How the Western Was Lost(and Why It Matters)暮色残阳西部片

文/迈克尔·阿格雷斯塔 译/陈丽

By Michael Agresta

电影《独行侠》由杰里·布鲁克海默制片，戈尔·维宾斯基执导。据报道，该片在制作过程中花费了2.5亿美元，而且首映的周末适逢假日，却仅收入5000万美元。这一票房惨败不仅沉重打击了天价预算的好莱坞巨片、约翰尼·德普的演艺生涯和迪士尼，也许还在西部片哀伤的衰败史上书写了新的一章，具有决定性意义。

As superheroes, sequels, and international appeal influence Hollywood studios, films from the frontier are riding off into the sunset—just when America needs them most.随着超级英雄、续集、国际吸引力等对好莱坞电影制片厂的影响逐渐加大，反映边疆生活的西部片却逐渐日薄西山——然而，现在正是美国最需要它们的时刻。

[2]自电影诞生以来，西部片一直是伟大而持久的一个电影类型。但现在，它的观众似乎真的开始越来越少了。《独行侠》是四年内第三部在夏季上映却遭受票房失败的西部片，而且它是投资额最高的一部，超过了开创潮流之作《牛仔和外星人》与《西部英雄约拿·哈克斯》。西部片的影迷在人口结构上多为老人和白种人，正如共和党的政治顾问会告诉你的那样，这一特点并不拥有光明的前景。其他一些更为年轻的类型，如超级英雄片和机器人打斗片，比牛仔电影更能吸引年轻人和国际观众。

[3]现在，西部片处于一个尴尬的位置，需要一位英雄来拯救，而且速度还得快。假如《独行侠》成为历史上最后一部大制作西部片，那它将是电影史上一座悲伤的纪念碑，而且也会成为美国的一座悲伤的纪念碑。一个多世纪了，我们依赖西部片来教导我们历史，反思我们目前的政治以及我们在世界上的地位。我们难以承受现在就失去这面镜子，尤其是仅仅因为我们不喜欢这面镜子反馈给我们的影像而摒弃它。

[4]西部片带来了许多历久弥新的愉悦——硬汉英雄、马背上的动作场面、在壮美风景里发生的冒险故事、正义战胜邪恶，等等。所有这一切在第一部西部片《火车大劫案》里就全都出现了。

[5]但是，假如我们在探讨西部片时，仅仅把它浓缩为从野蛮人手里拯救家园、在荒野里追踪坏人或者在山野里寻找财宝的英雄故事，那就忽视了西部片的真正意义。西部片之所以成为美国国家文化和全球形象的一个核心成分，是因为它给电影制作者提供了一个可以信赖的渠道，来探讨美国历史和人物的一些棘手问题。在这一类型片的经典作品中，我们了解到，对家园的真正威胁来自于那种被操纵的向富人倾斜的经济体制，或者对坏人的追踪演变成在以暴制暴的文化环境中对意义的追寻，又或者碧血金沙里的财富其实是美国梦投下的血腥幻影。

[6]通过上个世纪的西部片，我们可以追寻美国的自我形象的演变过程，从一个混乱吵闹但道德自信的世界事务旁观者，演变为一个无所不能、良心有愧的警长。在一战之后，特别是二战前夕，好莱坞极其擅长制作凶狠打击敌人并拯救手无寸铁的定居点民众的英雄故事。而到了大萧条时期，资本主义和美国例外论受到了质疑，牛仔英雄便常常被错误地当作罪犯，从而被迫需要证明自己的价值，当然他无一例外做出了证明。随后，在50、60和70年代，随着美国用一系列的政变、暗杀和愈加可疑的战争实现了其对大半个地球的统治，牛仔的形象也变得更加黑暗、复杂。如果你爱看西部片，那么可能你最爱的一些西部经典便出自这一时期——《原野奇侠》、《搜索者》、《虎豹小霸王》、《花村》（又译《雌雄赌徒》）、意大利式西部片，等等。到反越战的高潮时期，电影中的反英雄牛仔形象增加到和英雄牛仔的数量几乎相当。

