When Artists Distort History

　　(1) King Richard III was a monster. He poisoned his wife, stole the throne from his two young nephews and ordered them to be smothered in the Tower of London. Richard was a sort of Antichrist the King — “that bottled spider, that pois’nous bunch-back’d toad.

　　(2) Anyway, that was Shakespeare’s version. Shakespeare did what the ______ does: he turned history into a vivid, articulate, organized dream — repeatable nightly. He put the crouch-back onstage, and sold tickets.

　　(3) And who would say that the real Richard known to family and friends was not identical to Shakespeare’s memorably loathsome creation? The actual Richard went dimming into the past and vanished. When all the eye-witnesses are gone, the artist’s imagination begins to conjure.

　　(4) Variations on the King Richard Effect are at work in Oliver Stone’s JFK. Richard Ⅲ was art, but it was propaganda too. Shakespeare took the details of his plot from Tudor historians who wanted to blacken Richard’s name. Several centuries passed before other historians began to write about Richard’s virtues and suggest that he may have been a victim of Tudor malice and what is the cleverest ______ of all: art.

　　(5) JFK is a long and powerful discourse about the death of the man Stone keeps calling “the slayed young king.” What are the rules of Stone’s game? Is Stone functioning as commercial entertainer? Propagandist? Documentary filmmaker? Historian? Journalist? Fantasist? Sensationalist? Paranoid conspiracy-monger? Lone hero crusading for the truth against a corrupt Establishment? Answer: some of the above.

　　(6) The first superficial effect of JFK is to raise angry little scruples like wounds in the conscience. Wouldn’t it be absurd if a generation of younger Americans, with no memory of 1963, were to form their ideas about John Kennedy’s assassination from Oliver Stone’s report of it? But worse things have happened — including, perhaps, the Warren Commission report?

　　(7) Stone’s movie and the Warren report are interestingly symmetrical: the Warren Commission was insensi-tively, one might say pathologically, unsuspicious, while in every scene of the Stone film conspiracy theories move painfully underfoot like snakes. In a strange way, the two reports balance one another out. It may be ______ to accord Stone’s movie a status coequal with the Warren report. On the other hand, the Warren report has endured through the years as a monolith of obscure suppression, a smooth tomb of denial. Stone’s movie, for all its wild gesticulations, at least refreshes the memory and gets a long-cold curiosity and contempt glowing again.

　　(8) The irresponsibility of the Warren report somehow makes one less indignant about Stone’s methods and the 500 kitchen sinks that he has heaved into his story. His technique is admirable as storytelling and now and then preposterous as historical inquiry. But why should the American people expect a moviemaker to assume ______ for producing the last word on the Kennedy assassination when the government, historians and news media have all pursued the subject so imperfectly?

　　(9) Stone uses a suspect, mixed art form, and JFK raises the familiar ethical and historical problems of docu-drama. But so what? Artists have always used public events as raw material, have taken history into their imagi-nations and transformed it. The fall of Troy vanished into the Iliad. The Battle of Borodino found its most memorable permanence in Tolstoy’s imagining of it in War and Peace.

　　(10) Especially in a world of insatiable electronic storytelling, real history procreates, endlessly conjuring new versions of itself. Public life has become a metaphysical breeder of fictions. Watergate became an almost con-tinuous television miniseries — although it is interesting that the movie of Woodward and Bernstein’s All The President’s Men stayed close to the known facts and, unlike JFK, did not validate dark guess.

　　(11) Some public figures have a story magic, and some do not. Richard Nixon possesses an indefinable, em-barrassed dark gleam that somehow fascinates. And John Kennedy, despite everything, still has the bright glam-our that works best of all. Works, that is, except when the subject is his assassination. That may be a matter still too sacred, too raw and unassimilated. The long American passivity about the death in Dallas may be a sort of hypnosis — or a grief that hardened into a will not to know. Do not let daylight in upon magic.

　　(12) Why is Stone’s movie different from any other imaginative treatment of history? Is it because the assassi-nation of John Kennedy was so traumatic, the bady boomers’ End of Childhood? Or that Americans have santi-fied it as official tragedy, a title that confers immunity from irreligious revisionists who would reopen the grave? Are artists and moviemakers by such logic prohibited from stories about the Holocaust? The Holocaust, of course, is known from the outset to be a satanic plot. For some reason — a native individualism, maybe — many Americans resist dark theories about J.F.K.’s death, and think those retailing them are vending foreign, anarchist goods. Real Americans hate conspiracies as something unclean.

　　(13) Perhaps the memory of the assassination is simply too fresh. An outraged movie like Stone’s intrudes upon a semipermanent mourning. Maybe the subject should be embargoed for some period of time, withheld from artists and entertainers, in the same way the Catholic Church once declined to consider sainthood until the person in question had been dead for 50 years.

