Dying to Live Forever
by Katie Baker
November 05, 2010
translation by Autumnson Blog
Gary Hershorn / Reuters-Corbis
Nothing seems more modern than society’s relentless obsession with reality-show stars, Hollywood tweets, and tabloid scandals. But a wildly entertaining new book by former Daily Telegraph literary editor Tom Payne suggests that our celebrity culture has rather old roots. In Fame, Payne draws provocative parallels between 21st-century stardom and the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Aztecs to explore how the fame game has evolved over the millennia.
沒有什麼看起來現代過社會的不懈迷戀真人秀明星、荷里活的吱吱叫、和小報的醜聞。但一本由前每日電訊報文學編輯湯姆佩恩的瘋狂娛樂新書，提出我們的名人文化有頗古老的根源。在Fame，佩恩畫出刺激的相似之處，在 21世紀明星和古代希臘人、羅馬人、和阿茲台克人之間，探討名利遊戲如何已經發展了幾千年。
Celebrity worship reflects a primal need that’s been present since the Babylonians: to elevate people to the status of mythic heroes, only to destroy them. “It suits us when … fame comes at a price,” Payne writes. Or as the Greeks put it, the only place to go from the top of Fortune’s Wheel is down. Achilles, hero of the Trojan War, had to choose between a long, anonymous life or a short, glorious one. There’s no middle ground: a hero must either “go out in a blaze of glory or else disappoint us.”
名人崇拜反映一原始的需要，自巴比倫人那已一直存在：去提升人們對神話英雄的地位，只是去毀滅他們。 “它適合我們當...名聲要付出代價，”佩恩寫道。或者正如希臘人所說，從財富之輪的最高處唯一可去的地方是向下。木馬屠城戰爭的英雄阿基里斯，要從一長久、隱名的生活或短暫、光輝的生命選擇。有沒有中間位：英雄必須要“在榮耀的火焰走出，否則會令我們失望。”
Of course, we prefer that our famous go out while they’re on top—in fact, dying young (and publicly) may be the best way to ensure mythical status. Think James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Kurt Cobain. Heath Ledger’s overdose clinched him a posthumous Oscar. Naturally, Payne sees a classical parallel: early Christian martyrs, knowing they’d draw huge crowds to their executions, embraced death to gain acclaim and spread their religious message.
當然，我們情願我們著名的走出，當他們在頂的時候 - 事實上，死於年青時（和公開地）可能是最好的方法去確保神話般的地位，想想占士甸、瑪麗蓮夢露、肯尼迪、Kurt Cobain(和我們的家駒、Leslie...)；希斯萊傑的超劑量追授他一次死亡後的奧斯卡獎。自然地，佩恩看到一經典的平行：早期基督教的殉難者，知道他們會吸引大批群眾到他們的處決，擁抱死亡去獲得好評和傳播他們的宗教信息。
There’s another, more gruesome precedent for the fame cycle: ritual sacrifice. Payne cleverly juxtaposes Britney Spears’s head-shaving meltdown with the myth of Iphigenia, who was purportedly killed so that the Greek ships could sail to Troy (and who became very famous because of it). Both the ancient maiden and the modern pop star show that we’ve always wanted our celebrities to be complicit in their own destruction, he says. Audiences need to believe that the celebrity has willingly chosen such a life and accepts the inevitable tradeoffs—loss of privacy, potential public humiliation, even untimely death—that go along with it. As Spears herself once said, “You do have to sacrifice your freedom when you’re in this business, but it’s a small price to pay.”
為名利週期有另一個更可怕的先例：犧牲儀式。佩恩巧妙地並置布蘭妮斯皮爾斯的剃頭危機與Iphigenia的神話，他據稱被殺害以使希臘船舶能往特洛伊航行（和他因為它變得非常有名）。古代少女和現代流行歌星兩者顯示，我們已常希望我們的名人在他們自己的毀滅中是串成一氣的，他說。觀眾需要相信，名人已願意地選擇這樣的生命，和接受不可避免的交換 - 失去隱私、潛在的公開羞辱：甚至英年早逝 - 那隨它一起。正如布蘭妮自己一度說過：“當你在這行業，你確要犧牲自己的自由，但它衹是一個小代價。”
So what is the allure of fame? The lifestyle, for one thing. In the Faust legend, the doctor agrees to sell his soul to the Devil, but in return gets all his wishes granted for 24 years. In both ancient Albania and Mesoamerica, slaves and youth selected as human sacrifices were often first entertained in massive splendor. Nowadays, MTV allows the Jersey Shore kids to party themselves sick—with the explicit understanding that they’ll pay back the network by self-destructing for the cameras.
The promise of immortality is another incentive, says Payne. As she’s about to die, Iphigenia tells her mother, “You will be famous through me.” It’s that old dilemma of Achilles all over again. Of course, in The Odyssey, Achilles’ ghost reappears and says he made the wrong choice—he should have gone for long-lived anonymity. But once fame is granted, there’s no going back.
http://www.newsweek.com/content/newsweek/2010/11/05/the-cult-of-celebrity-is-as-old-as-humanity-itself.html
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