美国流行文化垄断面临挑战

Doomsday was supposed to come on the first day of winter, according to certain readings of the Mayan calendar. The world didn’t end, but December 21 marked an epoch nonetheless. Psy, the stage name of 34-year-old Park Jae-sang, became the first artist to get 1bn views on YouTube, with Gangnam Style , a dance video about the fashion-conscious haute bourgeoisie of Seoul that is manic, funny, raunchy and surprising.

根据玛雅历法的某种说法，世界末日应在2012年冬至那一天到来。世界并未在去年12月21日那一天毁灭，不过，那一天仍标志了一个崭新纪元的开始——因为一段名为《江南风》(Gangnam Style)的歌舞视频，艺名为Psy的韩国说唱歌手朴载相(Park Jae-sang)成为了首位在YouTube上浏览量过10亿次的艺人。这段视频疯狂、有趣、粗俗，又令人大跌眼镜，反映的是韩国首尔时髦中上阶层的生活。

What is most surprising, perhaps, is that Gangnam Style is not American and not even sung in English. Every culture has its dance crazes and its pop idioms. Korean, or K-Pop, groups are in vogue now. But global blockbuster hits, in whatever genre, have come to seem a US niche market. It was Michael Jackson’s popularity in the 1980s that started this global style in pop culture. In contrast to, say, The Beatles, who had an unmistakably English style that became globally popular, Jackson’s music, an ingenious collection of disco rhythms and nonsense phrases, didn’t seem to come from any culture. Justin Bieber’s Baby, a similar global product, seemed the best bet to reach 1bn YouTube views until Gangnam Style came along.

但最让人惊讶的一点或许是，《江南风》并不是美国歌，甚至也不是用英文演唱的。每种文化都有自己的流行舞蹈和流行风格。目前韩国的流行音乐（又称K-Pop）组合流行起来了。但轰动全球的东西，不论是在哪个领域，一直以来似乎都是美国的专利。迈克尔·杰克逊(Michael Jackson)在上世纪八十年代风靡全球，从此开创了流行文化领域的国际化风格。披头士(Beatles)具有非常鲜明的英伦风格，并在全球大受欢迎，与之形成鲜明对比的是，杰克逊的音乐天才地融合了迪斯科节奏以及没有太多内在含义的语句，看不出任何文化背景。另一件带有全球化特征的文化作品是贾斯汀·比伯(Justin Bieber)的《宝贝》(Baby)。在《江南风》风行之前，《宝贝》似乎是最有希望实现YouTube浏览量过10亿次的歌曲。

Why have Americans so dominated the globalised part of popular culture up till now? Despite complaints from France and elsewhere, it was not a matter of “cultural imperialism. The US has little in the way of cultural infrastructure abroad, like Germany’s Goethe Institutes or the British Council. And that should not matter because, to repeat, the culture we are talking about is not American culture – it is an international culture in which Americans have played the leading role.

为什么美国人迄今为止一直主导着流行文化中的全球化潮流？虽然法国和其他一些国家对此提出抗议，但这一现象并不属于“文化帝国主义范畴。美国几乎没有在海外设立像德国的歌德学院(Goethe Institute)或者英国大使馆文化教育处(British Council)那样的文化机构。但这对美国主导国际文化并没有太大影响，因为如前所述，我们在这里讨论的这种文化并不是美国文化——而是一种国际文化，这种文化一直由美国人主导。

The US has benefited from intangible advantages. It uses the lingua franca, the cultural equivalent of printing a reserve currency. It is easier for authors to get translated from English than into English, and the same principle holds for movies. US corporations have the longest familiarity with the relatively new business models used in cultural markets. For instance, iTunes is an American invention. This magnifies US cultural advantages because the market into which artists from other countries must sell is often abysmal. A superb report by Youkyung Lee and Ryan Nakashima showed how little Psy has made from Gangnam Style in his native South Korea: about $50,000 from CD sales and $61,000 from 3.6m downloads.

美国得益于一些无形的优势。美国说英语，这是国际通用语言，相当于文化领域的“储备货币。英文作品翻译成其他语言远比其他语言的作品翻译成英文容易，电影作品也是如此。美国企业最早熟悉文化市场中相对较新的商业模式。例如，iTunes就是美国人的发明。这进一步放大了美国的文化优势，因为其他国家的艺术家所需面对的市场环境通常惨不忍睹。李柳暻(Youkyung Lee)和Ryan Nakashima撰写的一份极为出色的报告显示，朴载相的《江南风》在韩国本土市场仅为他带来了很少的收益：5万美元的CD销售收入，以及6.1万美元的网络下载收入（360万次下载）。

Their home audience may be the pivotal advantage US artists have. As the writer Todd Gitlin put it years ago: “By the time it leaves our shores, US popular culture has been ‘pretested’ in a heterogeneous public – a huge internal market with hybrid tastes and a tradition of juxtaposition and recombining disparate elements, melting them down into a Hollywood melange.