[7] 1980年代初期见证了罗纳德·里根就任总统，也见证了艺术范儿十足却过于浮夸的《天堂之门》的票房惨败。随后的十年，失望情绪弥漫，似乎修正主义西部片已经失败，西部片不得不依赖千篇一律的爱国主义情怀方能撑起一片天空。80年代几乎没有产生可圈可点的西部片，而里根本人也是骄傲地将自己塑造为那种老派的、越战之前的牛仔形象。但是，冷战胜利之后出现了西部片的复兴潮，这其中包括修正主义西部片，一个典型的例子便是克林特·伊斯特伍德的扛鼎之作《不可饶恕》。随着后殖民西部片《与狼共舞》的大获成功，凯文·科斯特纳崛起成为一颗新星，他的形象比以往的西部片英雄更温柔。随即，2000年代，乔治·W.布什重新借用牛仔来塑造他的外交形象，不过他的外交政策远没有里根的外交政策成功，西部片再次缩回艺术片的象牙塔内。

[8]考量我们的历史是西部片的任务，哪怕随着时间流逝，那段历史变得越来越令我们尴尬。这就意味着牛仔电影很容易搞砸，因为迄今所有的故事都涉及有争议的问题。

[9]在巴拉克·奥巴马执政时期，西部片出现了短暂的复兴，似乎与美国重新展露苗头的道德权威遥相呼应。如果说这一时期的西部片有一个共同的目标的话，那就是破除传统，不再严格拘泥于白人、男性、异性恋的立场来看待历史乃至现世的矛盾冲突。《牛仔和外星人》是后种族时代西部片颇为愤世嫉俗的尝试——只要片中不出现印第安人，我们就又能成为好人啦！但是更严肃说来，《大地惊雷》《被解救的姜戈》和《独行侠》都把非男性、非白种人的视角放在了突出位置。还有两部比较引人瞩目的片子也符合这一模式：很棒的《断背山》和很糟的《飙风战警》。不过，应该指出的是，以上所举各例（除了《断背山》）都是由白人男性导演执导的，而且《独行侠》中印第安人唐托的扮演者几无印第安血统可言。

[10]尽管岁末巨献如《大地惊雷》和《被解救的姜戈》一举获得评论界好评、奥斯卡奖项和相当多的投资回报，但奥巴马时代对这些旨在赢得更多观众的新奇西部片并不友善。使情况更加糟糕的是国际观众对牛仔电影的排斥，尤其是中国观众。所以，几乎就在电影制作者们对于容纳更为多元的视角愈发感兴趣的同时，全球观众数量的增长遭遇了瓶颈。这个原因也可以用来解释，为什么《独侠者》很可能会成为最后一次真正尝试在夏季电影里独树一帜的西部片。

[11]谁也不喜欢虎头蛇尾，对于牛仔电影来说尤其如此。我们可以接受一个悲伤的结尾，甚至这一类型片的消亡，但至少请让我们的英雄直面他的挑战，完成他的使命，坚守他（或她）的阵地。看着《独行侠》日薄西山，我们很难体会到西部片的出路在哪里。 □

The Lone Ranger’s failure at the box office not only dealt a blow to mega-budget Hollywood blockbusters, Johnny Depp’s career, and Disney1约翰尼·德普是该片主演，迪士尼是电影的发行公司。.The Jerry Bruckheimer-Gore Verbinski flop—which cost a reported $250 million to make and brought in just $50 million opening on a holiday weekend22《独行侠》于2013年7月3日上映，恰逢美国法定假日独立日，故称假日周末。5000万美元的数据不实，据多个电影网站的数据，该片首个周末的收入是2921万。这对于一部投资2.5亿美元的影片来说，可以说是票房惨败。不包括事后发行的光碟收入，该影片的全球票房收入为2.6亿，勉强收支相抵。—also may mark a decisive chapter in the sad story of how the Western was lost.

