1、小编给你一个美联英语官方免费试听课申请链接：http:/ 捕捉一个暴 戾的时代，需要用暴戾的喜剧If “South Park” were a person, it would be old enough to vote, though it probably wouldnt. That scabrous cartoon has been a one-stop shop for anti-partisan satire and blasphemy on Comedy Central since 1997.如果“南方公园”(South Park)是个人，应该已经到了投票的年龄，虽然它可能不会去。从
2、 1997年至今，这部污秽不 堪的卡通剧一直在提供反党派政治讽刺和神明亵渎的一站式服务。Few comedies can stay first-rate for that long. (Sorry, Homer.) Early in the current season, the shows 19th, the creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone seem to wonder how well the shows offend-at-all-costs ethos has aged. “Its like Im a relic,” a recurring ch
3、aracter says. “Sometimes I feel like Ive outstayed my welcome.”很少有哪部笑剧能如此长时间保持一流水平。（抱歉了，Homer。）在本季即本剧第 19 季之初，剧创特雷帕克(Trey Parker)和麦特斯通(Matt Stone)似乎在想，这种不惜一切代价触怒他人的精神是不是已经过时了。“我就像个老古董，”一个经常出场的人物说道。“有时候我觉得，老这么赖着不走已经招人烦了。”The character in question is a white restaurant owner who believes he is Chinese
4、 and speaks in a grossly stereotyped Asian accent. Maybe, that meta-lament seemed to suggest, the show had started punching down in its later years.此人是个经营着一家餐馆的白人，认为自己是华人，操一口极端符合刻板印象的亚洲口音。平白无故冒出来的哀叹似乎在暗示，也许这个步入暮年的剧已经有些力不从心。Yet this fall “South Park” has gone and revitalized itself, by telling a more
5、 ambitious, serialized story and by asserting that it takes an outrageous comedy to capture an era of outrage.然而在今年秋天，南方公园用一个更宏大的系列故事宣告，要捕捉一个暴戾的时代，需要用暴戾的喜剧。This season, which airs its finale on Wednesday, is built around an extended satire of political correctness. South Park, Colo., is taken over b
6、y a new school principal named, aptly, P. C. Principal and his crew of like-minded, jacked-up frat bros, who believe that being p.c. “means you love nothing more than beer, working out and the feeling that you get when you rhetorically defend a marginalized community from systems of oppression!” The
7、y meet microaggression with macroaggression, bullying kids and adults who, say, refer to the transgender reality star Caitlyn Jenner as anything less than “stunning and brave.”于本周三结束的这一季，是围绕着一种对政治正确的全面嘲弄展开的。一位新校长入主科罗拉多州南方公园，他有个贴切的名字“PC 校长”（P.C. Principal，P.C.即“政治正确”political correctness。 译注） 还有一帮跟他志
8、同道合的弟兄手足，个个情绪激动，坚信政治正确“就是说你的最爱是啤酒、健身，以及那种在压迫体制下慷慨激昂地捍卫一个边缘群体的感觉！”他们用“宏侵犯”(macroaggression)打击“微侵犯”(microaggression )，任何不认为 跨性别真人秀明星凯特 琳詹纳(Caitlyn Jenner)“美艳而勇敢”的人，不论长幼，都会遭到他们的恐吓。But the season also targeted the rise of Donald J. Trump, a phenomenon who has thrived on a resentment of things p.c., just
9、 this week crowing that his plan to ban Muslims from the United States was “probably not politically correct.” A longtime character, Mr. Garrison, begins a White House bid on a familiar-sounding platform of xenophobia against Canadians (recurring boogeymen of “South Park,” going back to the “Blame C
10、anada” number from the 1999 movie musical). Canada, in turn, has elected its own Trump-like figure, with disastrous results. “We thought it was funny,” one Canadian laments. “Nobody really thought hed ever be president!”然而这一季还瞄准了唐纳德J特朗普(Donald J. Trump)，一个因为憎恨一切 PC而大红大紫的人物，就在这一周他还得意地说，他的禁止穆斯林入境计划“可能
