试图在整个事情上表现得非常专业。
And I feel so bad because I think I sucked her into this whole thing.
我感觉很糟糕,因为我觉得我把她卷入了这整件事。
And so one night we were driving around with a bunch of people on our way to the beach.
有一天晚上,我们和一群人开车去海滩。
And we had two carloads of people and she was driving.
我们有两车人,她开车。
And all of a sudden, the other car full of mostly gang guys-- we were with some gang guys too-- started racing us.
突然,另一辆车上满是帮派成员——我们也和一些帮派成员一起——开始与我们比赛。
They took off from the light and started to fool around.
他们离开灯光,开始鬼混。
We were going down Fullerton Avenue, a very busy street, going eastbound toward the lake.
我们沿着富勒顿大道,一条非常繁忙的街道,向东向湖边行驶。
And so the guys in our car were like, "Come on, Heather.
所以我们车里的人就像,“来吧,希瑟。
Come on, you can do it.
来吧,你能做到的。
Just bust through these lights."
只要冲破这些灯光就可以了。”
And she's like, "No. I can't do that.
她说:“不。我不能那样做。
No. I can't do that."
不,我不能那样做。”
So I'm behind her going, "Come on, Heather.
所以我在她身后说道:“来吧,希瑟。
Come on.
来吧。
We really got to do this.
我们确实必须这样做。
I mean, they'll really think we're cool." That wasn't what I was saying, but that was what I was thinking.
我的意思是,他们真的会认为我们很酷。”我不是这么说的,但我是这么想的。
Like, you've got to do this, Heather.
就像,你必须这样做,希瑟。
You have to do it.
你必须这么做。
And she didn't want to do it.
而她不想这么做。
And she did.
她做到了。
She did?
她做到了?
She ran the lights?
她开灯了?
Kelly Mcevers She ran the lights.
凯莉·麦克弗斯 她负责控制灯光。
She drove 75 miles an hour on Fullerton Avenue.
她在富勒顿大道上以每小时 75 英里的速度行驶。
And she won.
她赢了。
And so were you right?
那么你是对的吗?
Did they respect you after that?
后来他们尊重你了吗?
I don't think they respected us.
我不认为他们尊重我们。
For the night, yes.
过夜,是的。
Did it last throughout these months where I thought I was going to get this great story?
这几个月我是否一直认为自己会得到这个精彩的故事?
Probably not.
可能不会。
That night, yeah.
那天晚上,是的。
"Oh Heather, you're so cool." We got back to the neighborhood.
“噢,希瑟,你真酷。”我们回到了小区。
She was very popular that night.
那天晚上她很受欢迎。
"You shoulda seen her go.
“你应该看着她走。
We didn't think a white chick could do that, but--" You know, that sort of thing.
我们不认为一只白色小鸡能做到这一点,但是——”你知道,那种事情。
Did it occur to you at any point during that-- I have crossed a line?
在那期间你有没有想过——我已经越界了?
No. Not then.
不,那时不行。
There was a point, and I don't know when it was, that I just sort of stopped taking notes, stopped interviewing people, and just started living with them and not being someone who was documenting them.
有一点,我不知道是什么时候,我只是停止做笔记,停止采访人们,而是开始和他们一起生活,而不是成为一个记录他们的人。
And when you think about it, what happened?
当你想一想,发生了什么?
I guess I just thought everything was becoming a means to an end, that the more time I spent with them, I would eventually have that one experience that then I would take notes.
我想我只是认为一切都成为达到目的的手段,我和他们在一起的时间越多,我最终就会有这样的经历,然后我会记下笔记。
I think that's how I explained it to myself.
我想这就是我向自己解释的方式。
You kept expecting that there might be some other deeper gang experience than the one you were having?
你一直期待着可能会有比你所经历的更深刻的帮派经历吗?
Right.
正确的。
Ira Glass It's interesting, because in a way what you're saying is that you expected that this just sort of hanging around-- well, this isn't the real gang life.
艾拉·格拉斯(Ira Glass):这很有趣,因为从某种程度上来说,你所说的是你期望这只是一种闲逛——嗯,这不是真正的帮派生活。
The real gang life is still those fights and shootings which are about to happen.
真正的帮派生活仍然是那些即将发生的打斗和枪击事件。
So you were expecting that at some point, I'm going to be so inside, they're going to take me to that, not realizing that the actual gang life is actually just hanging around on the street gossiping about who is whose girlfriend.
所以你以为在某个时候,我会很内向,他们会带我去那里,却没有意识到真正的帮派生活实际上只是在街上闲逛,八卦谁是谁的女朋友。
And selling drugs.
还有贩卖毒品。
And fighting about who should have the drugs and who owes who $10 and who slept with whose boyfriend.
还为谁应该拥有毒品、谁欠谁 10 美元以及谁和谁的男朋友睡了而争论不休。
Before you got into this situation, what did you think the appeal of that life would be, gang life?
在你遇到这种情况之前,你认为那种生活的吸引力是什么,帮派生活?
I thought it would be, like I said, much more criminal.
正如我所说,我认为这会更加犯罪。
I thought I would see big gang fights.
我以为我会看到大规模的帮派斗争。
Not like the Jets or anything in West Side Story , but I really thought that I would see groups of people fighting each other.
不像喷气机队或西区故事中的任何东西,但我真的认为我会看到一群人互相争斗。
And I've heard numerous stories about these types of fights.
我听过很多关于此类打架的故事。
But I never saw them.
但我从未见过他们。
So even from my initial interviews, the stories that I was hearing about what was going on in these neighborhoods, I thought I would see that.
因此,即使从我最初的采访、我听到的有关这些社区正在发生的事情的故事来看,我也认为我会看到这一点。
I never saw anyone get hurt.
我从未见过有人受伤。
I saw a drive-by shooting blocks away, a car driving by and shooting at someone.
我看到几个街区外有一辆汽车开枪射击,一辆汽车驶过并向某人开枪。
They weren't hurt.
他们没有受伤。
I'm saying this like I'm disappointed.
我这么说好像我很失望。
I didn't see this overly criminal life that I thought I was going to see.
我没有看到我以为我会看到的这种过度犯罪的生活。
And is that because it wasn't actually going on?
这是因为事情实际上并没有发生吗?
Well, yes.
嗯,是的。
At least in this particular gang, it's about business.
至少在这个特定的帮派中,这是关于生意的。
It's about making money and selling drugs.
就是为了赚钱和卖毒品。
But selling drugs is a criminal activity.
但贩卖毒品是一种犯罪活动。
And seeing them sell drugs is witnessing a criminal business.
看到他们贩卖毒品就等于目睹了犯罪活动。
That's true.
这是真的。
Mm-hmm.
嗯嗯。
I guess I became as blase about it as everyone else in the neighborhood.
我想我和附近的其他人一样对此感到厌倦。
Did you worry at any point that you were fetishizing, that it's easy to fetishize what these lives were like?
你有没有担心过自己迷恋,担心很容易迷恋这些生活?
Yeah.
是的。
Yeah, definitely.
是的,绝对是。
Ira Glass Tell me about that.
艾拉·格拉斯 跟我讲一下吧。
Yeah.
是的。
It made really great anecdotes.
这确实产生了很棒的轶事。
And people thought it was very funny.
人们认为这很有趣。
I mean, it is funny.
我的意思是,这很有趣。
But it's also very serious, what their lives are like.
但这也很严重,他们的生活是什么样的。
Even though they just sort of hang out and sell a couple drugs here and there, they still know what it's like to find your boyfriend dead in a car.
尽管他们只是闲逛并到处卖几种毒品,但他们仍然知道发现你的男朋友死在车里是什么感觉。
Death is always sort of present.
死亡总是存在的。
Is it your impression that the fantasy is spinning through their heads as well?
你的印象是他们的脑子里也有这样的幻想吗?
Yeah, absolutely.
是的,绝对是。
Ira Glass How do they see it?
艾拉·格拉斯 他们怎么看?
I believed their perception of themselves.
我相信他们对自己的看法。
They see it as very-- the life, the world.
他们将其视为生活、世界。
You have to live the life to know the life, this very, very hard place to be.
你必须经历过生活才能了解生活,这是一个非常非常艰难的地方。
Yet they wouldn't be anywhere else.
但他们不会在其他任何地方。
In their minds, is it this glamorous, criminal, outsider life?
在他们的心目中,这就是这种光鲜亮丽、犯罪、局外人的生活吗?
Oh, yeah.
哦,是的。
Yeah.
