怒视前方Look Forward in Anger
自人们看电影来放松身心的那一刻起，某些人就开始对其抱有质疑。内容淫秽吗？是不是腐蚀了年轻人？回首过去，你会发现这类担忧曾经发生在任何曾经快速流行起来的娱乐传媒形式上——电视，广播，摇滚，RPG游戏，漫画，电子游戏，矩阵，拟感芯片，所有叫得出名字的三维影像——只要有人喜欢，就会有另一些人觉得这东西在危害人的精神。
The moment people started relaxing by watching
moving pictures, other people started worrying
about it. Was the content obscene? Was it corrupting the youth? Look back in time, and you’ll
see these worries about just about any form of
media or entertainment that enjoyed a rapid
rise in popularity—television, radio, rock ‘n’ roll,
role-playing games, comic books, video games,
the Matrix, simsense, trideo you name it—if some
people like it, some other people think it’s destroying their character.
而真相是——他们说的并不完全错。没错，有很多说法是过分夸大或者误解，但是也有一些是真的。有些是简单基础的，比如看太多虚假消息会让人变蠢。政治宣传把你变成为人利用的工具。等等诸如此类的玩意儿。而从这里继续就变得复杂了，有些节目会让你变得孤僻和反社会，而另一些则会让你对自己的同类有更积极的看法。有些会让你渴求进步，另一些会让你变得自满。
And here’s the real trick of it—they’re not entirely wrong. Yeah, a lot of the angles have been overblown or misidentified, but there are certain truths
there, too. Some of them are basic, like watching
a lot of misinformation leads you to being dumb.
Watching propaganda makes you a tool. That sort
of thing. But it gets more nuanced from there.
Some programming can make you feel anti-social
and isolated, while others can make you feel more
positive about your fellow sentient beings. Some
programming can make you yearn for change,
other shows can make you feel complacent.
或许你早就知道这些，或许你不知道，但是我告诉你：超企们早就知道了，并且在我们如今的媒体格局的形成中扮演了重要角色。我们如今购买消费的这些难以计数的媒体们都归十大所有，而他们使用的技巧和技术已经完善了一个多世纪。
Maybe you already knew that, maybe you
didn’t, but I’ll tell you this: The corps already knew
it, and that plays a huge role in shaping the media landscape in which we exist. The Big Ten are at
the root of a ton of the media all of us consume,
and they are using tricks and techniques that have
been perfected over more than a century.
最早的奥斯卡最佳影片奖得主是《翼》，一部战争爱情片，它在制作时得到了美国军方的帮助，军方为其资助了飞机与飞行员。二十年后，美国国防部成立了娱乐联络处，雇佣专职人员从事影视与广播节目制作。他们在数千部影片制作中都扮演了重要角色，提供专业知识或者酷炫的武器与载具，并以此换取一系列好处。有些时候是让穿着军装的帅哥在影片中出镜做正面宣传，另一些时候是调整拍摄方法与剧情线来把美军塑造成无私的英雄。这很有效，旧美国的国民们长期以来对所有事物都抱有不同的观点并彼此争论不休，但批判军方的话题却一致被他们边缘化。如果你想在政府或者企业中身居高位，你得把军方当成英雄来尊敬，别把批评对准它们。
The very first Academy Award winner for Best
Picture was Wings, a wartime romance that had
production help from the U.S. Army. The Army
brought in planes and pilots to help with the movie. Twenty years later, the United States Department of Defense formed an entertainment liaison
office so that full-time staff could work with movie
and broadcast productions. They played a role in
literally thousands of different productions, offering expertise and access to cool-looking weapons
and vehicles in exchange for a range of benefits.
Sometimes this was about inserting good-looking people in uniform into shows that would show
them off to good advantage. Other times it was
about tweaking lines and scenarios so that the
military would be shown as altruistic heroes. It
worked—the old United States spent decades in a
condition where its citizens would argue passionately about everything and anything, but criticism
of the military was relegated to the fringes of society. If you wanted a prominent position in the government or business, you saluted the military as
heroes and directed any criticism you might have
about them elsewhere.
