Ice – T: Is the lssue Social Responsibility …

 

(1) How did the company that publishes this magazine come to produce a record glorifying³ the murder of police?

I got my 12-gauge? sawed off

I got my headlights turned off

I’m ‘bout? to bust⁴ some shots off

I’m ‘bout to dust some cops off

Die, Die, Die Pig, Die!

 

(2) So go the verse to Cop Killer⁵ by the rapper Ice-T on the album Boby Count. The album is released by Warner Bros. Records, part of the Time Warner media and entertainment conglomerate⁷?.

 

(3) In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece laying out the company’s position, Time Warner co-CEO Gerald Levin makes two defenses. First, Ice-T’s Cop Killer is misunderstood. “It doesn’t provoke or glorify² vio-lence … It’s his fictionalized attempt to get inside a character’s head … Cop Killer is no more a call for gun-ning down the police than Frankie and Johnny is a summons for neglected lovers to shoot one another.’’ Instead of “finding ways to silence the messenger,” we should be “heeding the anguished¹⁰? cry contained in his mes-sage.’’

 

(4) This defense⁸ is self-contradictory. Frankie and Johnny does not pretend to have a political “message” that must be “______.” If Cop Killer has a message, it is that the murder of policemen is a justified¹¹ response to po-lice brutality¹². And not in self-defense, but in premeditated acts of revenge against random¹³ cops. (“I know your family’s grievin’ — f ---’em.”)

 

(5) Killing¹⁴ policemen is a good thing — that is the plain meaning of the words, and no “larger understand-ing” of black culture, the rage of the streets or anything else can explain it away. This is not Ella Fitzgerald tell-ing a story in song. As in much of today’s popular music, the line between performer and performance is pur-posely shadowed. These are political sermonettes? clearly intended to advocate the sentiments being expressed. Tracy Marrow¹⁵ (Ice-T) himself has said, “I scared the police, and they need to be scared.” That seems clear.

 

(6) The company’ s second defense of Cop Killer is the classic one of free expression: “We stand for creative freedom. We believe that the worth of what an artist or journalist has to say does not depend on preapproval from a government official or a corporate¹⁶ censor¹⁷?.”

 

(7) Of course Ice-T has the right to say whatever he wants. But that doesn’t require any company to provide him an outlet¹⁸. And it doesn’t relieve a company of responsibility for the messages it chooses to promote. Judg-ment is not “censorship.” Many an “anguished cry” goes unrecorded. This one was ______, and promoted, be-cause a successful artist under contract wanted to record it. Nothing wrong with making money, but a company cannot take the money and run from the responsibility.

 

(8) The founder¹⁹ of Time, Henry Luce, would pour scorn upon the notion that his company should provide a value-free forum²⁰? for the exchange of ideas. In Luce’s system, editors were supposed to make value judgments²¹ and promote the truth as they saw it. Time has moved far from its old Lucean rigidity²² — far enough to allow for dissenting²³? essays like this one. That evolution is a good thing, as long as it’s not a handy excuse for aban-doning all standards.

 

(9) No commercial enterprise need agree with every word that appears under its corporate approval. If Time Warner now intends to be “a global force for encouraging the confrontation²⁴ of ideas,” that’s good. But a policy of allowing diverse viewpoints is not a moral free pass. Pro¹ and con⁶? on national health care is one thing; pro and con on killing policemen is another.

 

(10) A bit of sympathy is in order for Time Warner. It is indeed a “global force” with media tentacles²⁵? around the world. If it imposes rigorous standards and values from the top, it gets accused of corporate censorship. If it doesn’t, it gets accused of moral irresponsibility. A dilemma²⁶. But someone should have thought of that before deciding to become a global force.

 

(11) And another genuine ______. Whatever the actual merits of Cop Killer, if Time Warner withdraws the album now the company will be perceived as giving in to outside pressure. That is a disastrous²⁷ precedent²⁸ for a global conglomerate.

 

(12) The Time-Warner merger²⁹ of 1989 was supposed to produce corporate “synergy?”: the whole was sup-posed to be more than the sum of the parts. The Cop Killer controversy³⁰ is an example of negative synergy. Peo-ple get mad at Cop Killer and start boycotting³¹ the movie Batman Returns. A reviewer praises Cop Killer (“Tracy Marrow’s poetry takes a switchblade and adept³² slices life’s jugular³³?,” etc.), and TIME is accused of corruption³⁴ instead of mere³⁵ foolishness. Senior Time Warner executives find themselves under attack for — and defending — products of their company they neither honestly care for nor really understand, and doubtless weren’t even aware of before controversy hit.

 

(13) Anyway, it’s absurd to discuss Cop Killer as part of the “confrontation of ideas” — or even as an au-thentic anguished cry of rage from the ghetto³⁶?. Cop Killer is a cynical³⁷ commercial concoction³⁸?, designed to tit-illate? its audience with imagery of violence. It merely exploits the authentic³⁹ anguish⁹ of the inner city for further titillation⁴⁰. Tracy Marrow is in business for a buck⁴¹, just like Time Warner. Cop Killer is an excellent joke on the white establishment, of which the company’s anguished excuse (“Why can’t we hear what rap is trying to tell us?”) is the punch line.