是的。
Ira Glass But is the life that you're leading the life that you're actually leading or the life that you tell yourself you're leading?
艾拉·格拉斯(Ira Glass):但是你现在过的生活是你真正过的生活,还是你告诉自己你现在过的生活?
For me at the time, it was the one I was telling myself I was leading.
对当时的我来说,这是我告诉自己我正在领导的。
But I mean, I think it's easy to make that sound sort of silly.
但我的意思是,我认为这很容易让人听起来有点愚蠢。
But I have to say, there are a lot of people who are going through life with a little movie in their head that's different than what's actually happening.
但我不得不说,有很多人的生活中,脑子里都是一部小电影,与实际发生的情况不同。
So maybe I shouldn't be so upset about doing this.
所以也许我不应该因为这样做而感到如此沮丧。
I thought, and still do think, that I had the greatest job in the world when I did this story.
当我写这个故事时,我认为,现在仍然认为,我拥有世界上最伟大的工作。
If I can do this, if I can hang out, if I can become somebody else for a summer, that's a great job.
如果我能做到这一点,如果我可以出去玩,如果我可以在一个夏天变成另一个人,那就是一份很棒的工作。
Kelly McEvers.
凯莉·麦克埃弗斯。
[MUSIC- "I AM A CLICHE" BY X-RAY SPEX]
[音乐-X-RAY SPEX 的“我是陈词滥调”]
Act Two, Black Like Me.
第二幕,像我一样的黑人。
Well, our program today is about what happens when you try to turn yourself into the real thing, some notion of the real thing, an idea which is always a kind of fiction, a kind of cliche.
好吧,我们今天的节目是关于当你试图把自己变成真实的东西时会发生什么,真实的东西的一些概念,一个永远是一种虚构、一种陈词滥调的想法。
Glenn Loury is a professor at Boston University.
格伦·劳里是波士顿大学教授。
He's written a fair amount about black people trying to define what it is to be a real black person.
他写了很多关于黑人的文章,试图定义什么是真正的黑人。
He does not like the idea of cultural uniformity.
他不喜欢文化统一的想法。
I remember him once actually defending the notion that if a black person likes Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, then that is still a black thing to do, because a black person is doing it.
我记得他有一次实际上捍卫了这样一种观念:如果一个黑人喜欢克罗斯比、斯蒂尔斯、纳什和杨,那么那仍然是黑人要做的事情,因为黑人正在这样做。
He rejects a kind of rigid cultural conformity, as I say.
正如我所说,他拒绝某种严格的文化整合。
But recently he had this experience with his son.
但最近他和儿子就有了这样的经历。
Oh, this was in South Suburban Boston.
哦,这是在波士顿南郊。
We were walking in one of the forest preserves around here-- a Sunday, mid-afternoon, it was in the winter time-- just to get out and find something to do.
我们在这附近的一个森林保护区散步——一个星期天,下午三点左右,当时是冬天——只是想出去找点事做。
So we'd driven into the forest and parked and were just walking along.
所以我们把车开进森林,停好车,然后沿着路走。
And yeah, we stumbled on this frozen lake.
是的,我们偶然发现了这个结冰的湖。
And there were guys out there playing hockey.
还有人在那里打曲棍球。
And my son, who at the time was probably three or four years old, was really interested in what was going on and started squealing and straining to get away from me.
我的儿子当时可能只有三四岁,他对正在发生的事情非常感兴趣,并开始尖叫并努力摆脱我。
He would have run out on the ice and joined them if I'd have let him.
如果我允许的话,他一定会跑到冰上加入他们。
And all I could think about was, all of these guys are white.
我所能想到的就是,所有这些人都是白人。
They were all New England guys who liked to play hockey.
他们都是喜欢打曲棍球的新英格兰人。
And I didn't want my son out there doing that.
我不想让我的儿子在那里做那样的事。
I wanted him to play basketball or something respectable.
我希望他打篮球或者做一些值得尊敬的事情。
Some of those things die hard.
其中一些东西很难消亡。
And even when I had this intellectual position rejecting that kind of imposition of cultural uniformity in the name of blackness, still, when it came down to my kid and what his enthusiasms would be, I had rather hoped they'd be closer to something that I could recognize from my growing up on the South Side of Chicago.
即使我的知识分子立场拒绝以黑人的名义强加这种文化统一性,但当涉及到我的孩子和他的热情时,我还是希望他们能更接近我在芝加哥南区长大时能认识到的东西。
Sadly, my kid is growing up on the South Side of Boston.
可悲的是,我的孩子在波士顿南区长大。
John Simpkins grew up in Lexington, South Carolina, a small town in a segregated black neighborhood.
约翰·辛普金斯在南卡罗来纳州列克星敦长大,这是一个位于种族隔离黑人社区的小镇。
It was tightly knit.
它被紧密地编织在一起。
On his block, six of the houses were relatives.
在他所在的街区,有六栋房子是亲戚。
But when he went away to college at Harvard, he found that other black students had a very different picture of what it meant to be black in America.
但当他去哈佛大学上大学时,他发现其他黑人学生对美国黑人的含义有着截然不同的看法。
The students who weren't from small towns had this very definite image of blackness and what it meant to be an African American.
非来自小镇的学生对黑人有着非常明确的印象,也知道作为非裔美国人意味着什么。
And in most cases, that image was rooted more in Western Africa, or in Africa in general, instead of the South.
在大多数情况下,这种形象更多地植根于西非,或者整个非洲,而不是南部。
And I thought the ironic thing was that students who weren't from the South tended to look down upon the South if you weren't from Miami or Atlanta or one of the huge Southern cities.
我认为具有讽刺意味的是,如果你不是来自迈阿密或亚特兰大或南方大城市之一,那么非南方的学生往往会看不起南方。
Anyone who wasn't from any of those areas was viewed as being kind of backward.
任何不来自这些地区的人都会被视为落后。
In their view, was it almost an inauthentic black experience?
在他们看来,这几乎是一次不真实的黑人经历吗?
I think they viewed it as being a powerless black experience.
我认为他们认为这是一种无能为力的黑人经历。
There was an embrace of this sort of radical black nationalism, at least the words of radical black nationalism, with very little of the actions of radical black nationalism.
人们拥抱这种激进的黑人民族主义,至少是激进黑人民族主义的言论,但激进黑人民族主义的行动却很少。
What did their backgrounds tend to be?
他们的背景往往是什么?
Where were they from?
他们来自哪里?
Most of them tended to be from cities, mostly Northern cities.
他们大多数来自城市,尤其是北方城市。
A lot of them were from, at least in my mind, fairly well-off or at least middle-class families.
至少在我看来,他们中的很多人都来自相当富裕或至少是中产阶级家庭。
And as far as you were concerned, was it that the sense of identity and group identity that they wanted, that's something you felt like you just had when you were growing up in the South in a small town?
就你而言,他们想要的认同感和群体认同感是你在南方小镇长大时所感受到的吗?
Right.
正确的。
Glenn Loury We do live in a community where we're the only black family on this block.
Glenn Loury:我们确实生活在一个社区,我们是这个街区唯一的黑人家庭。
Now, the school that our boys go to is a thoroughly integrated school.
现在,我们孩子们就读的学校是一所完全一体化的学校。
25% of the student body is Japanese-speaking.
25%的学生讲日语。
But the kind of close-knit and all-encompassing experience of a black community, which both my wife and I knew growing up, is not something that they're ever going to have.
但我和我的妻子在成长过程中都知道,黑人社区的那种紧密联系和包罗万象的经历是他们永远不会拥有的。
And yet, we think the issue of race is sufficiently important.
然而,我们认为种族问题足够重要。
We want them to be able to feel comfortable with their racial identity, to be able to not have to get to be 18 years old and then go off to college and all of a sudden determine that they're going to have to find out what this blackness is about.
我们希望他们能够对自己的种族身份感到满意,能够不必等到 18 岁然后去上大学,然后突然决定他们必须找出这种黑人的含义。
That was one of the more disturbing aspects of it.
这是其中更令人不安的方面之一。
And that there was this attitude of hip radicalism embraced by people who really hadn't experienced what it meant to be on the other side of that coin.
这种时髦激进主义的态度受到那些真正没有经历过硬币另一面意味着什么的人的欢迎。
The other side being?
对方是?
John Simpkins Being growing up either-- whether in the city or even in a small town-- in a lower-middle-class or lower-class family.
约翰·辛普金斯(John Simpkins)无论是在城市还是在小镇,都在中下阶层或下层家庭中长大。
And did you view a lot of this as just posing?
你是否认为这只是摆拍?
