恐怖大師史蒂芬金
姜台芬(台灣大學外文系教授)
史蒂芬金﹙Stephen King﹚是一位寫過無數暢銷恐怖小說的著名作家，他有許多作品皆被好萊屋拍成賣座的影片，如「魔女嘉莉」等。以下這篇短文，選錄自Reading Culture ﹙1995年，Harper-Collins出版﹚，他分析了恐怖電影這麼受大眾歡迎的原因。
I think that we're all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better─and maybe not all that much better, after all. We've all known people who talk to themselves, people who sometimes squinch their faces into horrible grimaces when they believe no one is watching, people who have some hysterical ─of snakes, the dark, the tight space, the long drop...and, of course, those final worms and grubs that are waiting so patiently underground.
我認為每一個人精神都有問題。沒有被關進精神病院的只不過是隱藏得比較好些──而且可能好得有限。我們都認識一些會自言自語的人、一些以為沒其他人在看時就作出可怕鬼臉的人；一些有著歇斯底里恐懼的人──怕蛇、怕黑、怕狹小的空間、怕長長的墜落……當然還有怕那些在地底下耐心等待著的蟲和蛆。
When we pay four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in a theater showing a horror movie, we are daring the nightmare.
當我們付了四或五塊錢，去放映恐怖電影的戲院十排中央坐下來時，我們是在挑戰那些夢魘。
Why? Some of the reasons are simple and obvious. To show that we can, that we are not afraid, that we can ride this roller coaster. Which is not to say that a really good horror movie may not surprise a scream out of us at some point, the way we may scream when the roller coaster twists through a complete 360 or plows through a lake at the bottom of the drop. And horror movies, like roller coasters, have always been the special province of the young; by the time one turns 40 or 50, one's appetite for double twists or 360-degree loops may be considerably depleted.
為什麼呢？有些理由淺顯易見。為了表現我們並不害怕，表現我們有膽搭上這輛雲霄飛車。這可不是在否定一部好的恐怖電影在某些時刻能像雲霄飛車大轉三百六十度或在最低點衝過湖面時一樣引人尖叫。而恐怖電影，正如雲霄飛車般，從來就是年輕人的專利；當一個人四五十歲時，對雙螺旋或三百六十度大迴圈的胃口就會小了許多。
（看恐怖電影，最淺顯的動機是要表現自己膽大。挑選正中央的位子，可以體驗最完全的恐怖效果，作最高度的挑戰。）
And we go to have fun.
Ah, but this is where the ground starts to slope away, isn't it? Because this is a very peculiar sort of fun, indeed. The fun comes from seeing others menaced─sometimes killed. One critic has suggested that if pro football has become the voyeur's version of combat, then the horror film has become the modern version of the public lynching.
我們去也是為了好玩。
啊，這裡就有一點奇怪了，不是嗎？因為這的確是一種特殊的趣味。這趣味來自於看到別人處在威脅下，甚至被殺。一位影評說如果職業足球賽是一種偷窺慾者的戰鬥版本，那麼恐怖電影便是古代私刑處死的現代版本。
（看恐怖電影的再深一層動機，可就有點邪了。作者從這裡開始對人類本性與心理逐步進行冷酷而深刻的剖析，"the ground starts to slope away" 與稍前 "plows through a lake at the bottom of the drop" 相呼應，彷彿有意無意在提醒人，恐怖電影的吸引力附帶著高度危險性，可能教人踰越人性的底限。）
It is true that the mythic, "fairy-tale" horror film intends to take away the shades of gray...It urges us to put away our more civilized and adult penchant for analysis and become children again, seeing things in pure blacks and whites. It may be that horror movies provide psychic relief on this level because this invitation to lapse into simplicity, irrationality and even outright madness is extended so rarely. We are told we may allow our emotions a free rein...or no rein at all.
的確，虛幻而如神話般的恐怖電影把灰色地帶都抹去了……它迫使我們丟棄文明而成熟的思辨傾向，轉而像孩子般只看見黑與白。恐怖電影在這個層面上也許提供了心靈上的解脫，因為鮮少有如此機會被邀請進入一個簡單、非理性、甚至徹底瘋狂的世界中。我們被允許讓情緒自我駕馭，甚至完全不受駕馭。
（恐怖電影欲突破傳統規範的奇特傾向，正凸顯了人性的曖昧複雜。）
If we are all insane, then sanity becomes a matter of degree. If your insanity leads you to carve up women like Jack the Ripper or the Cleveland Torso Murderer, we clap you away in the funny farm (but neither of those two amateur-night surgeons was ever caught, heh-heh-heh); if, on the other hand, your insanity leads you only to talk to yourself when you're under stress or to pick your nose on you morning bus, then you are left alone to go about your business...though it is doubtful that you will ever be invited to the best parties.