[2] Since the dawn of film, the Western has been one of the great, durable movie genres, but its audience seems to be finally drying up. The Lone Ranger is the third Western to flop in four summers3夏季是影片销售旺季，学校放假且影院提供了避暑的娱乐场所。发行公司会选择其认为重要的大片在暑期或者, and the most expensive, capping a trend set by Cowboys & Aliens and Jonah Hex44《牛仔和外星人》由环球影业公司出品，2011年7月上映，取材于2006年斯科特·罗森堡的同名漫画，影片预算1.63亿美元，全球票房收入1.74亿美元；《西部英雄约拿·哈克斯》由华纳兄弟公司发行，于2010年6月上映，取材美国DC漫画公司的同名漫画，影片制作成本4800万美元，全球票房收入1100万美元。. Western fans are getting older and whiter with respect to the overall population, and as any Republican political consultant will tell you, that doesn’t bode well for the future. Other,newer genres like superhero movies and fighting-robot flicks have cowboy movies outgunned with younger generations and international audiences.

[3] Now the genre finds itself in the ironic position of needing a hero to save it, and quick. If The Lone Ranger goes down in history as the last of the bigbudget oaters, it’ll be a sad milestone for moviemaking—and for America.For a century plus, we have relied on Westerns to teach us our history and re flect our current politics and our place in the world. We can ill afford to lose that mirror now, especially just because we don’t like what we see staring back at us.

[4] Westerns provide many timeless pleasures—tough guy heroes, action set pieces on horseback, adventures in magnificent landscapes, good triumphing over evil. It’s all there already in arguably the first narrative film ever made, The Great Train Robbery5《火车大劫案》是1903年的一部西部片，全长12分钟，由埃德温·斯坦顿·波特（Edwin Stanton P.

[5] But to discuss Westerns as if they just boiled down to heroic stories of saving the homestead from savages,tracking the bad guy through the wilderness, or finding the treasure in the mountains would be to miss the real meaning of the genre. Westerns have earned their place at the heart of the national culture and American iconography abroad because they’ve provided a reliable vehicle for filmmakers to explore thorny issues of American history and character. In the enduring examples of the genre, the real threat to the homestead, we learn, is an economic system that is being rigged for the wealthy, or the search for the bad guy becomes a search for meaning in a culture of violent retribution, or the treasure of the Sierra Madre66本句作者引用了一个经典西部片《碧血金沙》的片名（The Treasure of the Sierra Madre）。该片又译《宝石岭》《浴血金沙》等，是著名导演约翰·休斯顿的扛鼎之作，由亨弗莱·鲍嘉主演，1948年上映，在21届奥斯卡上斩获最佳导演、最佳剧本、最佳男配等多项大奖，讲述了一个贪欲摧毁一切的故事。is a diabolical mirage of the American dream.

[6] Through the past century of West-ern movies, we can trace America’s self-image as it evolved from a roughand-tumble but morally confident outsider in world affairs to an all-powerful sheriff with a guilty conscience. After World War I and leading into World War II, Hollywood specialized in tales of heroes taking the good fight to savage enemies and saving defenseless settlements in the process. In the Great Depression especially, as capitalism and American exceptionalism came under question, the cowboy hero was often mistaken for a criminal and forced to prove his own worthiness—which he inevitably did. Over the ’50s, ’60s, and’70s however, as America enforced its dominion over half the planet with a long series of coups, assassinations, and increasingly dubious wars, the figure of the cowboy grew darker and more complicated. If you love Westerns, most of your favorites are probably from this era—Shane, The Searchers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, McCabe &Mrs. Miller, the spaghetti westerns7西部片中的一个类型，泛指1960年代由意大利人导演及监制的西部片，演员和工作人员也多为意大利人和西班牙人。为了降低拍摄成本多选择与美国西南部风景相似的西班牙作为外景拍摄地，表现美国西部和墨西哥革命等特殊时代的草莽英雄。人物形象不再善恶分明，出现反英雄、反乌托邦的一些特点。, etc.By the height of the Vietnam protest era, cowboys were antiheroes as often as they were heroes.

