《美国狙击手》和枪支文化

Things we can learn from “American Sniper”:

我们可以从《美国狙击手》(American Sniper)中学到的东西：

You know the movie, right? It has not only been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar; it could wind up selling more tickets than the other seven nominees combined. Plus, it’s triggered a left-right controversy that makes the old dust-up over “Duck Dynasty” seem like a tiny cultural blip.

你知道这部电影，对吧？它不仅获得了奥斯卡最佳影片提名，而且最终票房可能比其他七部提名影片加在一起都高。另外，它在左右两派之间引发了很大争议，令之前为《鸭子王朝》(Duck Dynasty)打的那一仗相形见拙。

“American Sniper” tells the story of Chris Kyle, a real-life Iraq war veteran and sharpshooter. The film is certainly powerful, and it celebrates our Iraq veterans. But it also eulogizes the killing of Iraq insurgents, including children, and critics feel it ought to be put in the context of an invasion that didn’t need to happen in the first place.

《美国狙击手》讲述了克里斯·凯尔(Chris Kyle)的故事。他是一位现实生活中的神枪手，曾参加过伊拉克战争。这部电影无疑令人震撼，它颂扬了我们的伊拉克老兵，但也赞美了对包括儿童在内的伊拉克叛乱分子的杀戮。评论家认为，它应该提供一个背景：这场入侵本来就是没有必要发生的。

There’s been less conversation about the final scene in the movie, which shows the hero walking through his family home, where the kids are romping. He’s carrying a handgun, which he points at his wife Taya, playfully telling her to “drop them drawers.” Taya says she can see he’s finally getting over his war traumas and back to his old fun-loving self.

对于电影的最后一幕，大家讨论得比较少。在这一幕中，主人公带着一支手枪，穿过自己的家，孩子们正在嬉戏。他开玩笑地用手枪指着妻子塔亚(Taya)，说：“把衣服脱了。”塔亚说，她能看出来，他终于走出了战争创伤，恢复到以前那种爱玩爱闹的状态。

This is, by virtually any standard, insane behavior. Mike Huckabee, a big “American Sniper” fan, recently published a book called “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,” which is so wildly opposed to any weapon regulation that Huckabee opens his chapter on modern education by complaining that public schools are anti-gun. Yet he also presents a list of universally accepted gun safety rules, many of which boil down to don’t point it at anybody as a joke.

以任何标准来看，这种行为都极其愚蠢。迈克·赫卡比(Mike Huckabee)是《美国狙击手》的铁杆粉丝，最近出了一本书，名叫《上帝、枪支、砂砾和横财》(God, Guns, Grits and Gravy)。该书猛烈抨击各种形式的武器管制，在“现代教育”一章的开始，他抱怨了公立学校的反枪立场。然而，他也列出了一些公认的枪支安全准则，其中很多条都可以归纳为：不能用枪指着任何人开玩笑。

“Yeah, but if you want to complain about the casual treatment of guns in movies, you don’t have to look very hard on any Friday night,” said Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Murphy hasn’t seen the movie, but he’s one of Congress’s leading advocates of gun-control regulation. It’s not the world’s most rewarding job. In recent years, his colleagues have not only refused to pass an extremely modest bill on background checks, they’ve failed to ban the sale of guns to people on the terrorism watch list.

“是啊，但如果你想抱怨电影里对枪支的草率处理，随便哪个礼拜五晚上都可以轻易找到例子，”康涅狄格州参议员克里斯·墨菲(Chris Murphy)说。墨菲还没看这部电影，但他是国会首屈一指的控枪法规倡导者。这可不是一份招人喜欢的工作。近年来，他的同僚们不但拒绝通过一个极其不起眼的背景调查法案，连禁止向恐怖主义监控名单中的人出售枪支都做不到。

“American Sniper” is on one, supremely obvious level, a celebration of gun culture. But it’s also a cautionary tale. The real Chris Kyle was shot to death while the script was being written. He had volunteered to help a troubled veteran, Eddie Ray Routh, who had a history of violent behavior and was an apparent victim of post-traumatic stress. Kyle felt the best way to get him to relax was to take him to a shooting range. While they were there, Routh turned his gun on Kyle, and one of Kyle’s friends, killing them both.

