乐坛大战 坎耶卡戴珊夫妇手撕斯威夫特

Sunday night’s episode of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” played less like a breezy record of the reality-star demimonde than a military-strategy documentary.

星期日晚上的那集《与卡戴珊姐妹同行》(Keeping Up With the Kardashians)不像是真人秀明星姐妹的欢快记录，倒更像是军事战略纪录片。

Early in the episode, Kim Kardashian West was called to action by her husband, Kanye West, after audio of him angrily referring to Taylor Swift as “fake” leaked in February. Over and over again, she reiterated how she felt that Mr. West was portrayed unfairly in public, by Ms. Swift and others. As the episode goes on, Ms. Kardashian West’s ire rises — clearly, she is plotting her moves.

坎耶·韦斯特(Kanye West)愤怒地声称泰勒·斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)“虚伪”的音频在2月泄露出去了。在这一集刚开始不久，他召唤妻子金·卡戴珊·韦斯特(Kim Kardashian West)行动起来。她一次又一次地重申，她觉得斯威夫特和其他人公开描绘的自己夫君的形象缺乏公正。随着这一集展开，卡戴珊·韦斯特的愤怒不断高涨——显然，她在策划自己的行动。

At the end, she seeks advice from her mother and manager, Kris Jenner. Ms. Jenner suggests calling Ms. Swift to smooth things over. Ms. Kardashian West says no, thanks.

到这一集最终，她向母亲和经纪人克里斯·詹纳(Kris Jenner)征求意见。詹纳建议给斯威夫特打电话平息事件。卡戴珊·韦斯特说不，谢谢。

Just as the episode ended on the East Coast, Ms. Kardashian West released on Snapchat several video clips of a phone conversation between Mr. West and Ms. Swift in which he appears to get her support — mostly enthusiastic, perhaps slightly hesitant — for provocative lyrics that refer to her on his song “Famous,” from his album “The Life of Pablo,” released in February.

这一集在东海岸刚刚播放完毕，卡戴珊·韦斯特在Snapchat上放出了若干韦斯特与斯威夫特之间通电话的视频。通话中，斯威夫特似乎同意他在2月发行的专辑《帕布罗的生活》(The Life of Pablo)中的歌曲《出名》(Famous)里那些影射她的挑衅性歌词――她显得很热情，或许稍带点犹豫。

Not long after, Ms. Swift released a statement on Instagram stating that she had not approved of the song and that Mr. West had not delivered on a promise to play her the final version before its release. “While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye on the phone call, you cannot ‘approve’ a song you haven’t heard,” she wrote.

之后不久，斯威夫特在Inatagram上发表声明，说她没有批准那首歌曲，韦斯特也没有履行承诺，在这首歌发行前没有把最后版本放给她听。“我的确希望在电话中对坎耶表示支持，但你无法‘批准’一首你根本没听过的歌，”她写道。

These are the latest salvos in the running squabble between Ms. Swift and Mr. West, a gripping but unfortunate beef that puts two of the leading pop stars of the day at loggerheads.

斯威夫特和韦斯特之间早就争吵不断，此事是最新的进展。这是一场吸引人但却非常不幸的矛盾，让当今两大流行歌星针锋相对。

The first phase of their disagreement dates from the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when he crashed her acceptance speech for best female video, in a show of support for Beyoncé, whom she had beaten. They didn’t publicly reconcile until the 2015 Grammys, and the road since has been bumpy. On “Famous,” he rapped, in familiar hyperbolic style, that they “might still have sex,” and that he was responsible for her success. Shortly thereafter, she lashed out at him (without using his name) from the Grammy stage. The video for “Famous,” released last month, features a Swift look-alike, along with other celebrity look-alikes, topless in bed with Mr. West and Ms. Kardashian West, an eyebrow-raising jolt of beatific pop-art erotica.

他们的不和最早始于2009年MTV视频音乐奖，他打断她接受最佳女艺人视频的获奖致辞，以此向被她击败的碧昂斯(Beyoncé)表示支持。两人直到2015的格莱美奖上才公开和解，之后也非一帆风顺。在《出名》里，他用人们熟悉的夸张风格说唱道，他们“仍有可能做爱”，而且她的成功是他的功劳。不久后，她在格莱美奖的舞台上抨击他（没有指名道姓）。上月发行的《出名》的音乐视频里，有一个长得很像斯威夫特的女人，还有几个很像其他名人的人，都没有穿上衣，在床上和韦斯特与卡戴珊·韦斯特一起，构成一幅惊人的流行艺术色情极乐图。

Ms. Swift and Mr. West couldn’t be more different: Ms. Swift is a covert operator, Mr. West a namer of names. Ms. Swift is as careful a crafter of narrative, both in song and in life, as anyone in pop. Mr. West shoots from the hip; it’s the source of much of his charm.