超企沿用着军方的老办法，利用文娱来传教。有时它们是精巧又成功的，比如《E.T》和锐滋巧克力棒。另一些时候则既笨拙又浪费钱，比如《E.T》把《新外星人》和它那愚蠢的麦当劳植入广告撕成碎片。那些差劲或者平庸的片子，他们只是把精力放在怎样把要宣传的产品在镜头前挥来挥去，而那些杰作则是专注于如何调控思想，告诉人们他们与·想要的生活近在咫尺，只要他们买对了东西。或者，将宣传的立意更上一层，能决定自己购买什么产品的自由是通向良性社会的最佳途径，而那些生产并销售这些可爱的东西给你的人才是这个社会真正的英雄。
The corps walked right alongside the military
in using entertainment to evangelize. Sometimes
they were smooth and successful, like E.T. and Reese’s Pieces. Other times they were clumsy wastes
of money, like the E.T. rip-off Mac and Me and its
graceless McDonald’s references. When they
were bad or just mediocre, they focused on how
to move product quickly. When they were good,
they focused on how to condition minds, how to
tell people the lifestyle they wanted was in reach
if they just made the right purchases. Or, on a larger scale, how the freedom to decide what you
purchase was the best path to a virtuous society,
and how the people who make and sell you these
wonderful things are the true heroes of society.
>人们不断尝试制作《源泉》的电影改编是有原因的，尽管它只是一部关于建筑师演讲的书，并不是最适合电影化的项目。但它符合他们的叙事，那些有勇气赚大钱的人才是真正的英雄。别跟我提《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》的电影改编。
> Cosmo
> There’s a reason people keep attempting adaptations of
The Fountainhead, despite the fact that it’s a book about
speechifying architects, which is not the most cinematic
subject. It fits their narrative, where people with the
courage to make a lot of money are the real heroes. And
don’t get me started about adaptations of Atlas Shrugged. > Cosmo
你所观看的所有媒体们都在致力于脑控你是一个很有吸引力的观点，但这并不是个成熟的观点。回到20世纪，法西斯与独裁者们常常采取高压政策来控制媒体——集中管理广播，印刷和电视传媒并无情的封禁任何无证媒体。这其中的一些规范被沿用至21世纪，但是新的问题诞生了。随着可选择的媒体增多，观众们开始巴尔干化，把自己裹在了各自的肥皂泡里，在那里他们可以只听自己想听的。媒体资源的发展满足了观众们的这种需求，而超企们学到了如何通过推动部落主义来收获他们想要的行为。当你能定位每个小圈子中最受关注的人并把他推至台前中央，管控就会变得轻松许多。你甚至不需要去控制他们——他们会想要向自己的圈子分享你给的信息。你只需要给他们一个平台就好。
Now, here’s the point where it’s tempting to
say that the whole point of most of the mediayou watch is to control you, but that’s an unsophisticated way of looking at the world. Back in
the twentieth century, fascist and authoritarian
rulers usually employed the tactic of ruthlessly
controlling the media—centralizing radio, print,
and broadcast media, and ruthlessly shutting
down unlicensed media. Some of those principles
carried over to the twenty-first century, but new
wrinkles emerged. As media choices proliferated, audiences Balkanized and drifted into isolated
bubbles, where they could hear what they wanted to hear. Media sources developed to serve up
what people wanted, and corps learned how to
get the behavior they wanted through tribalism.
Control can be a lot less heavy handed when you
find the charismatic people of a particular tribe
and put them front and center. You don’t have to
dictate to them—they want to share your message.
You just have to give them a platform.