【参考译文】

Ice-T：问题是否为社会责任…

 

(1)发行这本杂志的公司，怎么会制作出一张歌颂杀警察的唱片？

锯短了我的霰弹枪

把我的车头灯关上

我要几颗子弹开花

我要轰掉几个警察

死吧！死吧！猪！死吧！

 

(2)拉普歌手Ice-T的专辑《尸体清点》中的《杀警人》一曲，歌词就是这样。发行这张专辑的是华纳兄弟唱片公司，属于时代华纳媒体与娱乐集团的一员。

 

(3)　时代华纳公司的副总裁莱文投书《华尔街日报》读者来函版说明公司的立场，文中提出两点辩护。第一，Ice-T的《杀警人》被误解了。“这首歌并不燃点或颂扬暴力，……而是他以虚构的方式尝试进入一个人物的心灵……《杀警人》并不是呼吁别人枪杀警察，就好像老歌《弗朗基与约翰尼》并不号召被欺骗的恋人拿枪互射是一样的。”我们不应该“设法让表达讯息的人住口”，而应“仔细倾听他讯息中的痛苦的呐喊。”

 

(4)　这种辩护是自我矛盾的。《弗朗基与约翰尼》并未假装有什么政治“讯息”要人“仔细听”。要说《杀警人》有什么讯息的话，那就是：杀警察是对于警察暴力正当的回应。而且不是为了自卫，而是随便找个警察，有预谋的进行复仇行动。（“我知道你的家人在伤痛——Ⅹ他的。”）

 

(5)　杀警察是好事——这是歌词里表示得清清楚楚的，不管是对黑人文化的“更全面的理解”也好，街头的愤怒也罢，不论怎么解释都改变不了这个事实，这和埃拉?菲茨杰拉德用歌曲说故事的情形不同。今天的热门音乐常常如此：表演者与表演内容之间的分野被刻意模糊了。这首歌是政治宣传，很时显的是用来支持歌中表达的感觉的。特雷西? 马罗（Ice-T）自己也说过：“我吓唬到警察，警察也该被吓一吓。”这点应该是蛮清楚的。

 

(6)　时代华纳公司对《杀警人》的第二点辩护是常见的言论自由论：“我们支持创作的自由。我们相信艺术家或新闻记者要表达的东西有没有价值，并非取决于事先获得政府官员或企业检查人员的批准。”

 

(7)当然Ice-T有权说他爱说的话，可是这并不需要一家公司来为他提供一个讲台。而且公司选择这个讯息来促销，就不能以言论自由来推卸责任。判断力并不是“检查制度”。社会上太多“痛苦的呐喊”一直没有人倾听。这一个呐喊之所以被录下来，被促销，只因为公司旗下一个成功的艺人要录它。赚钱没有错，可是公司不能拿了钱就不负责了。

 

(8)《时代杂志》的创办人亨利?卢斯，如果听说他的公司应该提供一个没有价值标准的论坛来做意见交流，他一定会嗤之以鼻。在卢斯的制度下，编辑应该要做价值判断，同时宣扬他们眼中的真理。《时代杂志》离开卢斯时代的僵硬作风已经很远了——远到能容许像这一篇唱反调的评论出现。这种进化是好事，可是不能用它作为很好用的借口来抛弃所有的标准。　

 

(9)　公司企业当然不需要对获得公司授权而出现的每一个字都同意。如果时代华纳公司现在打算做“一支全球性的生力军，鼓励不同意见互相交锋”，这当然很好。可是允许不同观念并存的政策，并不是一张道德通行证。全国性医疗保健的利弊辩论是一回事，杀警察的利弊又是一回事。

 

(10)时代华纳公司也颇值得同情。它的确是“一支全球性的生力军”，媒体的触角遍及全世界。如果它由上往下冠上严格的价值标准，就会被批评为公司检查言论。如果没有要求标准，也会被批评为不负道德责任。这是两难的局面。可是在决定要做一股全球势力之先就该有人想过这个局面。

 

(11)另外还有一个无解的两难。不论《杀警人》本身的真实价值如何，如果时代华纳公司现在收回这张专辑，会被视为向外界压力屈服。这对全球性的集团来说是灾难性的先例。

 

(12)1989年时代公司与华纳公司的合并原意是要产生企业的倍数效果：整体的力量应该超过各部分的总和。《杀警人》引起的争议可说是负面倍数效果的实例。消费者对《杀警人》感到恼火，于是开始抵制电影《蝙蝠侠续集》。有一位评论家如此“赞扬”《杀警人》：“特雷西? 马罗的诗歌拿出弹簧刀，熟练地切断生命的颈动脉”云云。《时代杂志》也不仅被批评为愚蠢而已，甚至被称为腐败。资深的时代华纳公司主管们因为公司的产品而饱受攻击，他们还得为这些产品辩解——这些产品其实他们根本没有兴趣，也并不真正了解；而且，在争议爆发之前，肯定是根本不知道有这些产品存在。

 

(13) 无论如何，把《杀警人》当作“不同观念的交锋”来讨论——甚至当作贫民区真正痛苦的、愤怒的呐喊来讨论——本身就很荒谬。《杀警人》只是一项虚伪的商业制品，设计来以暴力影像刺激听众。它只是利用贫民区真实的痛苦来做进一步的刺激。特雷西?马罗是为了几个钱在做生意，和时代华纳公司没什么不同。《杀警人》对白人体制开了一个大玩笑，笑话中的笑点就是时代华纳公司痛苦的辩白：“我们为什么不去听听拉普音乐要告诉我们的讯息？”

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