斯威夫特和韦斯特实在太不一样了：斯威夫特是个行事隐秘的人，韦斯特是个喜欢指名道姓的人。斯威夫特是小心谨慎的叙事大师，写歌时和生活中都是如此。韦斯特说话从来不走脑子，这也是他魅力的主要来源。

Throughout this battle, each has accused the other of dishonesty. There is a fundamental layer of falseness and contrivance to all public images: Celebrity culture relies on that layer not being disrupted. Part of the power of the video Ms. Kardashian West released is it appeared to show that Ms. Swift’s public presentation and private machinations were at odds. The Ms. Swift in those video clips is self-aware — “I’m, like, this close to overexposure,” she said — in a way she often isn’t in public, and she is also willing to disrupt her image in unexpected ways.

在这场战役中，两人都指责对方不诚实。所有公众人物都有一个虚伪和做作的基本层面，明星文化就建立在这个层面不被打破的基础上。卡戴珊·韦斯特放出的视频之所以有力量，部分是因为它表明斯威夫特公开的表现和私下的作风是不一致的。在这些视频片段里，斯威夫特显得很自知——“这个有点过度了吧，”她说——她在公开场合通常不是这样子，她也经常乐于以意想不到的形式打破自己的形象。

But her stern response to the song’s release served as a reassertion of the old order. It also extended a narrative in which Mr. West, who is black, is painted as the predator and Ms. Swift, who is white, as the prey, a story with uncomfortable racial overtones.

但是她对这首歌的严厉回应是对旧秩序的重新确认。它还提供了这样一种叙事，黑人韦斯特被描绘成加害者，白人斯威夫特被描绘成受害者，这个故事带有令人不舒服的种族色彩。

In the excerpts, though, Mr. West is solicitous and warm. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he says, enunciating each word of the lyric carefully, with Ms. Swift on speakerphone. Rhythmically, it sounds like perhaps he’s workshopping one of two options with her. Later, he says: “I want things that make you feel good. I don’t want to do rap that makes people feel bad.” (The clips are short and choppy, and clearly excerpts. On Twitter in February, Mr. West said the call with Ms. Swift had been an hour long.)

不过，在这些视频里，韦斯特显得体贴温暖。“我觉得我和泰勒仍然有可能做爱，”在给斯威夫特的电话里，他对着电话清晰谨慎地读出歌词中的每个字。他读得非常有节奏，听上去好像在和她研究歌词的两个版本。后来他说：“我希望能让你感觉好。我不做那些让别人感觉糟糕的说唱。”（这些视频短而杂乱，显然经过剪辑。2月，韦斯特在Twitter上说，两人之间的通话长达一小时）。

“I just really appreciate it,” Ms. Swift said. “I never would have expected you to tell me about a line in your song.”

“我真的很感激，”斯威夫特在电话中说。“我从没想到你会告诉我你歌里的一句词。”

“Relationships,” Mr. West tells her, “are more important than punch lines.”

“友好关系比精彩的歌词更重要，”韦斯特对她说。

Seeking permission for a lyric is an extraordinary step, especially for Mr. West, whose loose tongue is his greatest asset. Ms. Swift, by contrast, has generally avoided identifying the subjects of her songs, though after the 2009 V.M.A.s, she released the rather patronizing “Innocent” — including the words “Who you are is not what you did/You’re still an innocent” — which she described in a 2010 interview with MTV as not a song about Mr. West but one “to” him. (Her song “Dear John” is widely believed to be about John Mayer, to whom Ms. Swift was romantically linked. It is one of the most effective and ruthless eviscerations of a fellow celebrity in pop history, and it seems unlikely that Ms. Swift ran it past Mr. Mayer for approval.)

为一句歌词而征求许可是一种非同寻常的事，特别是对于韦斯特这样的人，口无遮拦是他最大的资产。斯威夫特就正相反，她一般避免指明歌曲中的主人公，尽管2009年的MTV视频音乐奖之后，她发行了显得有点屈尊俯就的《清白》(Innocent)，歌词中写道“昨天做出的事不代表今天的你/你还是那个清白的人”。2010年，她在接受MTV台的采访时说，这首歌不是在说韦斯特，而是“送给”他的。（她的歌《亲爱的约翰》[Dear John]被广泛认为写的是与她有浪漫关系的约翰·梅耶[John Mayer]。那首歌有效而无情地达到了与另一位明星一刀两断的目的，堪称流行音乐史之最，而且斯威夫特事先也不大可能就这首歌征求过梅耶的同意。）

Given the seemingly genial nature of the conversation between Ms. Swift and Mr. West, what agitated Ms. Swift remains unclear. The release of video clips of the call is a clear violation of trust and raises possible legal issues. (The legality of recording phone calls varies from state to state; a representative for Mr. West did not respond to an inquiry about where the rapper had been at the time of the call.) In an interview with GQ released last month, Ms. Kardashian West mentioned that Ms. Swift’s legal team knew about the recorded conversation “and then they sent an attorney’s letter like, ‘Don’t you dare do anything with that footage,’ and asking us to destroy it.”