I viewed a lot of it as posing.
我认为很多都是在摆姿势。
And I thought that there was little opportunity to discuss the range of what it meant to be a black person in America.
我认为几乎没有机会讨论作为美国黑人意味着什么。
I mean, one of the things that my wife and I live most in fear of is that having neglected attention to this question earlier in the children's life, they will then rebel later on and lapse into some kind of formulaic blackness that is stilted and narrow.
我的意思是,我和我的妻子最担心的一件事是,在孩子们生命的早期忽视了对这个问题的关注,他们随后就会反抗并陷入某种生硬而狭隘的公式化黑暗。
We want them to think you can learn the Japanese language, or the Arabic language, for that matter, or you can learn to play the cello and still be black.
我们希望他们认为你可以学习日语或阿拉伯语,或者你可以学习拉大提琴,但仍然是黑人。
There's nothing un-black or uncool about any of those activities.
这些活动都没有什么不黑或不酷的地方。
Is there a part of you where you feel like your kids are missing something by not growing up in a segregated black community?
您是否觉得您的孩子因为没有在种族隔离的黑人社区长大而错过了某些东西?
Yeah.
是的。
They're missing something.
他们缺少一些东西。
But it's OK.
但没关系。
This is the way of the world.
这就是世界的方式。
There are benefits and there are costs.
有好处也有成本。
And I think the costs outweigh the benefits of living in that kind of society.
我认为生活在这种社会中的成本超过了好处。
Our kids take a lot of stuff for granted.
我们的孩子认为很多东西是理所当然的。
They just assume that the world is their oyster.
他们只是假设世界是他们的牡蛎。
They don't have to overcome some barriers or to make some discovery that they can do anything.
他们不必克服一些障碍或发现他们可以做任何事情。
They take it for granted that everything is possible for them.
他们理所当然地认为一切皆有可能。
And I don't think that kind of sensibility can be fostered when you're living in a ghetto.
我认为当你生活在贫民区时,这种情感是不可能培养出来的。
It's very clear that everything is not possible for you.
很明显,一切对你来说都是不可能的。
That's why it's a ghetto.
这就是为什么它是一个贫民窟。
A lot of them grew up in integrated environments.
他们中的许多人是在集成环境中成长的。
And in a few cases, there were even kids who had gone to the best schools and had the best educations, from Exeter or Andover, schools of that sort, who came to college.
在少数情况下,甚至有一些孩子曾就读于最好的学校并接受过最好的教育,来自埃克塞特或安多弗之类的学校,他们进入了大学。
And it became their political awakening.
这成为他们的政治觉醒。
But what I found interesting was that once college was over, they returned to this lifestyle that they had led before they left to go to college.
但我发现有趣的是,大学毕业后,他们又回到了上大学之前的生活方式。
Explain that a little more.
稍微解释一下。
What do you mean?
你是什么意思?
This is where a lot of the comparisons between the black middle class, or the black student population at Harvard, and the white middle-class students really comes into play.
这就是黑人中产阶级或哈佛黑人学生群体与白人中产阶级学生之间的很多比较真正发挥作用的地方。
Especially during the '60s, when a lot of white students went away to school and engaged in experimental activity, they left and took jobs in the corporate world.
特别是在20世纪60年代,当许多白人学生离开学校并从事实验活动时,他们离开并进入企业界工作。
Or a lot of people would say that they sold out.
或者很多人会说卖完了。
And I don't even think that that's necessarily the case.
我什至认为情况不一定如此。
But the same things happened with the black students at Harvard, in that there was a lot of posturing.
但同样的事情也发生在哈佛的黑人学生身上,他们有很多故作姿态。
It was a heavily politicized environment.
这是一个高度政治化的环境。
But really once the rubber met the road, those were the same students who took jobs on Wall Street or who went to law school or who went to business school.
但实际上,一旦真正上路,那些在华尔街工作、上法学院或商学院的学生就都是这些学生。
So their college activism was just a little pleasurable hiatus from the identities that they had had before and the identities they were going to have after?
那么,他们的大学活动只是他们之前拥有的身份和之后将拥有的身份之间的一个令人愉快的间歇?
Right.
正确的。
Right.
正确的。
Glenn Loury I know that my boys will be black in a way so very different from that which characterized my own life.
格伦·洛里(Glenn Loury) 我知道我的孩子们将以一种与我自己的生活截然不同的方式成为黑人。
And my thinking now is that the best thing is that they wear that racial identity lightly.
我现在的想法是,最好的事情是他们轻松地表现出种族身份。
Not that they'd be indifferent to their blackness or ashamed of it, or look at it as an irrelevancy, but that I'd hope that they would be able to be black in a way that leaves them flexible and adaptable and open and not parochial and narrow.
并不是说他们对自己的黑人身份漠不关心或感到羞耻,或者认为这是无关紧要的,而是我希望他们能够以一种让他们灵活、适应性强、开放、而不是狭隘和狭隘的方式成为黑人。
Glenn Loury and John Simpkins.
格伦·劳里和约翰·辛普金斯。
Coming up, a man calls Robert De Niro chicken to his face.
走上前来,一名男子当面称罗伯特·德尼罗为“小鸡”。
Well, not really to his face, but it's still kind of interesting.
好吧,虽然不是当着他的面,但这仍然很有趣。
That's in a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues.
一分钟后,国际公共广播电台将继续我们的节目。
It's This American Life .
这就是美国生活。
I'm Ira Glass.
我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of different kinds of people to tackle that theme with a variety of different kinds of stories.
当然,在我们的节目中,我们每周都会选择一个主题,邀请各种不同类型的人通过各种不同类型的故事来解决该主题。
Today's program, The Real Thing, stories of people trying to live up to some ideal, or refusing to.
今天的节目《真实的事情》讲述了人们试图实现或拒绝实现某种理想的故事。
We have arrived at Act Three of our program.
我们已经到了我们计划的第三幕了。
Act Three, Drawl.
第三幕,拖长声。
There are tens of millions of real Southerners in this country.
这个国家有数千万真正的南方人。
They shop.
他们购物。
They live among us.
他们生活在我们中间。
They look just like you and me, my friend.
他们看起来就像你和我,我的朋友。
But one industry does not seem to notice the reality.
但有一个行业似乎并没有注意到这一现实。
Writer Mark Schone is a Southern expatriate who has noticed.
作家马克·舍恩(Mark Schone)是一位南方侨民,他注意到了这一点。
My wife and I, since we'd been in lock-down with each other, oh, these past nine years, have developed a bit of shorthand.
我和我的妻子,自从我们彼此隔离以来,哦,过去的九年里,已经发展了一些速记。
If one of us says something the other has heard so many times before that tears of boredom flow, the victim has a right to protest.
如果我们中的一个人说了一些对方已经听过很多遍的事情,而对方却因为无聊而流下了眼泪,那么受害者有权抗议。
The victim says, "That's on the tape." As in, that's on your tape-- the list of stories and obsessions you've rewound so often I could sing along with them in my sleep.
受害者说:“录音带上有。”就像在你的磁带上一样——你经常倒带的故事和痴迷清单,我可以在睡梦中跟着它们一起唱歌。
But if we're lying in the queen size at night watching TV and chance on some misbegotten soup of dropped R's and fake I's that's supposed to be a Southern accent, my tape starts jumping.
但如果我们晚上躺在大号床上看电视,偶然喝到一些由 R 和假 I 组成的混杂汤,那应该是南方口音,我的磁带就会开始跳动。
It must be heard.
必须听到它。
I must blurt, "Foghorn Leghorn.
我必须脱口而出:“雾角来航。
Foghorn Leghorn."
雾霍恩来航。”
My wife says, "Tape," and we change the channel.
我妻子说:“磁带”,然后我们就换频道了。
For me, all that is cornball about movie Southern accents, all that is fake, is embodied by that would-be mac daddy of the barnyard, the animated chicken known as Foghorn Leghorn.
对我来说,电影中南方口音的一切都是假的,一切都是假的,都体现在那个未来的谷仓麦克爸爸,一只被称为 Foghorn Leghorn 的动画鸡身上。
He was conceived as a parody of the genteel Old South cliches from movies like Gone With the Wind .
他被认为是对《乱世佳人》等电影中优雅的老南方陈词滥调的模仿。
He was a preening dandy and a fool for the ladies.
他是个爱打扮的花花公子,对女士们来说却是个傻瓜。
Go away, boy.
走开,男孩。
You bother me.
你打扰我了。
I got work to do.
