经济学人下载:电影与电视 删减血腥镜头(上)

Film and television Blood and cuts
电影与电视 删减血腥镜头

Unusually, some Chinese want more censorship
不同寻常，一些国人期待更严格的审查

A FLYING dagger stabs a Japanese soldier in the heart. Another fighter has his neck slit by a Chinese secret agent. Others are shot at close range, gassed or drowned. Like war dramas everywhere, “Royalty in Blood”, a 36-part television series about the war between China and Japan from 1937-45, is pretty gory. Yet unlike elsewhere, the on-screen violence is not just for adult viewers. It is aired each week at 7.35pm, the most popular television-watching hour, when even very young children in China have yet to go to bed.
飞掷而来的匕首刺中了一名日本士兵的心脏，另一名士兵被中国特工割破了脖子。其他人或被近距离射杀，或被气体毒死，或被淹死。36集电视连续剧《异镇》，描述了1937年至1945年的中日战争。与满大街的战争戏一样，该剧场景异常血腥。但是与其他国家或地区不同，中国电视荧屏上的暴力场景不仅只供成年观众观看。该剧在每天晚上7点35分的电视黄金时间播放，而那时，甚至中国的小孩子都还没有上床睡觉。

All films and TV shows are vetted by a government committee. Oddly, however, China has no ratings system to denote a film's suitability for certain age-groups. It has no TV “watershed” either, as many countries do, dividing the day into family-oriented programming and late-night viewing with more adult content. Violent TV dramas are sometimes shown on public transport. Ticket sales at cinemas increased nearly 50% in the first 11 months of 2015 on the previous year to reach $6.3 billion, a total surpassed only by America. Yet questions are often raised about whether films are safe and appropriate for children, who can watch any of them.
所有的电影和电视节目都要经过一个政府委员会的审查。但奇怪的是，中国并没有相应的分级制度说明电影适宜观看的年龄群体；也没有很多国家施行的电视“限时”播放制度----该制度将一天的电视节目分为家庭节目时段与包含更多成人内容的深夜节目时段。此外，含暴力场景的电视剧时不时也会出现在公共交通中。2015年的前11个月中，中国电影票房相比去年全年增加了近一半，达到了63亿美元，仅次于美国。但是，经常有人对电影内容是否适合儿童观看提出质疑，因为儿童看电影没有限制。

The government does not want ratings or a watershed because it does not want to be seen to be permitting sex and violence for anyone. Its constraints on what may appear on screen represent a laundry list of the state's anxieties. Content must not “endanger” China's unity, security or honour. It also should not “twist” history, feature explicit sex or gambling, advocate “the supremacy of religion” or “meticulously describe fortune-telling”. Playing up violence is prohibited, in theory.
不采取分级制度和限时播放制度，是因为政府不想被人们认为其允许色情和暴力是适合某些人观看的。电视节目的限制清单反映了国家的关注点。电影电视内容不能危害国家团结、安全或有损国家荣誉。同时它也不能“扭曲”历史，包含直白的性内容、赌博，倡导“宗教至上”或“封建迷信”。理论上，暴力内容也应被禁。

But to attract adult audiences, makers of film and TV entertainment often like to push the boundaries of what the Communist Party regards as good taste. And even the prudish standards of the censors are sometimes flexible enough to allow content that might shock children, who are just as impressionable in China as anywhere else. In apparent response to demand from anxious parents, a handful of cinemas in the far western province of Xinjiang introduced their own unofficial ratings in 2014.
但是为了吸引成年观众，电影或电视节目的制作者常常挑战共产党制定的规则。而有时保守的审查者也会过于灵活，让一些儿童不宜的内容出现在了荧幕上，这个人群在中国和别处一样，都非常容易受到影响。为了响应忧心忡忡的父母们的请求，2014年，在中国偏远的西部省份新疆，一些电影院采用了他们自己制定的非官方分级制度。

Censors' shockability has varied over time. The first Communist-era on-screen kiss was a peck on the cheek in “Romance on Lushan Mountain” in 1980, the year that Richard Gere appeared naked in “American Gigolo”, among the first Hollywood films to feature full-frontal male nudity. China has relaxed a bit since: for a while, one film fan had a blog called “Research Centre for Nipples in Chinese Films”.
随着时代变迁，中国审查者们的尺度也在不断更改。在第一代共产党时代，屏幕上的亲吻仅是1980年《庐山恋》中出现的嘴唇轻轻一触脸颊，而同年Richard Gere的裸体已经出现在了《美国舞男》中，那是第一批男士裸体正面出现的好莱坞电影之一。据一位电影爱好者的博客“中国电影乳房研究中心”所言，自那时开始，中国已经逐渐放开了一些。

