08.28 麥凱恩之死與這個自戀的時代

麥凱恩之死與這個自戀的時代

Death in the Age of Narcissism

弗蘭克·布魯尼

2018年8月28日

Just before and after John McCain’s death on Saturday, I read many tweets, Facebook posts and essays that beautifully captured his importance.

就在約翰·麥凱恩(John McCain)上週六去世前後，我閱讀了許多推文、Facebook帖子和各種文章，它們都很好地說明了麥凱恩的重要性。

I read many that were equally concerned with the importance of their authors:

我還讀到，許多文字同樣旨在彰顯說話者自身何其重要：

Here’s how much time I spent around McCain. I’m also close to his daughter Meghan. This is the compliment he once gave me. This is what I said back. I voted for him this many times. I agreed with him on these issues but not those. It’s difficult to describe how pained I am. Here’s a photo of me looking mournful.

看看我有多少時間是跟麥凱恩一起度過的。我跟他的女兒梅根關係也很好。他曾經這樣誇獎我。我是這麼回應的。我多次投票給他。我同意他在這些問題上的看法，但在那些問題上，我保留自己的意見。我的痛苦難以形容。這張照片裡，我的樣子很悲痛。

Were these hymns to McCain or arias of self-congratulation? The line blurred as the focus swerved from the celebrated to the celebrator.

這些究竟是對麥凱恩的讚美詩，還是自鳴得意的詠歎調？當焦點從被讚美者轉向讚美者的時候，界限變得模糊。

A measure of this is inevitable and even right. One of the best ways to convey someone’s impact on the world is to demonstrate and universalize his or her effect on us, and our own stories and memories are our inimitable additions to the conversation.

這在一定程度上是不可避免的，甚至是正確的。表達一個人對世界有何種影響的最佳方式之一，就是將他或者她對我們的影響告知世人，而我們自己的故事和記憶對討論的貢獻是別人無法模仿的。

But a little of the first-person singular goes a long way.

但是，本應起到點綴作用的第一人稱敘述，變得喧賓奪主。

Did you hear Donald Trump on the day Aretha Franklin died? In the first sentence out of his mouth, he defined her as “a person I knew well.” In the second, he alluded to a few of her performances in hotels that he owned by saying, “She worked for me.” The remark was classic Trump in its offensiveness. But it also reflected a more widespread conflation of eulogy and personal P.R.

你注意到唐納德·特朗普在阿麗莎·富蘭克林(Aretha Franklin)去世那天說什麼了嗎？從他嘴裡出來的第一句話，把她定義為“一個我很熟悉的人”。在第二句話裡，提到了她在自己的酒店裡的一些表演，說“她為我工作”。這是特朗普一貫的無禮風格，但也反映出悼詞和個人公關之間更為常見的一種融合。

Did you see Madonna at MTV’s Video Music Awards? She stepped up to the microphone, began to memorialize Franklin and mused at great length about the raw ambition, relentless rise and gritty resilience of … Madonna! “So you are probably all wondering why I am telling you this story,” she finally added, stirring from her solipsistic stupor.

你看麥當娜出席MTV臺音樂錄音帶大獎了嗎？她走到麥克風前，開始紀念富蘭克林，若有所思地絮叨著原始的野心、無情的崛起和堅韌不拔不屈不撓的……麥當娜！“所以，你們可能都想知道我為什麼要跟你們說這個故事，”她最後從自我陶醉中醒過來，補充道。

麥當娜在MTV音樂錄影帶大獎上談論阿麗莎·富蘭克林，以及她自己。

麥當娜在MTV音樂錄影帶大獎上談論阿麗莎·富蘭克林，以及她自己。 LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

No, we weren’t “wondering why.” We were “appalled that.” As Stuart Heritage of The Guardian wrote, “Madonna took Franklin’s legacy and forced it through a prism so utterly self-regarding that even the jazzed-up kids in the audience looked like they were losing the will to live.” But while her indulgence was extreme, it was also emblematic.

不，我們並不“想知道”。我們對此“感到震驚”。正如《衛報》(The Guardian)的斯圖爾特·赫裡蒂奇(Stuart Heritage)寫的那樣：“麥當娜繼承了富蘭克林的遺產，強行用一個完全以自我為中心的稜鏡加以折射，以至於觀眾中哪怕是那些最興奮的孩子，看上去也像是失去了活下去的盼頭。”雖然她的這種肆意妄為是極端的例子，但也是具有象徵性的。

The rest of us have neither the megaphones nor megalomania of Trump and Madonna, but we have some of the same impulses when weighing in on famous people’s deaths. We find the one point where we intersected with them. We wedge in our own biographies. We flaunt our own résumés.

