一夜之间，女性被奴役，权力被剥夺，没有了自由，彻底沦为生殖机器。美剧《使女的故事》大爆，摘奖无数。原著小说创作于三十多年前，但美剧制作播出时，正逢特朗普当选，获得了更多的关注。有评论说，这部美剧横扫艾美奖是一种政治正确，但这也说明了故事的政治性让人无法忽视。
特朗普时代的《使女的故事》
作者：Matthew d'Ancona
译者：王乐颖
校对：文诗韵
策划：朱雨晴
The Handmaid’s Tale held a mirror up to a year of Trump
《使女的故事》：特朗普之年的明镜
本文选自
The Guardian
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In politics and culture, the year 2017 was the opposite of Where’s Wally? The question, instead, was always Where Isn’t Trump? All roads – public debate, private argument, artistic endeavour – seemed eventually to lead in his
squalid
direction; his gravitational pull irresistible, his fleshy presence horribly ubiquitous.
从政治与文化层面来说，在2017年，人们不需要玩“威利在哪里”这样的解谜游戏
（注：《威利在哪里？》是儿童书籍，在人山人海的图片中找到威利）
。相反，大家经常思考的是“哪里没有特朗普？”公共辩论、私人讨论、艺术创作，一切的一切最终似乎都会指向特朗普那个
丑恶的
方向：他如地心引力般让人无法抗拒，他的存在感高得离谱。
squalid
[ˈskwäləd] adj. extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect 肮脏的
It wasn’t just the explicit satire of, say, Saturday Night Live that kept the US president front and centre in cultural life. Lee Hall’s triumphant reworking at the National Theatre of Network, Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film about mass media and
demagoguery
, held a more subtle mirror up to the age of Trump.
让美国总统成为文化焦点的并不只有《周六夜现场》中直接露骨的讽刺。帕迪·查耶夫斯基1976年的电影《电视台风云》是关于大众传媒和
散布谣言
的。如今，在英国皇家国家剧院，李·霍尔对《电视台风云》的成功改编，更隐晦地反映了特朗普时代。
demagoguery
[ˌdɛməˈɡɒɡərɪ] n. Impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace 煽动群众，散布谣言
Shakespeare’s history plays acquired fresh and often unsettling relevance (watch out for the Bridge theatre’s production of
Julius Caesar
, opening in London next month). Even War for the Planet of the Apes teemed with apparent parallels in its post-apocalyptic vision of walls, segregation and deportation.
现在，莎士比亚的历史剧与我们有了新的联系，，这种联系常常使人不安（请关注下月在伦敦桥剧院上映的《
尤利乌斯·凯撒
》）。就连《猩球崛起:终极决战》中那些高墙、种族隔离和驱逐出境等世界末日般的场景也能在现实生活中找到明显对照。
Julius Caesar
注：这部剧写的是凯撒得胜归来，百姓纷纷上街庆祝他的战功，罗马万人空巷。这名独裁者受拥戴的程度让受过良好教育的精英们警惕，他们密谋推翻他的政权。但暗杀成功之后，罗马爆发了内战。
Yet it was Hulu’s television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale that
jangled
the nerves most vividly and to such startling effect. Set in the near future, it imagined Gilead: an authoritarian mutation of the United States, in which the constitutional apparatus has been forcibly dismantled and replaced by the patriarchal rule of “
Sons of Jacob
”, stripping women of all rights and enslaving those who remained fertile as handmaids, serially raped in a pseudo-biblical “ceremony” to provide the childless governing caste with progeny.
但是，最成功
挑起了
人们的紧张感、直击人心的还属由美国视频网站Hulu改编的玛格丽特·阿特伍德作品《使女的故事》。故事发生的时间设定在不远的将来，它讲述了基利亚国的故事：这是美国经历血腥革命后成立的独裁国家，法律机构被强行废除，取而代之的是“
雅各之子
”般的父系社会法则，这个社会剥夺女性所有的权力，奴役仍可以生育的女性，在伪宗教“仪式”上对她们进行反复强奸，为没有孩子的统治阶层提供下一代，这些女人就是所谓的“使女”。
jangle
[ˈdʒaŋɡ(ə)l] v. If your nerves jangle, or if something jangles your nerves, you feel nervous or upset 刺激，烦扰（神经），使烦躁
Sons of Jacob
雅各之子：拉结无法生育，便让其使女辟拉代替她与其丈夫（雅各）同房，借腹生子。
The Handmaid’s Tale was ostensibly televisual fiction. Yet in its uncompromising exploration of fear and power and its abuse, it also captured the lightning of the moment in a bottle of dystopian genius. It was
nothing short of
mesmeric, all the more so on repeated viewings.