我还有工作要做。
The late, legendary Mel Blanc didn't try and do an actual Southern accent.
已故的传奇人物梅尔·布兰克(Mel Blanc)并没有尝试说真正的南方口音。
You better, I say, you better keep a sharp eye on us chickens.
我说,你最好密切关注我们这些鸡。
He was spread thin being a martian and a putty tat and a tweety bird.
他是一个火星人、一个腻子纹身和一只鸣叫的鸟。
And this was a satire starring a big white rooster.
这是一部以大白公鸡为主角的讽刺剧。
It wasn't about sounding real.
这并不是为了听起来真实。
60 years later, though, actors are still speaking Foghorn, and they think it is real.
然而 60 年后,演员们仍在说雾号,而且他们认为这是真的。
I'm an authority on Southern accents because I'm a typical, rootless, modern Southerner, meaning I was born outside the South, just like Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, and moved as a kid with my Midwestern parents to a brand new subdivision chopped out of the swamp in Southeastern Virginia.
我是南方口音的权威,因为我是一个典型的、无根的、现代的南方人,这意味着我出生在南方以外的地方,就像纽特·金里奇和迪克·阿米一样,小时候和我中西部的父母搬到了弗吉尼亚州东南部沼泽地中开辟出来的一个全新的小区。
A babysitter taught me what y'all meant when I was seven years old.
当我七岁时,一位保姆告诉我你们的意思。
In high school, my rebellion against my liberal college professor dad was to hang out with drug-dealing rednecks.
高中时,我对我的自由派大学教授父亲的反抗是与贩毒的乡下人一起出去玩。
I whimpered in the backseat with a beer clenched between my thighs as they drove the back roads at 100 miles per hour, swerving through the swamp fog, their eyes closed and giggling.
当他们以每小时 100 英里的速度沿着小路行驶,在沼泽的雾气中急转弯时,我在后座上呜咽着,大腿间紧握着啤酒,他们闭着眼睛,咯咯地笑着。
But as long as they looked and talked like Allen Collins of Lynyrd Skynyrd, as long as they had that mean, feral glamour, I thought they were cool.
但只要他们看起来和说话像林纳德·斯金纳德的艾伦·柯林斯,只要他们有那种刻薄、野性的魅力,我就认为他们很酷。
I talked like them on purpose.
我故意像他们一样说话。
It thrilled me when a guy on my school bus grunted, "Groundhog?
当我校车上的一个人咕哝道:“土拨鼠?
My mama don't eat it but my daddy do."
我妈妈不吃,但我爸爸吃。”
I went to college 1,000 miles away in Nashville and heard a stronger, twangier accent than the coastal burr I grew up with.
我在 1000 英里外的纳什维尔上大学,听到的口音比我从小听到大的沿海口音更重、更浓重。
And I moved to Georgia for a few more years of seasoning.
我搬到佐治亚州又做了几年调味品。
By the time I left the South, I had a pretty good grasp of the range of regional dialects.
当我离开南方时,我已经很好地掌握了各种地方方言。
And I knew that the movies had them all comically wrong.
我知道这些电影的错误全都是可笑的。
I would argue that nearly every vowel that comes out of nearly every actor's mouth is wrong.
我认为几乎每个演员嘴里发出的每个元音都是错误的。
But for outsiders, here are the easiest problems to spot.
但对于局外人来说,以下是最容易发现的问题。
Let's take Keanu Reeves in Devil's Advocate .
让我们以《魔鬼代言人》中的基努·里维斯为例。
Is it your testimony, Ms. Black, that between the hours of 6:10 and 9:40, you were engaged in sexual congress with the defendant?
布莱克女士,你的证词是在6点10分到9点40分之间,你与被告进行了性交吗?
Well, maybe that's too easy.
好吧,也许这太容易了。
How about someone who has never actually turned down a script, like Dan Aykroyd.
那些从未真正拒绝过剧本的人怎么样,比如丹·艾克罗伊德。
He played the son in Driving Miss Daisy .
他在《为黛西小姐开车》中饰演儿子。
I'm afraid that my loss up here and my gain down here have given me an air of competence I don't really possess.
我担心,我在这里的失利和我在这里的收获让我看起来有一种我并不真正拥有的能力。
Leaving aside all the other things wrong with this way-Foghorn soundbite, very few white people in the South still drop their R's.
撇开这种方式的所有其他问题——雾号原声片段,南方很少有白人仍然会放弃他们的R。
They say "Here," not "Heeya." A linguist at the University of Georgia told me, "If you want to find somebody with that old plantation accent, you're talking about people 75 years old."
他们说“这里”,而不是“嘿亚”。佐治亚大学的一位语言学家告诉我,“如果你想找一个带有古老种植园口音的人,那么你说的就是 75 岁的人。”
A friend in Atlanta was more emphatic.
亚特兰大的一位朋友更加强调这一点。
"Those people are dead.
“那些人已经死了。
Before they died, they were rich.
在他们去世之前,他们是富有的。
Or they lived in the coastal or Piedmont areas of the South.
或者他们居住在南部沿海或皮埃蒙特地区。
Up in the hills, they always said their R's.
在山上,他们总是说“R”。
And now, in the age of seven hours of TV a day and the air conditioner and the massive influx of interlopers like me and Newt and Dick, nearly every white devil in the South has followed suit, especially white devils under 50.
而现在,在每天看七小时电视、使用空调以及像我、纽特和迪克这样的闯入者大量涌入的时代,南方几乎所有白魔都效仿了,尤其是 50 岁以下的白魔。
We say R.
我们说R。
Lesson two.
第二课。
Tom Hanks My name's Forrest.
汤姆·汉克斯 我叫福雷斯特。
Forrest Gump.
阿甘正传。
My mama always said that life was like a box of chocolates.
我妈妈总是说生活就像一盒巧克力。
There are two kinds of I's.
我有两种。
The I sound in a word like "life," or "like," or "night," or "nice," is different from the I in "five," or "ride," or "time." Real Southerners make a distinction between the I's.
“life”、“like”、“night”或“nice”等词中的 I 发音与“ Five”、“ride”或“time”中的 I 发音不同。真正的南方人会区分“I”。
My experience in three states over 20 years was that they said "life," and they said "time." "Lifetime," not "laff-tahm." Not many people said, "laff," or "lahck." If they did, they were considered hillbillies.
20多年来我在三个州的经历是,他们说“生命”,他们说“时间”。 “一生”,而不是“laff-tahm”。没有多少人说“laff”或“lahck”。如果他们这样做了,他们就会被视为乡下人。
And in fact, they almost always really did hail from Appalachia or maybe a piney wood town in East Texas.
事实上,他们几乎总是来自阿巴拉契亚或德克萨斯州东部的松林小镇。
But in the movies, even a kid from a fine, old, big-columned Alabama home-- like Forrest Gump-- says, "Laff is lack a box of chocolates."
但在电影中,即使是来自阿拉巴马州古老、大柱子的精美家庭的孩子——就像阿甘正传——也会说:“拉夫缺一盒巧克力。”
Lesson three, the South is really big.
第三课,南方真大。
People from Savannah and the coal fields and the Bayou don't talk the same.
来自萨凡纳、煤田和河口的人们说话不一样。
And they're not usually in the same room, unless they're on vacation in Florida, which is another part of the South.
他们通常不会在同一个房间,除非他们在佛罗里达州度假,佛罗里达州是南方的另一个地区。
But in the movies, people with radically different accents turn out to be mother and daughter or lifelong neighbors.
但在电影中,口音截然不同的人竟然是母女或终生邻居。
Listen to the way Dolly Parton, Sally Fields, and Julia Roberts pronounce "color" in Steel Magnolias.
听听多莉·帕顿、莎莉·菲尔兹和朱莉娅·罗伯茨在《钢木兰》中如何发音“颜色”。
Fields is supposed to be Roberts' mother.
菲尔兹应该是罗伯茨的母亲。
Once upon a time, I couldn't figure out why the actors and directors in LA and New York couldn't spend any time listening to actual Southerners talk.
曾几何时,我不明白为什么洛杉矶和纽约的演员和导演不能花时间听真正的南方人的谈话。
Because if they did, they'd learn very quickly how far the film dialect had drifted from reality.
因为如果他们这样做了,他们很快就会了解到电影语言与现实的差距有多大。
But after I moved to New York, I realized that I was just living amid hicks again.
但搬到纽约后,我意识到我又生活在乡巴佬中间了。
This time they were urban hicks, and the world outside their hollow was one big movie set.