我們其他人既沒有特朗普和麥當娜面前的擴音器，也不是他們那樣的自大狂，但當我們就名人之死發表看法時，也會有著同樣的衝動。我們找到與他們相交的那個點，把自己的傳記楔入進去。我們炫耀的是自己的履歷。

We assert our character through our grief — or our lack of it. (No shortage of cranks on Twitter deemed this past weekend an appropriate occasion to revel in their distaste for McCain.) It’s classic virtue signaling, gauchely timed and in need of a more specific phrase. Virtue grieving? Obituary opportunism?

我們通過悲傷或者缺乏悲傷來主張自己的性格。（Twitter上不乏怪人，他們認為上週末是享受自己對麥凱恩厭惡的好時候）這是典型的道德炫耀，時機很不得體，而且需要一個更為契合的表達。美德哀悼？訃文投機主義？

To wade through reactions to the losses of McCain, Franklin and other public figures who have died this year is to wallow in anecdotes, information and statements of principle that are obliquely or clumsily attached to the sadness at hand.

我把這歸咎於社交媒體，它可以立即做出某種反應，看上去幾乎是強制性的，就像家庭作業一樣。它承諾“喜歡”和“分享”，成了誤判的助產士，自戀的擴大器。

I blame social media, which can make some kind of immediate response seem almost compulsory, like a homework assignment. It’s a midwife to bad judgment and a narcissism multiplier, with its promise of likes and shares.

我還怪新聞業，這個行業目前正處於這樣一個階段，鼓勵其從業者將重大事件視為塑造品牌的機會，在他人的敘事中刻畫我們自己的小環境，要成為劇中人和嚮導。要做到這一點同時不流露出沾沾自喜是很難的，而且我們當中有很多人都會在這方面失誤，所以我也不打算在本專欄中特意指出任何人了。出於類似的原因，我不會指責那些從麥凱恩笨拙地轉向他們自己小世界的政客和助手。

I also blame journalism, which is in a phase that encourages its practitioners to treat big developments as branding opportunities, carve our own niches in others’ narratives and become characters as well as guides. Doing that without preening is tricky business, and so many of us bungle it that I’m not going to single out anyone in this column. For similar reasons, I’m not going to point fingers at the politicians and aides who pivoted so awkwardly from McCain to their own navels.

六年前諾拉·埃芙隆(Nora Ephron)去世時，我一眼注意到了一些充滿自誇的奇怪悼詞。似乎好萊塢、紐約和華盛頓的所有人都認識她。也許確實如此：她精力極為充沛，有聯絡人脈的天分。在我當時寫的東西里，我對自己和她的關係寫得太過清楚了。現在我回頭看它，感到很難堪。

I first noticed a surfeit of oddly boastful eulogies when Nora Ephron died six years ago. It seemed that everyone in Hollywood, New York and Washington knew her. Maybe everyone did: She had tremendous energy and a talent for connection. I made my own connection to her much too clear in something that I wrote then. I look back at it and cringe.

我們當中許多人並不完全欣賞我們正在做的這種事，而對於其他很多人來說，這是一個對之更加關注的極好理由。它破壞了我們本來應有的目標，也就是將其他人置於聚光燈下。如果我們自己擠滿了舞臺，就無法做到這一點。

Many of us don’t fully appreciate what we’re doing, and that’s a damned good reason, among plenty of others, to pay closer attention to it. It undermines what should be our goal, which is to put someone else in the spotlight. We can’t do that if we’re crowding the stage.

說到舞臺，“旅程”(Journey)樂隊最近演出時，在他們背後的屏幕播放了富蘭克林的照片作為紀念。一位樂評人在評論中稱讚了這件事。然後，“旅程”的吉他手尼爾·朔恩(Neal Schon)及其公關人員聯繫了他，希望對文章進行修正，用公關的話說，要指出這個致敬並不是樂隊的安排，而是“由尼爾獨自完成的”。

Speaking of stages, a screen behind one on which the band Journey recently performed showed pictures, in memoriam, of Franklin. A music critic made positive note of that in his review. He was then contacted by Journey’s guitarist, Neal Schon, and his publicist, who wanted the review corrected to specify, in the publicist’s words, that the tribute was not arranged by the whole band but “was done solo by Neal himself.”

這下澄清了。同樣清楚的，還有他真正迷戀的對象是誰。