　　【参考译文】论艺术家扭曲史实

　　(1)英王理查三世是个魔鬼。他毒死了自己的妻子，篡夺原属于两个年轻侄儿的王位，还下令在伦敦塔中让他们窒息而死。理查可说是一位撒旦似的国王——“那瓶中的蜘蛛，那阴毒的驼背蟾蜍。”

　　(2)至少这是莎士比亚的说法。莎士比亚所做的只是剧作家的本分：把历史转变为鲜明、清晰、条理分明的梦——可以每晚上演。他把这个驼背怪物搬上台，卖票给人看。

　　(3) 又有谁敢说在亲朋好友眼中的真正的理查不是这样，和莎翁创造出来的那个令人厌恶得难以忘怀的剧中人物不同？真正的理查，随着历史远去而了无踪迹。所有的目击证人都已不在了，艺术家的想像力就开始施展魔力了。

　　(4) 在奥利佛•斯通的《谁杀了肯尼迪》中可以看到这种“理查国王效应”的变奏。《理查三世》是艺术，但也是宣传：莎翁剧情的细节取材自同时期的都铎王朝的历史家，而这些人蓄意丑化理查的形象。要过好几百年才有别的历史家出来记述理查的好处，并且暗示理查可能是都铎王朝恶意宣传的牺牲品，也是最巧妙的阴谋——艺术——的牺牲品。

　　(5) 《谁》片是有力的长篇大论，主题是一位人物的死亡——斯通一直称为“遇害的青年国王”的那个人。期通的把戏到底用的是哪种规则？他是扮演提供商业化娱乐的角色？还是宣传家？纪录片电影制作者？历史家？记者？幻想家？危言耸听者？有偏执狂的阴谋论者？独行侠式的英雄，为真理出征，挑战腐败的体制？答案：以上有些是。

　　(6) 《谁》片所造成的第一种比较表面化的效果，就是激起观众愤怒的原则问题的小抗议，好像良心上的一道道鞭痕：如果年轻一代的美国人，不复记得1963(肯尼迪遇刺年代)，对于肯尼迪遇刺案的观念全凭斯通的报道，这不是太荒谬了吗？可是比这更糟的事也不是没发生过——也许包括华伦委员会报告在内。

　　(7)斯通的电影和华伦委员会的报告形成有趣的对称：华伦委员会是反应迟钝，毫无疑心，几乎可以说到了病态的地步：而在斯通电影的每一场戏中，阴谋论像蛇一样在脚下到处窜动。这两种报告很微妙地可以互相平衡。当然，把斯通的片子赋予和华伦报告相同的地位，有点不伦不类。反过来说，华伦报告历经多年至今，像一块巨石般，隐隐压抑着所有不同的说法，好像一座平滑的坟墓，泰然否定一切。斯通的片子虽然从头到尾比手划脚，十分夸张，至少让人重温旧事，让观众心中早已冷却的好奇与轻蔑重新烧了起来。

　　(8) 因为华伦报告如此不痛不痒，所以让观众似乎比较能忍受斯通的手法与他搬到电影中的堆积如山的垃圾。从说故事的角度来看，他的手法高明，从调查史实的角度来看则不时显得荒谬。可是政府、历史学家与新闻媒体追查这个主题都无法令人满意，美国人又怎能指望一位电影人来负责对肯尼迪遇刺案下断语？

　　(9) 斯通采用的艺术形态是纪录剧情片，这种形态血统不纯正，可靠性也令人怀疑。《谁》片也再度引起关于纪录剧情片的道德性、历史性问题。可是这又怎样？艺术家一向都采用公共事件做原始素材，把历史纳入想象中加以改造。特洛伊城的陷落淹没在《伊利亚特》中。波罗金诺之役能够不朽，永为后人追忆的，不是史实，而是托尔斯泰在《战争与和平》中的想象。

　　(10)尤其在电子媒体无止境渴求故事的今日，真实历史不断创造、繁衍出千奇百怪的新版本。公共人物的生活好像成了虚构故事的哺育者。水门事件爆发后，变成几乎不间断的电视迷你剧集——不过有一点颇堪玩味：描写伍华德与伯恩斯坦揭发水门事件的《大阴谋》一片紧守已知的事实，不像《谁》片把阴暗的揣测当真。

　　⑾ 有些公共人物有成为故事的魅力，有些则不然。尼克松有一种不可名状的、好像要掩饰什么的阴暗的光芒，产生一种莫明的吸引力。肯尼迪不论如何还是有他灿烂的光彩，最适合编故事。或许应该说，他遇刺这个故事除外。这个主题可能还是太神圣、太生硬，还没有消化完毕。美国人长久以来对达拉斯市那宗死亡事件一直处于被动、消极状态，这可能是一种催眠——也可能是悲痛化为不愿去了解的意志。神奇的事物不要摊在阳光下。

　　⑿ 斯通的电影和别人利用历史做想象的素材为什么感觉不同？是否因为肯尼迪遇刺造成太深的心理创痛，象征了婴儿潮一代童年的结束？还是因为美国人把它当做国家悲剧供奉起来，使它得以免于被亵渎神明的翻案者从坟墓中挖出来？依此逻辑，艺术家与电影人是否就禁止用纳粹大屠杀来做故事材料？当然，纳粹大屠杀不同，打从一开始很清楚就是撒旦式的情节。许多美国人不知何故——也许天生的个人主义的关系吧——会排斥关于肯尼迪之死的阴谋论，而且认为兜售阴谋论的人是在贩卖外国无政府主义的货物。真正的美国人好像把阴谋看成不洁的事物而讨厌它。

　　⒀ 也许只是因为对刺杀肯尼迪案的记忆还太鲜明了。像斯通这种忿忿不平的电影侵犯到美国人近乎永恒的哀悼。也许这个题材应该禁用一段时间，不准艺术家和娱乐界人士使用，就像天主教从前不愿考虑把死亡未满50年的人封为圣徒一样。