美国艺术家的主要优势或许在于他们的本国观众群。作家托德·吉特林(Todd Gitlin)多年前就曾指出：“美国文化在走出国门以前，就已经预先接受过本国多元化的观众群检验——美国国内文化市场庞大，观众口味多种多样，并有将完全不同的元素排列组合、融合成一锅好莱坞式大杂烩的传统。

But you could as easily say “dumbing down as “melting down. Culturally speaking, the diverse US audience giveth and it taketh away. An American artist who wants to appeal to a variety of US cultural communities does so not by mastering the cultures of others but by stripping away those elements of his own that might require explanation. US society is indeed diverse, but for that very reason American popular culture is homogenous. It deals in universals: it’s wonderful to fall in love, it’s sad to grow old. This kind of US culture is accessible to all, but it is hostile to more elaborate cultures. That is why people abroad resent it even as they buy it.

但“融合化也容易被说成“通俗化。从文化角度来说，美国观众群体的多元化特质既有好处也有坏处。一名美国艺术家如果想要迎合美国多个文化群体的喜好，那么就要舍弃自己所属文化中可能令人不解的元素，而不是去掌握其他群体的文化。美国社会确实非常多元化，但正是由于这个原因，美国的流行文化才呈现出高度同质化的特点。美国流行文化围绕的是普世价值：陷入爱河是美妙的，年华老去是令人伤感的。这样的美国文化能够为所有人接受，但对于其他更为复杂的文化来说则是种威胁。正因如此，一些海外观众即便在购买美国文化作品的同时，也对其心存反感。

Americans understand this poorly. They concede that they have fallen behind in old-economy industries. But they believe the planet keeps gravitating to their movies, books and songs because the US is a nation of creative geniuses. Whether due to something admirable in their character or something admirable in their management of diversity, Americans think they are better at making popular culture than other peoples. They are probably wrong.

美国人对于这一点的理解很不到位。他们承认自己在传统行业中已经落后于其他国家，但他们相信，全世界仍然在为美国的电影、书籍以及歌曲所倾倒，因为美国是一个创意天才辈出的国家。不管是由于美国国民性格当中的某些优良特质，还是由于美国在对多元化的管理方面的可取之处，美国人认为自己在创造流行文化方面强于其他国家。但这种看法可能是错误的。

What the US has is not a national genius but wealth, prestige and glamour. The world is always curious about how wealthy, prestigious and glamorous people dance, fight and fall in love. If this is correct, then the American misjudgment of what other people are really buying from them is going to turn out to be a costly mistake. Obviously, the producers and venture capitalists who drive the entertainment industry will happily turn their focus towards any country that can produce blockbusters. For similar reasons, the Dominican Republic, with a 30th of the US population, provides a 10th of the players in US major league baseball.

美国的优势不在于其国民的聪明才智，而在于其财富、影响力以及魅力。这个世界总是想知道，有钱、有影响力又魅力非凡的人怎样跳舞、争斗以及恋爱。如果这个判断是正确的，那么美国人将因为错误理解了其他国家究竟是出于什么原因购买美国文化作品而付出沉重代价。显而易见的是，娱乐业的幕后推手——制片人和风险资本家将乐于将注意力转向任何国家，只要这个国家能够制造出轰动全球的作品。因为类似的原因，虽然多米尼加共和国的人口数量仅相当于美国总人口的三十分之一，但该国向美国职业棒球大联盟(Major League Baseball)输送的球员人数却达到该联盟球员总数的十分之一。

But the heart of the problem is elsewhere. The US role in the global corporate economy consists disproportionately of consultants, designers, personnel managers et al., who make a good living showing foreign leaders how to organise their businesses and societies along US lines. Should the US reputation for mismanagement, profligacy and trillion-dollar government deficits continue to grow, non-US corporate executives will at some point ask why they are paying an architect to design a conference room like those in Manhattan. Why not get one like they have in Pudong? By the same token, why not ask how people are dressing in Gangnam rather than in South Beach? Culture follows wealth, prestige and glamour. As the US share of these declines, the world’s viewers may come to prefer Sleepless in Seoul to Sleepless in Seattle.

不过以上并非问题的关键。在全球经济领域，美国在全球的咨询、设计以及人力资源管理等领域扮演特别突出的角色。通过向别国的管理者展示如何按照美国的方式管理企业和社会，这些专业人士获得了不菲的收入。如果有关美国企业管理不善、挥霍浪费以及高达数万亿美元的政府赤字的负面消息继续发酵，到某个临界点，其他国家的公司高管或许会自问，为什么要聘请建筑师来把会议室设计成曼哈顿风格，而不是浦东风格？基于同样的原因，人们或许会自问，与其关注美国迈阿密海滩的着装潮流，何不关注一下韩国首尔江南区的富人们是如何穿衣打扮的？文化影响力是基于财富、影响力以及魅力而产生的。随着美国在这三个方面实力减弱，全世界的观众以后或许会偏爱《首尔夜未眠》，胜过《西雅图夜未眠》(Sleepless in Seattle)。

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

本文作者是《旗帜周刊》(The Weekly Standard)高级编辑