这次他们是城市里的乡巴佬,他们的空洞外面的世界就是一个大电影布景。
The South was a movie.
南方是一部电影。
If you went there, you spoke a language invented by a British woman named Vivien Leigh, also known as Scarlett or Blanche, with an assist by New Jersey's Rod Steiger as the racist sheriff, and San Francisco's Mel Blanc as that uppity chicken.
如果你去那里,你会说一种由英国女性费雯·丽(也被称为斯嘉丽或布兰奇)发明的语言,新泽西州的罗德·斯泰格(Rod Steiger)扮演种族主义警长,旧金山的梅尔·布兰克(Mel Blanc)扮演那只傲慢的小鸡。
The South was a cartoon.
南方是一部动画片。
I admit, the natives played along.
我承认,当地人也配合。
They scammed the hicks by selling more and more preposterous stories about white columns and crazy aunts in the attic.
他们通过销售越来越多关于白色柱子和阁楼上疯狂阿姨的荒谬故事来欺骗乡巴佬。
They cooked up as much Gothic kitsch as the market would bear.
他们炮制了市场所能承受的尽可能多的哥特式媚俗。
A guy from St. Louis renamed himself Tennessee and made a mint.
一个来自圣路易斯的人给自己改名为田纳西州并赚了一笔。
It was a great racket, but it meant that Southerners never really saw themselves on screen.
这是一个巨大的喧嚣,但这意味着南方人从未在银幕上真正看到过自己。
They still don't.
他们仍然不这样做。
Counselor, is that you?
辅导员,是你吗?
Mark Schone It was the remake of Cape Fear that gave me my moment of clarity.
马克·舍恩 (Mark Schone) 翻拍的《恐惧角》给了我清晰的时刻。
I hunkered in a Manhattan multiplex awestruck.
我呆呆地坐在曼哈顿的一家影院里,心中充满了敬畏。
Robert De Niro was trying to impersonate a dirt-eating psycho.
罗伯特·德尼罗试图扮演一个吃土的疯子。
And yes, it was nuts.
是的,这太疯狂了。
But not the way De Niro intended.
但不是德尼罗想要的那样。
New York mook was bumping uglies with Cajun and Carolina.
纽约的穆克正在与卡真和卡罗莱纳州撞丑。
It was the worst thing I'd ever heard.
这是我听过的最糟糕的事情。
I rolled in it like a happy doggy with something dead.
我像一只快乐的小狗一样在里面打滚,里面有死东西。
It's going to take a hell of a lot more than that, counselor, to prove you're better than me.
辅导员,要证明你比我强,还需要做更多的事情。
When it was over and the credits drifted past, I locked onto the one that read Dialect Coach.
当节目结束,片尾字幕一闪而过时,我锁定了读《方言教练》的那个。
Now I knew.
现在我知道了。
After that, every time Foghorn turned up in a movie, I'd check to see who his dialect coach was.
从那以后,每次福霍恩出现在电影中,我都会检查他的方言教练是谁。
Every Southern ex-pat I knew came out of Cape Fear going, "Huh?" But the man who taught De Niro to sound like an Appalachian Springsteen was so proud he bragged about it.
我认识的每个来自开普菲尔的南方侨民都会说:“嗯?”但那个教德尼罗听起来像阿巴拉契亚斯普林斯汀的人非常自豪,他对此吹嘘不已。
I would see his ads in the showbiz trade papers and get all twitchy.
我会在演艺界商业报纸上看到他的广告,然后感到紧张。
"To Robert De Niro, congratulations, Sam Chwat."
“罗伯特·德尼罗,恭喜你,萨姆·查瓦特。”
Well, my name is Sam Chwat.
嗯,我叫萨姆·查瓦特。
I'm Director of New York Speech Improvement Services.
我是纽约言语改善服务中心的主任。
We're the largest company of licensed speech therapists in this country to, uh-- tsk.
我们是这个国家最大的有执照的言语治疗师公司,呃——呃。
We're the largest company of licensed speech therapists in the United States, specializing in accent acquisition and accent elimination.
我们是美国最大的持照言语治疗师公司,专注于口音习得和口音消除。
I dropped in on Chwat at his Manhattan offices, where boxes of celebrity junk spilled onto the floor.
我顺便拜访了查瓦特位于曼哈顿的办公室,那里的地板上散落着成箱的名人垃圾。
He was born and raised in Brooklyn speaking Yiddish, and he's never lived more than an hour from Grand Central.
他在布鲁克林出生和长大,讲意第绪语,而且他住的地方从来没有距离中央车站超过一个小时。
But he has a Masters in speech and 20 years of experience in accents.
但他拥有演讲硕士学位和 20 年的口音经验。
At first, he specialized in removing them.
起初,他专门去除它们。
Then he started doing implants.
然后他开始做植入手术。
I trained Robert De Niro to do an Appalachian accent for Cape Fear .
我训练罗伯特·德尼罗为《开普菲尔》表演阿巴拉契亚口音。
Leonardo DiCaprio, a New York accent for Basketball Diaries .
莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥,《篮球日记》的纽约口音。
Julia Roberts and Andie MacDowell lost their Southern accents with me before their film careers began.
朱莉娅·罗伯茨和安迪·麦克道威尔在他们的电影生涯开始之前就随着我失去了他们的南方口音。
Elle Macpherson, Kathleen Turner, Benjamin Bratt, a wide variety of people.
艾丽·麦克弗森、凯瑟琳·特纳、本杰明·布拉特,各种各样的人。
What would you say you're best at amongst the accents that you know?
在你所知道的口音中,你认为你最擅长什么?
I suppose my Italian is all right, you know?
我想我的意大利语还不错,你知道吗?
My Italian itself is not so good, you know?
我的意大利语本身不太好,你知道吗?
But I do a pretty good Italian.
但我的意大利语做得很好。
His Southern accent was every bit as convincing.
他的南方口音同样令人信服。
He told me he had a whole posse of relatives down in Savannah who taught him the local lingo.
他告诉我,他在萨凡纳有一大群亲戚教他当地的行话。
He demonstrated.
他示范了。
It depends on the sort of Southern accent you're talkin' about.
这取决于你所说的南方口音。
If it's an Appalachian sort of accent, it's one that I've taught many, many times.
如果这是一种阿巴拉契亚口音,我已经教过很多次了。
There's a kind of broad-based one, more indicative of, say, the deep South, where the R's disappear after the vowel, let's say.
有一种基础广泛的,更能代表南方腹地,比如说,R 在元音后面消失了。
Which is Hollywood Southern in a nutshell.
简而言之,这就是南方好莱坞。
It's the way people in movies talk, not people in real life.
这是电影里的人说话的方式,而不是现实生活中的人。
I told Chwat I'd never met anyone who spoke with the thing he was calling a Southern accent.
我告诉查瓦特,我从未见过任何人说他所谓的南方口音。
I pointed out that the people who drop their R's were not the same people as the ones who said, "Lack," and now the R-less people were almost extinct anyway.
我指出,那些放弃 R 的人和那些说“缺乏”的人不是同一个人,而且现在不管怎样,没有 R 的人几乎灭绝了。
He defended himself.
他为自己辩护。
He backpedaled.
他后退了。
And often, he stayed silent.
而且很多时候,他都保持沉默。
He told me I had a sensitive ear.
他告诉我我的耳朵很敏感。
But it doesn't take a sensitive ear.
但这并不需要灵敏的耳朵。
Listen to this clip from one of his star clients.
听听他的一位明星客户的这段剪辑。
If my daddy catches you in here, the question of whether or not I can carry your children will not matter.
如果我爸爸在这里抓住你,我能不能带你的孩子就不再重要了。
He will cut your thing off.
他会切断你的东西。
That's Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias .
那是《钢木兰》中的朱莉娅·罗伯茨。
A linguist will tell you that a middle-class 20-something in that town, in that recent year, would say her R's.
语言学家会告诉你,那个镇上的一个 20 多岁的中产阶级,在最近的一年里,会说她的 R。
She'd say, "whether" and "your," and "matter." A linguist told me that.
她会说“是否”、“你的”和“重要”。一位语言学家告诉我的。
But Chwat has bought into the cartoon so completely, he thinks Roberts herself used to talk that way when she was growing up in suburban Atlanta.
但查瓦特已经完全接受了这部动画片,他认为罗伯茨本人在亚特兰大郊区长大时也经常这样说话。
He claims that back before she was a star, when he helped her get rid of her Southern accent, here were the things he had to fix.
他声称,在她成为明星之前,当他帮助她摆脱南方口音时,他必须解决以下问题。
Pretty garden-variety Southern substitutions.