[7] The dawn of the 1980s brought the inauguration of Ronald Reagan and the box-of fice debacle of the artsy,overblown Heaven’s Gate8《天堂之门》是1980年迈克尔·西米诺执导的一部西部电影。该片耗资4000万美元，雄心勃勃的要成为西部片巨作，但整体乏善可陈，冗长无聊，未删节版长达325分钟。西米诺在拍这部电影时，前作《猎鹿者》刚获得许多奖项，事业如日中天，但《天堂之门》毁了一切。由于这部电影的失败，投资方联艺电影公司解体，进而导致美国导演对电影的控制逐渐减弱，制片厂对电影占据了完全的主导地位。. There’s a sense of disappointment to the decade that followed, as if the era of revisionist Westerns99西部片的一个类型，指的便是前文提到的60年代中期至70年代的那些具有反英雄色彩的西部电影。had failed and a less nuanced patriotism would have to carry the day. Few memorable Westerns were made in the ’80s, and Reagan himself proudly associated himself with an oldfashioned, pre-Vietnam cowboy image.But victory in the Cold War coincided with a revival of the genre, including the revisionist strain, exemplified in Clint Eastwood’s career-topping Unforgiven10《不可饶恕》是伊斯特伍德于1992年执导的一部西部片，被认为是修正主义西部片的经典，入围当年的9项奥斯卡提名，并最终获得最佳影片、最佳导演、最佳男配和最佳剪辑四项大奖，被美国电影学会选为美国电影史上最伟大的100部电影之一。. A new, gentler star emerged in Kevin Costner, who scored a post-colonial megahit with Dances With Wolves.Later, in the 2000s, George W. Bush reclaimed the image of the cowboy for a foreign policy far less successful than Reagan’s, and the genre retreated to the art house again.

[8] It’s the task of Westerns to address our history, even as decade by decade that history becomes more and more embarrassing to us. That means cowboy movies are easy to bungle, because by now they all take place on contested ground.

[9] Under the presidency of Barack Obama, there has been a short-lived Western revival that would seem to match America’s tentative new moral authority. If the genre in this era can be said to have a unifying aim, it’s to divest itself and its audiences of11to divest sb of sth 使摆脱，使失去。a strictly white, male, heterosexual perspective on history, and by extension on present day conflicts. Cowboys &Aliens is a cynical attempt at a postracial Western—just take the Indians out of the equation so we can be good guys again! —but with more sincerity,True Grit, Django Unchained, and The Lone Ranger have all put non-male,non-white perspectives front and center.(Two other notable movies, the wonderful Brokeback Mountain and the awful Wild Wild West, also fit this model.) It’s worth pointing out, however, that all of these examples (except Brokeback Mountain) were directed by white men,and The Lone Ranger has Tonto played by an actor12影星约翰尼·德普扮演唐托，德普主要是英国白人血统，据说有3/2048的非洲血统，没有印第安人的血统。with only the slightest claim to American Indian ancestry.

[10] Although end-of-year prestige movies like True Grit and Django Unchained have broken through to achieve critical acclaim, Oscars, and substantial return on investment, the Obama era has not been kind to newfangled Westerns that aimed for large audiences.Exacerbating the problem is the rejection of cowboy movies by international audiences, particularly the Chinese. So even as filmmakers have become more interested in incorporating a diversity of viewpoints, they have hit against what appears a global demographic ceiling. It’s another reason why The Lone Ranger will probably be the last attempt to build a true summer tent-pole in the genre.

[11] Nobody likes a weak ending, and this is especially true for cowboy movies. A sad outcome we can accept, even the death of a genre, but at least let our hero meet his challenge, ful fill his destiny, stand his (or her) ground. Watching The Lone Ranger slink off into the sunset, it’s hard to feel any sense of resolution for the Western. ■