鉴于斯威夫特与韦斯特之间的谈话显得友好愉快，她到底被什么激怒了，目前还不清楚。放出通话的视频剪辑这种行为，显然是违背了双方的信任，可能引发法律问题（关于对电话进行录音的合法性，各州规定不一；被问到韦斯特在打那个电话时身在什么地方，韦斯特的代表给出回应）。上个月的《GQ》发表了卡戴珊·韦斯特的采访，她提到斯威夫特的法律团队知道了这段录下来的对话，“他们发来一封律师函，写着‘警告你们不要拿这段话做任何事’之类，还让我们毁掉它。”

The statement issued by Ms. Swift’s representative when Mr. West’s “Famous” came out said that Ms. Swift had “cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message,” but that does not appear to be in line with what she expresses in these video clips. The statement also said, “Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, ‘I made that bitch famous.’” The video clips on Ms. Kardashian West’s Snapchat do not show Mr. West asking about that line.

当韦斯特的《出名》发布后，斯威夫特的代表发表声明说，斯威夫特曾经“就他发行这样一首带有强烈仇视女性信息的歌曲，对他提出过告诫，”但是这好像和她在那些视频中表达的情绪不一致。那份声明还写道，“泰勒根本不知道有一句歌词是，‘我让那个婊子出了名’。”卡戴珊·韦斯特在Snapchat上发布的视频剪辑里也没有显示韦斯特就这句歌词向斯威夫特征求意见。

And so, if this conflagration turns on the interpretation of that epithet, then what may be at play is a contextual misread, or perhaps a clash of value systems. Mr. West comes from the world of hip-hop, where use of that term to refer to women can be so pervasive as to dull its pejorative meaning. In 2012, Mr. West unveiled the song “Perfect Bitch” — it was about Ms. Kardashian West, then his girlfriend. But though it has become a catchall term, it still carries undeniable historical baggage. Perhaps Ms. Swift didn’t like hearing herself referred to in that fashion, regardless of the context. Maybe she was concerned about her young female fan base and the word’s effect on them. Maybe she simply got cold feet.

因此，如果这场风波集中于对那个字眼的解读，那么这其中可能有涉及上下文背景的误读，也或许是价值体系的冲突。韦斯特来自嘻哈音乐世界，他们太常使用这个字眼来指女人了，以至于它已经失去了原本的贬义。2012年，韦斯特推出歌曲《完美的婊子》(Perfect Bitch)，是写给卡戴珊·韦斯特的，她当时还是他的女友。但是，尽管它已经成为一个笼统的词，它仍然带有不可否认的历史涵义。或许不管上下文如何，斯威夫特都不喜欢被这样称呼。或许她担心自己的年轻女性粉丝，不希望这个词影响她们。或许她只是反悔了。

Whatever the case, both sides have opted for public escalation over private reconciliation. Mr. West and Ms. Kardashian West are armed with selectively edited documentation optimized for social media distribution. They are primed for battle. Meanwhile, Ms. Swift and her team increasingly transmit an air of fatigue. After Ms. Kardashian West’s GQ interview, Ms. Swift’s representative released a statement that concluded, “Taylor cannot understand why Kanye West, and now Kim Kardashian, will not just leave her alone.”

不管怎样，两边都选择了公开地升级矛盾，而不是私下和解。韦斯特和卡戴珊·韦斯特有精心剪辑的记录，非常适合社交媒体传播。他们也惯于战斗。另一方面，斯威夫特和她的团队越来越流露出厌倦。卡戴珊·韦斯特在《GQ》的访谈面世后，斯威夫特的代表发表声明，结尾处说，“泰勒不理解为什么坎耶·韦斯特，如今又是金·卡戴珊，总是不肯放过她。”

And Ms. Swift’s latest reply concludes with a similar sentiment, though this time from her directly: “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of, since 2009.”

斯威夫特的最新回应中也有类似情绪，不过这次是她本人直接发言：“我非常希望自己能被排除在这段故事之外，自从2009年起，我从来没有要求成为它的一部分。”

But this bespeaks a misunderstanding of how public storytelling unfolds. It is crowdsourced, not written from the top down. In the past, Ms. Swift’s refusal to name the subjects of her songs or any of her personal antagonists also robbed them of their opportunities to respond, keeping the narrative tidy. But that’s not an option when the two main characters are equally famous. Ms. Swift’s revulsion only amplifies the situation: The farther from Mr. West she tries to pull, the more tightly they are bound.

但是这说明了一种对公众叙事演进方式的误解。公众叙事是以一种集体创作，而不是一人写完大家看。过去，斯威夫特拒绝说出她歌曲里的主人公是谁，也不说出她的敌人的名字，这也就剥夺了他们反驳的机会，让她的叙事保持严谨。但是如果故事里的两个主人公有同样的知名度，就不能这么做了。斯威夫特的强烈拒斥只是把事态放大：她越是想远离韦斯特，这两个人就越是紧紧地绑在一起。