漂亮的普通南方替代品。
"Tin," instead of "ten." The "ah" for "I." Dropping an R after a vowel-- "heeya," "theya," "moh," instead of "here," "there," or "more."
“锡”而不是“十”。 “啊”代表“我”。在元音后面去掉 R——“heeya”、“theya”、“moh”,而不是“here”、“there”或“more”。
Except, of course, she didn't talk that way.
当然,除了她不那样说话。
If you want confirmation, all you have to do is ask someone who knew her then.
如果你想要确认,你所要做的就是询问当时认识她的人。
I've been a guidance counselor at Campbell High School for 21 years.
我在坎贝尔高中担任辅导员已经 21 年了。
I asked Richard Epps, a guidance counselor at her Smyrna, Georgia high school, who doesn't talk that way either.
我问理查德·埃普斯(Richard Epps),她是佐治亚州士麦那高中的辅导员,他也不会那样说话。
She was a student here.
她是这里的学生。
And she was a student aide in our office.
她是我们办公室的学生助理。
Yes.
是的。
Surely did.
当然有。
Mark Schone Now, this'll be your 21st year.
Mark Schone 现在,这将是你工作的第 21 年。
Yes, sir.
是的,先生。
Mark Schone In the 21 years that you've been at Campbell High School, have you had any white students who dropped their R's?
Mark Schone:在您就读坎贝尔高中的 21 年里,您是否有过放弃 R 的白人学生?
I don't recall any of that at all.
我根本不记得任何事情。
I don't recall any, to tell you the truth.
老实说,我不记得了。
How about Julia?
朱莉娅呢?
Did Julia ever drop her R's?
朱莉娅曾经放弃过她的R吗?
Absolutely not.
绝对不是。
Mark Schone And that's why Roberts sounds so fake when she drops them in Steel Magnolias .
马克·舍恩(Mark Schone)这就是为什么罗伯茨把它们扔进钢木兰时听起来那么假。
Because she's never done it before.
因为她以前从来没有这样做过。
I guess what happened is that when she showed up on set with her own real, suburban drawl, it wasn't close enough to the cartoon for the powers that be, and they sent for Chwat.
我猜发生的事情是,当她以她自己真实的、郊区的慢吞吞的方式出现在片场时,对于当权者来说,这与卡通片还不够接近,所以他们派人找来了 Chwat。
It's like something out of the movie Hollywood Shuffle , some white guy telling a black actor, "Um, can you make that blacker?"
这就像电影《好莱坞洗牌》中的场景,某个白人告诉黑人演员,“嗯,你能把它弄得更黑吗?”
One reason Hollywood can't get Southern right is that Southern won't hold still.
好莱坞无法让南方正确的原因之一是南方不会坐以待毙。
The real South is changing.
真正的南方正在发生变化。
Real Southerners go to malls and eat at The Olive Garden.
真正的南方人会去购物中心并在橄榄园就餐。
The media tells them that the way they speak is either quaint or a symptom of Gomer-dom.
媒体告诉他们,他们说话的方式要么很古怪,要么就是歌篾人的症状。
So if they're the slightest bit upwardly mobile, they try not to sound too you-know-what.
因此,如果他们有一点点向上的流动性,他们就会尽量不让自己听起来太“你知道”。
Sometimes Hollywood does make a semi-honest effort to keep it real.
有时好莱坞确实会做出半诚实的努力来保持真实。
Robert De Niro listened to real people speak for his role in Cape Fear.
罗伯特·德尼罗聆听真实人物讲述他在《开普菲尔》中的角色。
He sent his personal assistant into a Southern prison to tape interviews with inmates of the same age, criminal record, and hillbilly bona fides as his character in the script.
他派他的私人助理到南方的一所监狱,对与他在剧本中的角色年龄、犯罪记录和乡巴佬年龄相同的囚犯进行采访。
He picked a tape he liked and labored with Sam Chwat for weeks to perfect his imitation.
他挑选了一盘他喜欢的磁带,并与 Sam Chwat 一起工作了数周,以完善他的模仿。
Sometimes, however, the will, the intent, the technique is flawless, and the flesh still fails.
然而,有时,意志、意图、技术是完美无缺的,而肉体仍然失败。
I am like God, and God like me.
我就像上帝,上帝也像我。
I am as large as God.
我和上帝一样伟大。
He is as small as I.
他和我一样小。
He cannot above me nor I beneath him be.
他不能高于我,我也不能低于他。
Counselor?
辅导员?
Ira Glass Writer Mark Schone is a reporter living among the Yankees in New York City, hoping not to run into a certain actor.
艾拉·格拉斯 (Ira Glass) 作家马克·舍恩 (Mark Schone) 是一名住在纽约市洋基队中的记者,希望不要遇到某个演员。
[MUSIC- "SOUTHERN ACCENTS" BY JOHNNY CASH]
[音乐-约翰尼·卡什的《南方口音》]
Act Four, Real Love.
第四幕,真爱。
There's the real thing when it comes to your idea of what job you want, what house you want, what person you want to fall in love with.
当涉及到你想要什么工作、你想要什么房子、你想爱上什么人时,这些都是真实的。
And until you find the real thing that you seek, life is the same story over and over and over again, either played as comedy or as tragedy.
在你找到真正想要的东西之前,生活总是一遍又一遍地重复着同样的故事,要么是喜剧,要么是悲剧。
A story of missing the real thing yet again.
一个再次错过真实事物的故事。
In one of our live shows, Los Angeles writer and performer Sandra Tsing Loh tells what happened to her when she signed up for a computer dating service.
在我们的一场现场表演中,洛杉矶作家兼表演者 Sandra Tsing Loh 讲述了她注册电脑约会服务时发生的事情。
A folder arrived with a name and some vital stats.
一个文件夹收到了,里面有一个名字和一些重要的统计数据。
Robert Blair, 37, single.
罗伯特·布莱尔,37 岁,单身。
I look in his folder and I can't believe it.
我查看了他的文件夹,简直不敢相信。
My mouth goes dry.
我的口干舌燥。
For one thing, unlike what you'd expect from a dating service, Robert Blair is really, really attractive.
一方面,与您对约会服务的期望不同,罗伯特·布莱尔真的非常非常有吸引力。
No, I mean really.
不,我的意思是真的。
Straight nose, clean jaw line, smoldering blue eyes.
笔直的鼻子,干净的下巴线条,阴郁的蓝眼睛。
We are talking Ralph Fiennes.
我们正在谈论拉尔夫费因斯。
Ralph Fiennes has basically donned a crew neck sweater and is living among us in the Southland.
拉尔夫·费因斯 (Ralph Fiennes) 基本上都穿着圆领毛衣,住在我们南部地区。
[LAUGHTER] I turn the page.
[笑声]我翻过这一页。
Robert Blair is an architect by profession.
罗伯特·布莱尔是一名职业建筑师。
Time has been spent in Italy.
时间已经在意大利度过了。
Interests include opera, foreign movies, badminton.
兴趣包括歌剧、外国电影、羽毛球。
Marital status-- never.
婚姻状况——从来没有。
My heart is pounding.
我的心在狂跳。
My eyes are tearing up.
我的眼睛在流泪。
Oh my god, I'm thinking.
天哪,我在想。
Oh my god.
天哪。
And this panic is starting to seize me.
这种恐慌开始抓住我。
Not just the primary panic of having found the perfect man, but the secondary panic of knowing that other women are looking at this perfect man, and then the tertiary panic of realizing that I'm feeling this panic.
不仅仅是找到完美男人的第一级恐慌,还有知道其他女人正在看着这个完美男人的第二级恐慌,以及意识到我感到这种恐慌的第三级恐慌。
And when you feel panic, dates don't tend to go well.
当你感到恐慌时,约会往往不会顺利进行。
Somehow the panic invades your face causing these contortions to happen in the middle of some casual comment like, would you like some half-and-half?
不知怎的,恐慌侵入了你的脸,导致这些扭曲发生在一些随意的评论中,比如,你想要一些一半吗?
Equal?
相等吗?
Your face will split open and this demon, this [DEMON VOICE], will come out.
你的脸会裂开,这个恶魔,这个[恶魔之声],就会出来。
And in that instant, you have done it, that terrible, unthinkable thing.
在那一瞬间,你就做到了,那件可怕的、难以想象的事情。
You have pierced the dating membrane, that is, the membrane that covers all dating people and keeps them safe from each other.