11、政治不大正确”。在剧中已有些年头的人物“加里森先生”开始为入主白宫而努力，他采用的是排斥加拿大人的立场（也就是那个屡屡被南方公园树立为大恶人的族群，这段恩怨可追溯到1999 年歌舞片版里那首 都怪加拿大 Blame Canada），听上去十分耳熟。而加拿大反过来也选择了自己的特朗普式人物，后果是灾难性的。“我们是觉得好玩，”一个加拿大人痛心疾首地说。“谁能想到他真当上总统呢。”In reality, Canada has a prime minister. But “South Park” has never cared much about political fine points so
12、much as comedy that deflates zealots and defends the offensive, like an American Charlie Hebdo. It was ahead of the curve in asserting a right to depict the Prophet Muhammad, who appeared in a 2001 episode (though Comedy Central squelched later attempts).在现实中，加拿大选的是总理。但南方公园从来不在乎这些政治细节，它更在乎用喜剧贬损狂热，捍卫
13、无礼，就像美国版查理周报(Charl ie Hebdo)。在先知默罕穆德形象描绘权的伸张上，它是走在前面的，早在 2001 年的一集 中就已经出现（不过此后的几次企图遭到 Comedy Central 的压制）。Now, it was as if our culture had been shining an Eric Cartman-shaped Bat-signal and “South Park” answered. You could see the news from college campuses safe spaces, trigger warnings and conclud
14、e that America was more radically leftist than ever. You could read a dispatch from the Republican primary border walls, refugee panic and conclude that it was more reactionary than ever. The country is deeply polarized, and between two poles is precisely where the quasi-libertarian “South Park” mos
15、t likes to swing.此时此刻，我们的文化仿佛亮起了一个埃里克卡特曼(Eric Cartman)形状的蝙蝠讯号，南方公园应声赶来。你也许看到了大学校园传来的新闻安全空间(safe space)、触发警告(trigg er warning)认定如今的美国出于空 前激进的左倾状态。你也许看到了共和党初选的报道 边境墙、难民潮恐慌 认定它比以 往更加抗拒进步。这个国家是深度分化的，类自由主义的南方公园，恰恰最喜欢在这两极之间摇摆。“South Park” used to be so anti-continuity its episodes are often written days b
16、efore airing that the show would kill the same character, Kenny McCormick, every week. By shifting toward serial stories, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone have been able to make more complex arguments this season: acknowledging, for instance, that sometimes outrage culture has a basis in actual outrages. An
17、 episode on police brutality posits both that South Parks cops are needed to keep the peace and that many of them joined the force to have carte blanche to beat up minorities.南方公园曾经非常反对连续性脚本往往是在播出前几天写就每周都要杀死肯尼麦考尔米克(Kenny McCormick)。本季转向有 连续情节的故事后，帕克和斯通开始进行一些更复杂的论辩：比如他们承认，动辄觉得被冒犯的文化，有时的确源于粗暴的对待。在关于警察
18、暴力的一集中，南方公园的警察被认为是维护安定的必要存在，但同时，他们中的许多人加入警队就是为了可以肆意殴打少数族裔。And where past “South Park” satires once looked at single issues, this season is sketching something like a grand if messy unified theory of anger, inequality and disillusionment in 2015 America.以前的南方公园把讽刺的笔墨放在某个单一的问题上，而这一季里，面对 2015年美国的愤怒、不公和
19、幻灭，它选择去勾勒某种宏大的统一理论虽然谈不上有条理。Even as the p.c. wars rage, the town of South Park is being gentrified: Its attracted a Whole Foods and built Sodosopa (South of Downtown South Park), an enclave of hipster eateries and condos built literally around the house of the dirt-poor McCormick family. The townspeo
20、ple are delighted, until they realize many of them cant afford to join the few, the smug, the artisanal. Under the towns chichi new facade is a familiar slurry of resentment (of the privileged, of immigrants, of elites) and fear (of terrorism, of crime, of economically falling).就在 PC 战火熊熊燃烧之际，南方公园这座