好吧，也许还有一些培训，这正是如今超企们的得意之处。无论你是做新闻、拍纪录片还是讲一个故事，都有几条经典的窍门代代相传着。其中包括：
Well, and maybe some training, which is
where the corps shine these days. There are some
time-honored tricks that work whether you’re doing the news, making a documentary, or telling a
story, and these are the tricks that are passed along
from generation to generation. These include:
•树立一个敌人/替罪羊：在一些地方有一些人正伺机危害公众，而世上的好人与体面人们应该团结起来对抗他们的威胁。如果这些人有一个便于识别的标签就更好了（民族，语言，獠牙，肤色这类东西），这样人们可以更轻易的发现他们，并且每次见到他们都能增强对其的抗拒心理。不论你怎么做，确保你为观众树立的敌人和他们的经济能力相仿，而不是高出太多。
• Find an enemy/scapegoat: Someone, somewhere, is screwing up society, and the
good and decent people of the world need
to unite against them. It helps if there are
easily identifiable markers of this group
(ethnic names, common language, tusks,
skin color, that sort of thing) so that people
can spot them easily—and build up resentment each time they see them. Whatever
you do, make sure people know the enemy
is an economic group similar to them—not
one far above.
•让观众保持愉悦：警匪片在有媒体出现的那天起就一直是镜头叙事中长盛不衰的经典，而它的广受欢迎有两个关键因素。第一点显而易见，犯罪的魅力和惊险对观众有着致命的吸引力，第二点则有些微妙，犯罪片只有在影片相关的犯罪不再是问题后才会真正流行起来，犯罪带来的混乱必须被拨乱反正，而通常，这一正举会由现有制度的力量来完成，例如警察。犯罪片常常传达一个潜在讯息，那就是当权者正留心照看着你们，而且他们有能力解决社会性创伤。
• Keep people comfortable: Cop and detective
shows have been a staple of video storytelling for about as long as the medium has
existed, and there are two critical elements
to its appeal. The first is obvious—the lurid
appeal of crime and affiliated danger. The
second is somewhat subtler—crime dramas
are only truly popular when the crime in
question is solved. The disorder the crime
introduced has to be turned back to order,
and importantly, this is usually done by existing institutional forces, such as police.
Crime dramas often carry the undercurrent
that there are people in authority looking
out for you, and they are capable of healing
societal wounds.
•坏人才是害群之马：这一条和上一条有所关联。你希望能从剧中看到人物犯错并引发冲突，没有冲突就没有戏剧。如果你希望社会能维持现状，你就必须让人们相信是那些坏人引发了问题，而不是体系本身有问题。在这种观点下，犯罪只是个人做出的错误选择，在某个时间。他们不是因病态的体系而产生的症状，或是因为法律制度不健全才被判有罪。这些人和他们所做的选择才是问题——仅有的问题。
• Evil doers are bad apples: This is related to
the previous point. You tend to have people making mistakes and causing conflict in
drama, or else you don’t have drama. If you
want to preserve the status quo, people
have to believe bad decisions cause problems, not systems. In this view, criminals
are individuals making bad choices, period. They are not symptoms of the system,
or people who are only outlaws because of
questionable and problematic legal frameworks. These individuals and their choices
are the problem—the only problem.
>问题在于，当然有坏苹果存在，但也有人确实是被体系所影响，搞清楚哪些犯罪是因为坏人做了坏选择而哪些是被体系影响并不容易，这意味着搞出解决方案也同样困难。
>Pistons
> The trick is that there are, of course, bad apples, and
there also are systemic effects on people. Knowing
what is a bad choice and what is a societal effect is not
always simple to determine, which means knowing
how to address it isn’t easy.