你已经刺穿了约会膜,即覆盖所有约会对象并使他们彼此安全的膜。
As illustration, take Phillip, a perfect Los Feliz bachelor I was privileged to date a few times.
以菲利普为例,他是一位完美的洛斯费利斯单身汉,我有幸与他约会过几次。
You know the type-- successful 36-year-old film editor, or something.
你知道这种类型——36 岁的成功电影剪辑师之类的。
Great haircut, zippy Hugo Boss jacket.
很棒的发型,活泼的 Hugo Boss 夹克。
You know, one of those smart, funny, presentable men who form that eerie, hollow-eyed, Children of the Corn phalanx across our fair city.
你知道,他是那些聪明、风趣、体面的男人之一,他们组成了我们这座美丽城市中怪异、眼神空洞的“玉米之子”方阵。
Any-hoo, like others of his ilk, the perfect Phillip package was coated with this impenetrable dating membrane.
无论如何,就像其他同类产品一样,完美的菲利普包装上涂有一层坚不可摧的约会膜。
To wit, you were supposed to see Phillip once a week at most, twice a month more typically.
也就是说,你最多每周见菲利普一次,更典型的是每月两次。
But you were never to contact him in between as though he were some sort of undercover spy.
但你永远不能在这期间联系他,就好像他是某种卧底间谍一样。
To phone him at work was to trigger that bomb thing.
在工作时给他打电话就等于触发了炸弹事件。
Any-hoo, Phillip kept trying to train me in the new system.
无论如何,菲利普一直在努力训练我适应新系统。
And I knew that I should get with it.
我知道我应该接受它。
I knew that it was the law of Dating-land and that if I didn't follow it, I would lose my all-important Dating-land citizenship.
我知道这是约会之地的法律,如果我不遵守它,我就会失去我最重要的约会之地公民身份。
I wouldn't be allowed to go out on any more meaningless, un-fun dates such as these.
我不会被允许出去参加任何像这样毫无意义、无趣的约会。
So Phillip would smile suavely the next morning, handing me my delicious, warm, fresh, pumpkin muffin to-go.
所以第二天早上菲利普会温柔地微笑,递给我美味、温暖、新鲜的外带南瓜松饼。
"Call you in 10 days or so?"
“十天左右给你打电话?”
"10 days?
“10天?
That's almost two weeks," I'd stab at in alarm, eyes wide.
差不多两周了。”我睁大眼睛,惊恐地说道。
Picture last night's mascara gone spookily raccoon-y.
想象一下昨晚的睫毛膏变成了诡异的浣熊状。
"I'm out of town," he'd enunciate, as you do when telling a large, wattled, eager Labrador to sit but she cannot quite remember how.
“我出城了,”他会这么说道,就像你告诉一只体型巨大、垂垂着、热切的拉布拉多犬坐下一样,但她不太记得怎么坐下。
He repeated the command, "I'm out of town.
他重复了一遍命令:“我出城了。”
Out of town.
出城了。
In 10 days or so, I will call you.
大约10天后,我会给你打电话。
OK?
可以吗?
I'll call you.
我会打电话给你。
Really." Oh, I remember the drill.
真的。”哦,我记得演习。
Dutifully, I repeated the phrases he had taught me, unnatural as Arabic.
我尽职尽责地重复了他教我的短语,像阿拉伯语一样不自然。
"Well, have a great time.
“好吧,祝你玩得很开心。
Jeez, I've got a busy week too.
天哪,我这周也很忙。
Call me whenever.
随时给我打电话。
It is no problem at all." But once I got going, I just couldn't stop, so, "there's a phone.
完全没问题。”但一旦我开始走,我就停不下来,所以,“有一个电话。
You call me.
你打电话给我。
I won't call.
我不会打电话。
No, no, no." Delivery became so broad, so garish, so Jo Anne Worley-like that like a rare stag in the woods, my perfect bachelor would be spooked.
不,不,不。”交付变得如此广泛,如此花哨,如此乔·安妮·沃利(Jo Anne Worley),就像树林中罕见的雄鹿一样,我完美的单身汉会被吓到。
And after 10 days or so, Phillip did not call again.
大约十天后,菲利普没有再打电话来。
But I'm not going to make that mistake tonight, oh no. For once in my life, things are going to be different.
但今晚我不会犯这个错误,哦不。我一生中第一次,事情将会有所不同。
For once in my life, I'm going to be silent.
这辈子只有一次,我要保持沉默。
The forest green door opens and there stands Robert Blair.
森林绿色的门打开,罗伯特·布莱尔站在那里。
Crisp white linen, pressed khakis, tortoise-shell rims.
清爽的白色亚麻布、压制的卡其裤、龟甲边。
Oh my god, I think, feeling the force of gravity buckling my knees.
天哪,我想,感觉到重力使我的膝盖弯曲。
"Hello," is all I say, "Robert." With perfect manners, Robert Blair shows me around his perfect place.
“你好,”我只说“罗伯特。”罗伯特·布莱尔以完美的举止带我参观了他完美的地方。
We are talking coved ceilings, Mexican Paver tile, totally redone hardwood floors, muted track lighting, Sub-Zero fridge, even a utility sunroom with a pull-out ironing board.
我们谈论的是凹形天花板、墨西哥摊铺机瓷砖、完全重做的硬木地板、静音轨道照明、零度以下冰箱,甚至是带拉出式熨衣板的实用日光浴室。
You can almost hear a choir of angels singing.
你几乎可以听到天使合唱团的歌声。
"Sandra," Robert says behind me, "would you like some champagne?" [SQUEAK]
“桑德拉,”罗伯特在我身后说道,“你想喝点香槟吗?” [吱吱声]
[LAUGHTER] And there stands Robert Blair with two gleaming flutes of champagne and an Italian, hand-painted, ceramic plate upon which he's arranged Gorgonzola cheese, grapes, and English water crackers in a perfect fan.
[笑声]罗伯特·布莱尔站在那里,手里端着两杯闪闪发光的香槟,还有一个意大利手绘陶瓷盘,上面他把戈贡佐拉奶酪、葡萄和英式饼干摆成扇形。
[LAUGHTER] I am home, I find myself thinking.
[笑声]我回到家了,我发现自己在思考。
I am home.
我到家了。
The bistro Robert takes me to is a delightful, intimate place aglow with little candles.
罗伯特带我去的小酒馆是一个令人愉快、温馨的地方,里面点着小蜡烛。
"You like opera," I say.
“你喜欢歌剧,”我说。
"Yes," he says, "I do."
“是的,”他说,“我愿意。”
"I've heard Madame Butterfly is coming to the music center.
“我听说蝴蝶夫人要来音乐中心。
I saw something about it in the Los Angeles Times."
我在《洛杉矶时报》上看到了一些相关内容。”
"Really," he says, "Did you?"
“真的吗?”他说,“是吗?”
"Maybe we could--" no. Too early.
“也许我们可以——”不。太早了。
Retract.
缩回。
"It's just such a great opera is all.
“这就是一部如此伟大的歌剧。
I love it.
我喜欢它。
I love opera."
我喜欢歌剧。”
"Butterfly is alright," he says, "for a warhorse.
“对于战马来说,蝴蝶是可以的,”他说。
Americans certainly insist on their favorites.
美国人当然坚持他们最喜欢的。
I sometimes think if I'm forced to sit through another Boheme , I'll scream."
有时我想,如果我被迫观看另一部《波希米亚人》,我会尖叫。”
"Yes, I know what you mean.
“是的,我知道你的意思。
The opera world is all so exhausting, isn't it?"
歌剧界真是太累了不是吗?”
His smoldering blue eyes meet mine, lock.
他阴燃的蓝眼睛与我相遇,锁定。
"Yes, my dear," he says.
“是的,亲爱的,”他说。
"Exhausting." What does that mean?
“累死了。”这意味着什么?
[LAUGHTER] I think, wait a minute.
[笑声]我想,等一下。
Whoa, relax, breathe.
哇,放松,呼吸。
The guy works a 10-hour day.
这家伙每天工作 10 个小时。
He went to the trouble of laying out English water crackers for you in that perfect fan.
他不厌其烦地用那把完美的扇子为你摆出英式水饼干。
It's not that he's not having fun.
这并不是说他不开心。
It's just that he's really, really tired.
只是他实在是太累了。
And now I remember this happy thing.
现在我还记得这件快乐的事。
OK, this is really good.
好的,这真的很好。
In Robert's kitchen was this really, really fancy cappuccino maker, because cappuccino was his habit.
罗伯特的厨房里有一台非常非常精美的卡布奇诺机,因为卡布奇诺是他的习惯。
That's what he called it.