However, prudishness has revived in recent years. The nude scene in “Titanic”, a Hollywood film, was screened intact in China in 1998, for example, but removed from the 3D version released in 2012. Heaving bosoms have been blacklisted too: in the past year two popular TV dramas have been forced to re-edit shots that include plunging necklines and to zoom in on the actresses' faces instead (movies involving such filming techniques are referred to scathingly as “big-head” ones). Online streaming sites, which previously had often succeeded in escaping the censors' attention, are coming under closer scrutiny.
但是近年来保守之风又死灰复燃。例如好莱坞电影《泰坦尼克》1998年在中国放映时，戏中的裸露镜头是保持完整的，但是在2012年重新发布的3D版中却被删减。丰满的胸部也被列入了黑名单：去年两部热播电视部就被强迫重新编辑镜头，聚焦到将含有低胸画面的镜头改成女主角的脸部（使用到此类拍摄技巧的电影被人们戏谑地称为“大头娃娃”版）。线上媒体先前逃脱了审查者的注意，但现在也被置于更严格的审查中。

Moral strictures are not applied equally. Regulators warn against “displaying excessive drinking, smoking and other bad habits”, for example, yet smoking is routine on Chinese screens. One blockbuster released in 2015, “Gone with the Bullets”, had to delay its premiere, probably because it had to adjust some of its sexually suggestive content. But it featured 45 smoking scenes—around one every three minutes.
然而道德标准并不公正。例如，监管者们对“播放过度饮酒，抽烟或其他陋习”提出警告，然而在中国电影电视中，抽烟的镜头依旧比比皆是。2015年的电影巨作《一步之遥》不得不延迟上映，或许是因为要修改其中一些性暗示内容。但是电影中出现了45个抽烟的镜头----约每三分钟出现一次。

Tolerance for violence is higher than it is for sex, perhaps because so much of what passes for entertainment on TV and in cinemas is in fact propaganda relating to the war against the Japanese and the party's bloody rise to power. Such historical gore is mostly given a clean pass (although some anti-Japanese war shows were reined in for being “overly dramatic” in 2013). A Chinese film released in 2006, “Curse of the Golden Flower”, was given a rating in America that required those under 17 to be accompanied by an adult because of its violent scenes (one is pictured). But these scenes were left uncut when it was screened in China. Viewers were given no warning about them. On TV “The Patriot” (Yue Fei), a popular historical drama, commonly features long fights with bloody swords, arrows through the heart and dripping corpses. It currently airs on one channel in the early afternoon (others show it at 7.35pm).
对暴力内容的容忍度比性要高，这或许是因为许多电视节目和电影实际上都是在宣传反对日本侵略的战争，以及宣扬共产党崛起的血腥历程。类似的历史剧一般都不会遭到刁难（尽管2013年一些抗日战争剧因为“过于戏剧化”而被禁播）。2006年上映的电影《满城尽带黄金甲》因为其中的暴力场景（如上图），在美国被评级为17岁以下人员需由一名成人陪同才可观看。但是这些画面在中国上映时并没有被删减，观影者没有接到任何警告。正在上映的流行历史剧《精忠岳飞》中，经常出现带血的刀剑，箭矢穿心而过，以及正在流血的尸体等长时间打斗的画面。该剧每天下午早些时候在一个频道中播放（其他频道在晚上7:35播放）。

Censors more often pounce if the context is not related to China's military heroism. A Japanese anime film, “Attack on Titan”, was pulled from the Shanghai film festival in June, probably because of its violent content. A children's cartoon, “Pleasant Goat and the Big, Big Wolf”, a Chinese “Tom and Jerry”, was criticised by state media in 2013 for its “vulgar” language and violent images; they said that the wolf was assaulted with a frying pan over 9,500 times in his attempt to bring a sheep home for his wife to cook. There were no apparent objections to the gender stereotypes.
当上映内容与中国的军事英雄主义无关时，审查者们往往都倍加严格。在今年6月的上海电影节中，一部日本动漫电影《进击的巨人》或许就由于其暴力内容被撤。儿童动漫《喜羊羊与灰太狼》----中国版的《猫和老鼠》，在2013年时因为其中的粗俗语言和暴力画面被国家媒体抨击；他们称那只狼为了将羊抓回家让老婆煮被平底锅击中了9500多次。审查中没有明显地对性别的刻板印象提出异议。