一定程度上说，《美国狙击手》在十分鲜明地歌颂枪支文化。但同时它又是个警世故事。真实世界里的克里斯·凯尔是在剧本写作期间被枪杀的。他主动去帮助陷入困境的艾迪·雷·劳思(Eddie Ray Routh)，一个有暴力行为前科的退伍军人，而且似乎受到创伤后应激障碍的困扰。凯尔认为让他放松下来的最佳办法是带他去射击场。劳思在那里将枪对准凯尔以及凯尔的一个朋友，杀死了二人。

“American Sniper” could actually be seen, at least in the final scene, as a good-gun, bad-gun message. The real Chris Kyle did enjoy walking around the house, twirling a pistol. His wife said that as the clouds lifted after his Iraq service, he would playfully point a gun at the television and pretend to shoot down the bad guys.

实际上可以说，《美国狙击手》传达了一种枪有好枪、坏枪的观念，至少在最后一场戏中是这样。克里斯·凯尔本人的确是那种在家里摆弄着手枪走来走去的人。他的妻子说，随着从伊拉克战场归来后的阴霾散去，他有时会开玩笑地拿枪指着电视，假装击毙里面的坏人。

Jason Hall, who wrote the movie screenplay, said the scene was meant to both show Kyle in recovery and presage the violence that was about to occur off-screen.

影片编剧杰森·霍尔(Jason Hall)说，安排这样一个场景是为了说明凯尔在复原中，同时也预示了即将在画外发生的暴力。

“There’s a tension in the scene that builds toward the ending,” he said in a phone interview.

“这场戏有一种张力，一直积聚到结尾，”他在一次电话采访中说。

The American gun lobby has pushed its cause so far that it, too, may be falling off a cliff. Texas, where Chris Kyle’s alleged murderer is going on trial next week, has always had a gun-friendly culture, so much so that visitors can bring concealed handguns into the State Capitol. Some people definitely do not think this goes far enough, and, on opening day of the Legislature last month, they demanded new laws making it legal to carry handguns in the open, preferably without a license.

美国的枪支游说事业在推动其目标时不遗余力，简直已经到了悬崖边缘。在德克萨斯，也就是被控谋杀克里斯·凯尔的嫌疑人下周上庭的地方，一直都有一种奉枪文化，对枪的态度友好到前往州议会的人可以隐蔽携带手枪。显然有人觉得这还不够，他们在上月的议会开放日上要求通过新的法律，让他们可以合法公开携带手枪，最好是不用持枪证。

One particularly bouncy group, Open Carry Tarrant County, flooded the office of Representative Poncho Nevárez, a non-supportive Democrat. A video of the ensuing scene showed Nevárez, looking extremely wary, asking the demonstrators to leave his office, while one of them yelled back: “I’m asking you to leave my state.” When Nevárez tried to close his door, one of the protesters stuck his foot in it. This was all happening, remember, in a building where carrying concealed weapons is perfectly fine.

有个叫“塔兰特县公开携枪”(Open Carry Tarrant County)的团体格外活跃，他们涌进了不支持该提案的众议员庞乔·内瓦雷兹(Poncho Nevárez)的办公室。在随后拍摄的一段视频中可以看到，神色极为慌张的内瓦雷兹要求抗议者离开他的办公室，而其中一个人喊道：“我要求你离开我的州。”内瓦雷兹试图关门，却被一名抗议者伸脚卡住。别忘了，这一切都发生在一个可以完全合法隐蔽携带武器的建筑物里。

When it was all over, some legislators in both parties wore “I’m Poncho” badges in solidarity with Nevárez, who was assigned a security detail after he and his family received threats.

事后来自两党的部分议员佩戴了“我是庞乔”的徽章，表达对内瓦雷兹的支持，他和家人在受到威胁后得到了专门的警卫保护。

The leader of Open Carry Tarrant County, Kory Watkins, then posted another video in which he claimed that the resistant lawmakers were forgetting their duty was “to protect the Constitution. And let me remind you: Going against the Constitution is treason. And treason is punishable by death.”

“塔兰特县公开携枪”领导人科里·瓦特金斯(Kory Watkins)随后又上传了一段视频，声称和那些玩忽职守的议员对抗是“为了保护宪法。我来提醒你们一下：和宪法背道而驰是叛国。叛国是要处死刑的。”

Meanwhile, in the Texas Capitol, enthusiasm for watering down the gun laws seems to be dwindling. That could qualify as a happy ending.

与此同时，在德州议会，放宽枪支法律限制的呼声似乎在渐渐平息。这可以算作美满结局了。