> Pistons
如果你牢记这些基本准则，那你就能从你的诋毁者们可能会笃信的那些潜移默化的洗脑中脱身。举个例子，对超企宣传浅显的看法认为，他们只会展示超企做的好事和超企的光辉形象。而以DASH:Star Loner为例，它最近报导了科洛斯莫工业（Colosmo Industries）恶毒的首席执行官阿登•科洛斯莫（Arden Colosmo）。这人被唾骂的理由充分，他对下属的性骚扰，他拿着本来就很丰厚的薪水还要吃各种各样的回扣和二次支付，还有他反复无常的暴怒。他甚至——这一点绝不能被忽视——拒绝资助他行政助理的女儿进行救命的癌症治疗。矩阵上炸了锅，义愤与怒火直指科洛莫工业。
If you remember these basic guidelines, you can
get away with more subtle propaganda than your
detractors might believe. For example, the crude
view of corporate propaganda is that they can only
show corporations doing good things, or in a good
light. But that ignores existing corporate propa-ganda. Take DASH: Star Loner, which recently featured villainous CEO Arden Colosmo of Colosmo
Industries. He was truly hissable, with his sexual harassment of underlings, his assorted kickback and
double dipping that enhanced his already generous salary, and his occasional murderous rage. He
even—and this cannot be ignored—denied life-saving cancer treatment to his executive assistant’s
daughter. The Matrix was absolutely on fire with
outrage and anger directed Colosmo’s way.
>而且简直是骇人听闻，我是说，得了吧，他发给他助理的那条消息——“我不投资可能失败的项目”？真的有人会这样思考还说出口？
>/dev/grrl
>你应该找个时间去医疗马车的董事会上看看。
>Butch
> And it was overwrought AF. I mean, come on, that line
he delivered to his assistant—“I don’t invest in failing
concerns”? We’re supposed to believe anyone thinks or
talks that way?
> /dev/grrl
> You should attend a DocWagon board meeting some
time.
> Butch
而且他不只甘于自己作恶，他还纠集了整个公司和他一起。企业资金被用于让证人保持沉默，贿赂政府官员，当然了，也为暗影行动提供资金。所有超企会做的坏事他们都做尽了，而这些都被放在了一部长长的大受欢迎的3D影像上。
And it wasn’t just that he was evil—he marshaled his corporation around him for evil ends.
Corporate funds were used to silence witnesses,
bribe government officials, and of course fund
shadowruns. It was everything bad we know corporations can be, and it was right there on a massively popular trid series.
但以下才是真正的重要部分，或重要部分们。首先，科洛斯莫无疑是个坏蛋，一个变态。但是真正让他无法容忍的是他在与其他所有超企作对，践踏他们一直坚持的底线。他应该被拽下来踏上一万只脚，而当他应得的下场<剧透警告>到来时，它是由流浪骑士与科洛斯莫工业的死对头For科技（ForTech
）联手送上的。然而体系并未被推翻，甚至就连一丁点改变都没有。整个超企的结构——由公司法庭端坐其上好像一个仁慈的监督者，仍然保持原样。虽然不是全部，但这是为何将不合群的刺头绳之以法的关键要点。要传达的关键信息就是：体系运转良好。
But here’s the important part. Or parts. First, Colosmo clearly was a bad guy. An aberration. That
was what was so truly offensive about him, that
he was competing with all the other corporations
while violating the rules of ethics that they adhered
to. He had to be brought to heel, and when <spoiler
alert!> he finally was, it was by a combined effort
of Knight Errant and Colosmo’s plucky competitors
at ForTech. No systems were overturned, or even
significantly altered in anyway. The corporate structure, with the Corporate Court sitting at the top as a
beneficent overseer, remains in place. Not just that,
but it was a critical part of bringing the outlier tojustice. This is the critical message at the core of it
all: The system works.
这就是我们畅游其间的媒体世界，它拼命地要你相信我们所面对的症结只是体系的bug，而非体系正常的一部分。给我们时间，超企向我们请求道，而且更重要的是，给我们信息。告诉我们你知道的。告诉我们谁是那个刺头，那个问题儿童，那个麻烦制造者。把他指给我们，我们会让他们好转的。
This is the media world we swim in, one that
desperately wants us to believe that the ills we
face are bugs, not features. Give us time, the corps
ask us, and more importantly, give us information.
Tell us what you know. Tell us who are the outliers, the problem children, the troublemakers. Point
them out to us, and we will make them better.