21、小镇却在士绅化：它迎来了第一座全食超市(Whole Foods)，建造了 Sodosopa（南方公园下城南）区，一个潮人食 肆林立的地方，贫困的麦考尔米克家四周围全是新建的共管公寓。镇民们十分欣喜，但是没过多久他们就发现，他们无力负担那稀罕、自得、精致的生活。在附庸风雅的新外表之下，这座镇子弥漫着一种熟悉的（对特权阶层、对移民、对精英的）怨恨和（对恐怖主义、对犯罪、对经济滑坡的）恐惧。And all that, in the “South Park” worldview, drives people to a self-pitying narcissism that extends to po
22、litics but also goes beyond it. In the seasons darkest episode, “Safe Space,” the townspeople assign a single child to filter every negative comment from their social media, to protect their self-esteem from all manner of “-shaming.”在南方公园的世界观里，这些会让人产生一种自怜的自恋，它会扩张到政治中，还会向别处蔓延。在本季最黑暗的一集安全空间中，镇民们指定一个孩子
23、去过滤社交媒体上的所有负面评论，让他们的自尊免受一切“羞辱”的侵扰。After the boy nearly dies from the strain of filtering the entire Internets hate, an allegorical figure named Reality wearing a silent-movie villains cape and mustache shows up to scold South Parkers with a lecture that sums up this seasons Swiftian brimstone morali
24、ty: “Im sorry the world isnt one big liberal-arts college campus! We eat too much. We take our spoiled lives for granted. Feel a little bad about it sometimes.”为了过滤整个互联网的恨意，男孩在沉重的压力之下几乎因此丧命，一个名叫“现实”的寓言式人物随后出场，他穿着默片时代反派人物的斗篷，蓄着胡须，前来责骂南方公园的居民们，他用一场演说总结了这一季中的乔纳森斯威夫特式道德拷问：“很遗憾，这世界不是一座巨型文科学院校园！我们吃太多了。我们以
25、为生活本来就该这么养尊处优。心里应该偶尔有点过意不去的感觉。”Affected by his words, the citizens are moved to action: They take Reality to the town square and hang him.他的言语促使居民们行动起来：他们把现实带到镇广场，将其吊死。Its not exactly subtle, nor is the shows argument entirely focused; the season-ending arc has involved a tangent about deceptive onl
26、ine advertising. (The finale may be more timely. Only a week after the terrorist shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the episode promises a story on how “the citizens of South Park feel safer armed”; a teaser video has Cartman getting in an armed standoff with his mother at bedtime.)这不是多精巧的安排，而它的论述也
27、不见得总能落在正题上；本季结尾的剧情中突然插入了一段讲欺骗性网络广告的内容。（全季大结局可能有更多的时效性。一周前刚刚发生加州圣贝尔纳迪诺恐怖主义袭击，这一集承诺要讲讲“南方公园人民手里有枪心中不慌”的故事；在一段预告视频中，卡特曼在睡前和妈妈发生了一场持枪对峙。）And by making P. C. Principal and friends white dudes, the show sidesteps the fact that “politically correct” is often a label lobbed by white dudes at women and minor
28、ities whove faced actual prejudice. Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone anticipate this criticism too, having Cartman tell his schoolmate Kyle, with atypical self-awareness: “Were two privileged straight white boys who have their laughs about things we never had to deal with.”剧中的 PC校长和他的朋友都是白人男性，这就回避了一个现实：很多时候
29、是白人男性在往女人和少数族裔头上扣“政治正确”的帽子，也就是那些真的在受歧视的人群。帕克和斯通料到有人会揪住这里不放，他们让卡特曼用一种反常的自知之明对他的同学凯尔(Kyle)说： “我们是两个有特权的白 人直男，喜欢取笑一些我们永远 不需要面对的东西。”This product of two white guys does have a different vantage point from many of todays best comedies dealing with identity issues, from “black-ish” to “Master of None.” But in a way, its project and theirs are the same: to deal with tensions by prescribing more conversation, even if its uncomfortable, not less.比起目前其他的一些涉及身份问题的喜剧杰作比如喜新不厌旧(Black-ish)和无为大师(Master Of None)，本剧作为两个白人男性 的作品，的确占据着一个别人没有的优势。但从某种程度上说，它们的课题是一样的：在紧张的气氛下，它们开出的处方是增加而非减少对话，即便这对话让大家坐立不安。