《使女的故事》明显是虚构的电视作品。但故事不仅深入探索了恐惧、权势和权力滥用，也有对反乌托邦精神星星之火的描绘。故事
十分
吸引人，越看越觉得有趣。
nothing short of
you use nothing short of or little short of to emphasize how great or extreme something is 十分，非常
When the series was ordered in April 2016, Trump was the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination but not quite the presumptive candidate. It was still
orthodox
to assert that Hillary Clinton would trounce him in the election itself. His unapologetic
misogyny
had been perfectly clear at the first Republican contenders’ debate in August 2015, in which he sparred with the moderator, Megyn Kelly, and insulted Rosie O’Donnell. But the notorious Access Hollywood tape – “grab them by the pussy” – did not become public until October 2016, by which stage The Handmaid’s Tale was already in production.
2016年4月，该剧集接受预定时，特朗普在共和党美国大选提名中居于领先地位，但尚未成为潜在的总统候选人。当时的
主流
思想认为，希拉里会在选举中彻底击败特朗普。2015年8月，在共和党候选人辩论赛上，特朗普毫不掩饰的
厌女症
已表现得清清楚楚；他和主持人梅根·凯里争吵，还侮辱了罗茜·欧唐内。但是臭名昭著的“好莱坞录音带”——特朗普的著名言论“抓住她们的阴道”——直到2016年10月才公之于众。当时《使女的故事》已进入制作阶段。
Yet, through luck,
intuition
or a combination of the two, the series became a disturbing text for our times. Produced by Atwood, author of the original novel, and Elisabeth Moss, who played the lead character, June/Offred, it did more than a thousand news bulletins to capture all that was most toxic about the new populist right and the shredding of constitutional norms.
但是，借助运气、
直觉
或是两者的结合，这部电视剧成了我们时代令人不安的写照。由小说原著作者阿特伍德和扮演女主琼/奥芙芙雷德的伊丽莎白·莫斯制作的这部剧集对新极右民粹主义和法制规范崩坏危害性的描述比一千份新闻报道还到位。
intuition
[ɪntjʊˈɪʃ(ə)n] n. the ability to understand something instinctively 直觉
When the book first appeared in 1985, it was hailed as an ingenious thought-experiment and, of course, a bleak warning. Atwood’s point was that all the practices she described in fictional Gilead were actually taking place somewhere in the world. She was right, too, to draw attention to the strong strain of Puritanism embedded in American culture by the first settlers – at least as powerful as the Enlightenment values usually associated with the founding fathers.
1985年首次出版时，这本小说被当作一个原创思维实验，当然，也是微弱无力的警示。阿特伍德认为，她笔下虚构的基利亚国内发生的种种正在世界上的某个角落发生。另外，她让人们关注深深根植在美国文化中、由第一批移民带来的清教主义也是正确的，这一思想至少和美国国父们带来的启蒙运动一样影响深远。
But context is all. What seemed a cautionary tale then feels more like a deafening klaxon now. Why? Because the world of Offred, though still notionally a fiction, has migrated from creative construct to the realm of the thinkable. Gilead’s use of technology to subordinate women overnight seemed all too close to the bone in the year in which the power of digital manipulation and cyberwarfare to distort the democratic process became chillingly apparent. If the roots of pluralism, minority rights and constitutionalism were as shallow as Trump clearly believed, then anything was possible.