他就是这么称呼它的。
"My habit." And I think, that's what Robert Blair needs after dinner.
“我的习惯。”我想,这就是罗伯特·布莱尔晚饭后所需要的。
Some caffeine, a lift.
一些咖啡因,电梯。
But the thing is, we can't have it here.
但问题是,我们这里不能有它。
We can't have it in this restaurant, even though it's an Italian restaurant and espresso machines keep whirring, whirring, whirring around us.
我们不能在这家餐厅享用它,尽管这是一家意大利餐厅,而且浓缩咖啡机在我们周围不停地嗡嗡作响。
Because to prolong the date, to kick things to that higher level, we need to move to a new venue to do a new activity.
因为为了延长日期,为了把事情提升到更高的水平,我们需要搬到一个新的场地进行新的活动。
My god, it's barely 8:20 and the guy is all yawning and looking at his watch and going--
天哪,现在还不到 8 点 20 分,那家伙打着哈欠,看着手表,然后——
"Cappuccino," I say brightly.
“卡布奇诺,”我轻快地说。
"I guess you make a mean cup of it, huh?"
“我猜你喝的一杯很糟糕,是吧?”
"Well," he says, but then that slightly closed expression crosses his face.
“好吧,”他说,但随后他的脸上露出了略显封闭的表情。
He pushes up his glasses.
他推了推眼镜。
"Well, no."
“嗯,不。”
"But your machine," I say, "in your kitchen."
“但是你的机器,”我说,“在你的厨房里。”
"It doesn't work," he says abruptly.
“这不起作用,”他突然说道。
"It doesn't work?" "No, it is not that it does not work.
“这不起作用?” “不,并不是说它不起作用。
It is just that it needs a new filter, a new water filter."
只是它需要一个新的过滤器,一个新的水过滤器。”
"You don't just use the filtered water from the white Brita jug thing in your Sub-Zero fridge?"
“你不只是使用你的零度冰箱中的白色 Brita 水壶中的过滤水吗?”
"Well, you could.
“嗯,你可以的。
But it is just not good."
但这并不好。”
"Well, I could go for some cappuccino," I forge on, hacking through the dense, rubbery foliage with my scimitar.
“好吧,我可以去喝点卡布奇诺,”我继续说道,用弯刀砍开茂密的橡胶树叶。
"And you must be missing it if you can't make it at home.
“如果你在家做不到,你一定会想念它。
I know I miss things when I can't make them at home.
我知道当我在家做不到的时候我会想念一些东西。
[UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] I've got a great idea.
[难以理解的短语]我有一个好主意。
Why don't we go to a great cappuccino bar I know just a short walk from here on La Brea?" Clutching his arm, my hand like a pinion, I see myself reflected in Robert Blair's perfect tortoise-shell glasses.
我们为什么不去拉布雷亚一家很棒的卡布奇诺酒吧,我知道这家酒吧距离这里只有很短的步行路程?”我紧紧抓住他的手臂,我的手像小齿轮一样,我看到自己倒映在罗伯特·布莱尔完美的龟甲眼镜里。
My mascara is raccoony, hair a fright wig.
我的睫毛膏是浣熊色的,头发是恐怖假发。
I have come to my date dressed like a hyena, and I cannot stop talking.
我穿着像鬣狗一样来参加约会,而且我无法停止说话。
[LAUGHTER] "It was fun," Robert Blair says, giving me a quick peck on the cheek at the door.
[笑声]“这很有趣,”罗伯特·布莱尔说,在门口快速地吻了一下我的脸颊。
"Sorry about having to bail early.
“很抱歉不得不提前保释。
It's just that I'm really, really tired.
只是我实在是太累了。
But thank you." The forest green door shuts behind him, locks.
但谢谢你。”森林绿色的门在他身后关上,上了锁。
There are footfalls.
有脚步声。
A moment later, a light goes on upstairs.
过了一会儿,楼上的灯亮了。
That moment, I realize that Robert Blair is completely happy behind that curtain, alone in the perfect palace he took such great pains in showing me.
那一刻,我意识到罗伯特·布莱尔在窗帘后面完全幸福,独自一人在他煞费苦心向我展示的完美宫殿里。
He is probably leaping about in boyish stockinged feet on his perfectly appointed couches, loveseats, and pillows, throwing his arms up, jubilant, free of the burden of me.
他可能穿着孩子气的袜子,在他布置完美的沙发、双人沙发和枕头上跳来跳去,举起双臂,兴高采烈,摆脱了我的负担。
It makes me furious.
这让我很愤怒。
I begin to shake at the iron rods of the locked gate, shake them with all my might.
我开始摇动锁着的门上的铁棍,用尽全力摇动它们。
"I am not done with this evening," I yell.
“今晚我还没有结束,”我喊道。
"I am not done.
“我还没说完。
You don't even have to talk to me.
你甚至不必跟我说话。
We don't even have to see each other again.
我们甚至不必再见。
But I want that cup of cappuccino.
但我想要那杯卡布奇诺。
And I want it, uh, frothy!" But there was no answer.
我想要它,呃,泡沫!”但没有得到任何答复。
After a moment, ever so distantly behind double panes of glass, I hear it-- the rattle of a paper, pop open of a cork, and inevitably, the gentle murmurings of CNN.
过了一会儿,在双层玻璃后面很远的地方,我听到了纸张的嘎嘎声、软木塞的打开声,以及不可避免地传来 CNN 温柔的低语声。
Writer Sandra Tsing Loh.
作家罗清仪。
Her one-woman show, Aliens in America , runs at the Tiffany Theatre in Los Angeles through October.
她的独角戏《外星人在美国》在洛杉矶蒂芙尼剧院上演至十月。
Well, our program was produced today by Alex Blumberg and myself, with Susan Burton, Blue Chevigny, Nancy Updike and Julie Snyder.
好吧,我们今天的节目是由 Alex Blumberg 和我本人以及 Susan Burton、Blue Chevigny、Nancy Updike 和 Julie Snyder 制作的。
Contributing editors Paul Tough, Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, Alix Spiegel and consigliere Sarah Vowell.
特约编辑 Paul Tough、Jack Hitt、Margy Rochlin、Alix Spiegel 和顾问 Sarah Vowell。
Production help from Todd Bachmann, Starlee Kine, and Sylvia Lemus.
Todd Bachmann、Starlee Kine 和 Sylvia Lemus 为制作提供帮助。
[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS] Today we say a temporary goodbye to Sylvia Lemus, who talked her way into a position here not long after she first appeared on our program in January of 1998 on her 18th birthday, talking about her Mexican mother's expectations of her and her expectations of herself.
[致谢] 今天,我们暂时告别西尔维娅·莱穆斯 (Sylvia Lemus),她在 1998 年 1 月 18 岁生日那天首次出现在我们的节目中后不久,就在我们的节目中谈到了她的墨西哥母亲对她的期望以及她对自己的期望。
She's now off to college to pursue the life that she talked about pursuing back then.
她现在正在上大学,去追求她当时所说的生活。
We wish her the best.
我们祝她一切顺利。
We send her off with love.
我们用爱送她。
We expect to hear from her soon on these airwaves.
我们希望很快能在这些广播中收到她的消息。
If you would like to buy a cassette of this program, or that one, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380.
如果您想购买该节目或该节目的磁带,请致电芝加哥的 WBEZ,电话:312-832-3380。
You know, you can listen to most of our programs for free on the Internet, www.thisamericanlife.org.
您知道,您可以在互联网上免费收听我们的大部分节目:www.thisamericanlife.org。
Thanks to Elizabeth Meister who runs the site.
感谢运营该网站的伊丽莎白·梅斯特 (Elizabeth Meister)。
This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.
《美国生活》由国际公共广播电台发行。
[FUNDING CREDITS] WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who may have sidled up to you on a school bus years ago and said--
[资金来源] WBEZ 管理由 Torey Malatia 负责监督,他可能几年前在校车上偷偷靠近你并说道——
Groundhog?
土拨鼠?
My mama don't eat it, but my daddy do.
我妈妈不吃,但我爸爸吃。
I'm Ira Glass.
我是艾拉·格拉斯。
Back next week with more stories of This American Life .
下周我们将带来更多《美国生活》的故事。
It's good with gravy.
配上肉汁就很好吃
Announcer PRI, Public Radio International.
国际公共广播电台 PRI 播音员。
This American Life is produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago and delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange.
《This American Life》与 WBEZ Chicago 合作制作,并由 PRX 公共广播电台传送到各电台。