如果我們都瘋了，那麼瘋狂就只是程度上的問題了。如果你的瘋狂會導致你去把女人大切八塊，就像開膛手傑克或克里夫蘭軀體殺人魔一樣，我們會把你扔進瘋人院中。﹙但是前面兩位夜間業餘外科醫生可是至今沒被抓到，嘿嘿嘿…﹚相反的，如果你的瘋狂只會導致你在壓力大時自言自語、或是在早上的公車上猛挖鼻孔，那麼應該沒有人會干涉你……但是你可能永遠不會被邀請去好玩的派對。
(恐怖電影甚至危及正常與瘋狂的區分。)
The potential lyncher is in almost all of us (excluding saints, past and present; but then, most saints have been crazy in their own ways), and every now and then, he has to be let loose to scream and roll around in the grass. Our emotions and our fears form their own body, and we recognize that it demands its own exercise to maintain proper muscle tone. Certain of these emotional muscles are accepted─even exalted─in civilized society; they are, of course, the emotions that tend to maintain the status quo of civilization itself. Love, friendship, loyalty, kindness─these are all the emotions that we applaud, emotions that have been immortalized in the couplets of Hallmark cards and in the verses (I don't dare call it poetry) of Leonard Nimoy.
幾乎每個人的心中都隱藏著一個愛處私刑的人﹙除了古今的聖人之外；但，大部分聖人都有自己的瘋狂方式﹚，而每隔一段時間，這個人必須被放出來大叫幾聲，且在草地上滾幾圈。我們的情緒及恐懼有著自己的身體，而我們了解它們必須有自己的運動來維持肌肉的強度。一些特定的「情緒肌肉」是被文明社會所接受，甚至被大大稱頌的；它們當然就是維持文明現狀的情緒。愛、友誼、忠誠、親切──以上都是我們所讚許的情緒，被 Hallmark 卡片上的對句及 Leonard Nimoy 的文句﹙我不敢叫它作詩﹚捧的永垂不朽。
（作者將恐怖電影揭發出的人性中隱藏的瘋狂正式實體化，並授予它應有的生存空間與地位。)
But anticivilization emotions don't go away, and they demand periodic exercise. We have such "sick" jokes as, "What's the difference between a truckload of bowling balls and a truckload of babies?" (You can't unload a truckload of bowling balls with a pitchfork...a joke, by the way, that I heard originally from a ten-year-old). Such a joke may surprise a laugh or a grin out of us even as we recoil, a possibility that confirms the thesis: If we share a brotherhood of man, then we also share an insanity of man. None of which is intended as a defense of either the sick joke or insanity but merely as an explanation of why the best horror films like the best fairy tales, manage to be reactionary, anarchistic, and revolutionary all at the same time.
但是反文明的情緒並不會就此消失，而它們也一樣要求有規律的運動機會。我們有一些「病態」的笑話，比如說「一卡車的保齡球與一卡車的小baby有什麼不同？」﹙答案是你不能用乾草叉把保齡球卸下。……還有，這笑話是我從一個十歲的小孩口中第一次聽到﹚這樣的一個笑話會引我們發噱，即使就在我們被嚇得退縮的同時。如此的可能性證實了一個論點：如果我們共有對人類的手足之情，那麼我們必定也有著共同的瘋狂因子。這並非在為病態笑話或是瘋狂作任何辯解，而只是單純解釋為什麼好的恐怖電影和好的童話故事一樣，具有反動性、無政府傾向、與革命性。
The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies realized...and it all happens, fittingly enough, in the dark. For those reasons, good liberals often shy away from horror movies. For myself, I like to see the most aggressive of them─Dawn of the Dead , for instance─as lifting a trap door in the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators swimming around in that subterranean river beneath.
虛構的恐怖電影如同病態笑話有個骯髒的工作要作──它故意地迎合我們最壞的一面。它是不受羈抑的病態、是人性最深層的本能釋放、是最不堪幻想的實現；而且很適切地，這一切是在黑暗中發生。因為這些緣故，一些優秀的自由主義者總是避看恐怖電影。而我呢，則是挑最恐怖的來看﹙比如說「死者的黎明」﹚，就當作在文明的前腦打開一個暗門，丟一些生肉餵餵在底下隱蔽的大河中悠游的鱷魚們。
Why bother? Because it keeps them from getting out, man. It keeps them down there and me up here. It was Lennon and McCartney who said that all you need is love, and I would agree with that.
As long as you keep the gators fed.
何必如此費事呢？因為這樣可以防止它們跑出來啊，老兄。使它們乖乖的待在下面，而我則在上面。是約翰藍儂和喬治麥卡尼說你只需要愛，而我同意這點。
只要你記得把鱷魚餵飽。
「全民英語專刊」內容包含「著名英文演說賞析」、「名家作品賞析」、「新聞英語」、「英文翻譯」、「英語教與學」等專欄。本版今日刊登〈名家作品賞析〉─「恐怖大師史蒂芬金」，由臺大教授姜台芬執筆，另外尚有〈新聞英語〉─「臺灣立法委員要求調查秘密帳戶」。詳文請閱中央日報文教報第16版。
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