但如今时代背景变了。当初看似是杞人忧天的寓言现在成了振聋发聩的警钟。原因何在？因为尽管奥芙芙雷德（注：故事女主）的世界看上去是虚构的，它已经从不可能变成可能。基利亚国利用科技一夜之间废止男女平等，和今年网络安全和数字操纵改写民主选举的本质如此类似，让人不寒而栗。假如多元主义、少数族裔权力和遵纪守法和特朗普认为的一样浅薄，那一切皆有可能。
And that is not all: just as the series acted as a mythic commentary upon the culture wars of the Trump era, it also prefigured the fightback of the #MeToo movement. Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the Harvey Weinstein story in the New York Times in October. But the global phenomenon spawned by their initial investigations was luminously foreshadowed in The Handmaid’s Tale – and in one particular scene.
并且，这并不是全部：《使女的故事》是特朗普时代文化战争小说形式的实况报道，它也预示了推特＃MeToo运动的反抗。去年十月，朱迪·坎特纳和梅根·徒海在《纽约时报》曝光了哈维·韦恩斯坦的性骚扰丑闻。她们的行为在全球激起千层浪，在《使女的故事》中就有体现——在下面这一场戏中。
In the final episode, Offred and her fellow handmaids are assembled to stone one of their number to death. In a moment of beautifully captured
solidarity
, they refuse to comply, each dropping her stone as the scandalised guards and the supervising “Aunts” look on. The shot of their rebellious march away from the execution site to the strains of
Nina Simone
might be the backdrop to all that followed in the real world.
最后一集中，奥芙芙雷德和其它使女被召集起来对其中一个同伴施以石刑。镜头拍摄了她们
团结一致
的时刻：使女们拒绝服从命令，在令人发指的看守和监管“嬷嬷”的注视下，每个人都扔掉了手里的石头。在
妮娜·西蒙
的歌声中，使女从行刑场步行离开，这一反抗场景可能正是现实生活中发生事件的背景。
solidarity
[ˌsɒlɪˈdarɪti] n. loyalty and general agreement between all the people in a group, or between different groups, because they all have a shared aim 团结，一致
Nina Simone
美国歌手、作曲家与钢琴表演家。剧中反抗集权的使女们步行离开行刑场的场景配乐正是其代表作《feeling good》
Not that the story ends there. “There will be consequences,” says Ann Dowd’s Aunt Lydia. “Believe me.” As in art, so in life. If you doubt that the #MeToo movement has sown male resentment, look at some of the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) sites and Reddit threads, and think again. There are T-shirts for sale online that bear Gilead’s theocratic greeting, “Under his eye”. Do you think it is women who are buying them?
但故事并没有就此结束。“你们的行为会酿下苦果，” 安·唐德扮演的利迪亚嬷嬷说：“相信我。”影视作品如此，生活也是如此。如果你想知道＃MeToo运动是否在男性心中播下了仇恨的种子，你可以上网浏览一些MGTOW（我行我素的男人）网站和Reddit推送，他们会改变你的想法。网上卖的一款T恤上印着神权统治下基利亚国的标志性问候语：“我主明察”。你认为女性会买这些T恤吗？
Twenty-six years ago, Susan Faludi warned in Backlash that the struggle for gender equality was only just beginning. Just as many on the alt-right envy Islam’s segregation of women, so there are men, seething as never before, who privately regard Atwood’s Gilead not as a dystopia but an inspiration. As I overheard one say after watching the first few episodes: “When does it start getting bad?”
26年前，苏珊·福卢迪在《反挫:谁与女人为敌》中警告，性别平等的抗争才刚刚开始。就像很多极端右翼分子羡慕伊斯兰教对女性的掌控一样，也有男性私底下把阿特伍德笔下的基利亚国视作理想而不是虚构的反乌托邦。这一群体的数量在不断增长。我曾经听到一名男性在看过前几集后说：“这剧糟糕的部分什么时候才开始？”
Atwood’s novel is
opaque
about Offred’s fate but ends with an arch postscript – the minutes of an academic conference in 2195 – implying that Gilead eventually collapses. In contrast, the television series returns in the spring to resume the story of the characters she created more than 30 years ago.
阿特伍德的小说对奥芙芙雷德的命运描写相当
含糊
，小说以一篇2195年的学术会议记录结尾，这暗示基利亚国最终覆灭了。和小说不同，18年春季回归的电视剧会继续讲述阿特伍德三十多年前创作的故事。
