[2008.06.21] 逝者：乔纳森·罗斯

Jonathan Routh
乔纳森·罗斯 

Jun 19th 2008
From The Economist print edition

John Reginald Surdeval Routh, prankster, died on June 4th, aged 80
恶作剧者约翰·雷金纳·苏德瓦·罗斯于6月4日逝世，终年80岁

HE COULD have gone into the army, like his father. His liking for footnotes might have suited him to be an historian. If his lion’s mane of hair had been clipped a bit, and his alarmingly shaggy eyebrows had been half disguised by a bowler, he might have cut a figure in the city; for the accent was right, and he always looked dapper with a brolly. But what Jonathan Routh preferred to do was to dress up as a tree, wait at a bus stop and enquire which bus would take him to Sherwood Forest.
他本可以子承父业，从军入伍。他喜欢考据，当个历史学家也挺合适。要是他能稍稍理一下狮子鬃毛般乱糟糟的头发，再戴顶黑色圆顶礼帽遮挡一下浓得吓人的眉毛，兴许还能成为伦敦万人迷–操一口绅士腔，衣冠楚楚，长柄雨伞不离手。然而乔纳森·罗斯偏偏喜欢打扮成一棵树，等在公交车站，看哪路巴士愿意载他去舍伍德森林（Sherwood Forest）。

That was one of his easier japes. He also attempted to take a grand piano on the London Underground, and persuaded a crowd of tourists that Nelson’s Column needed holding up. He set up pyramids of plates to crash when people passed them, and rigged a mirror in a hat shop so that, when each matron posed simperingly before it, the glass cracked from side to side. His notion of a day’s work was to ask a passer-by for tuppence for a cup of tea and, having got the money, produce Thermos, milk and sugar for the astonished benefactor and inquire whether they wanted one lump, or two.
对罗斯来说，装树只是小儿科。有一次，他试图把一架三角钢琴（grand piano）搬上伦敦地铁（London Underground），还有一次，他说服一群游客纳尔逊纪念碑（Nelson’s Column）需要修缮。他曾经把盘子堆成金字塔状，然后在有人经过时推倒它。他还对衣帽店的镜子做手脚，使之在女顾客顾影自怜时突然破碎。在罗斯的概念里，日常工作就是以买茶为由向路人讨点小钱，得逞之后突然拿出热水瓶、奶和糖，询问一惊一乍的好心人要一块糖还是两块糖。

Mr Routh played pranks all his life. Uppingham ejected him for hanging a banner reading “Vote Routh, Communist” in the school chapel, and Cambridge parted company with him after he gathered hundreds of signatures to stop an imaginary motorway across Bletchley Park. In 1957 he put an ad in the Times: “Practical joker with wide experience of British public’s sad gullibility organises, leads and guarantees success of large-scale hoaxes.” He hoped never to do anything else.
罗斯一生都在搞怪。在阿宾汉姆学院（Uppingham），他往学校教堂上挂了一面大旗，上书”为共产主义者罗斯投票”。在剑桥大学（Cambridge），他征集了几百个签名，为的是叫停穿越布莱奇利庄园（Bletchley Park）的汽车道计划。结果两所大学均将他驱逐出校。1957年他在泰晤士报（the Times）上登了一则广告：”作为整蛊专家，本人深谙英国公众之愚钝，提供组织、领导大规模恶搞行动服务，保证成功。”除了搞怪，他从未想过干点别的事情。

His career was made with the appearance in 1960 of the TV series “Candid Camera”, in which he starred for seven years. The idea of surreptitiously filming people being tricked had come from Allen Funt in America; but Mr Routh gave it a singularly British twist, and his dark, disturbing features announced the definitive arrival in Britain of the camera as spy. When odd or embarrassing things happened to people after 1960, they would half-expect Mr Routh and his camera to be watching. The modern plague of CCTV devices has grown up in the shadow of his melancholy smile.
成就罗斯事业的是由他主打7年的《偷窥（Candid Camera）》。这档节目于1960年首播，其偷偷记录整人过程的创意原本来自美国人艾伦·方特（Allen Funt），但罗斯给它打上了鲜明的英国烙印，他阴沉猥琐的面貌宣告偷拍君临英国。1960年以降，每当英国人遇到奇怪尴尬之事，就会怀疑罗斯正拿着摄像机躲在身旁的某个角落。在罗斯忧郁的微笑中，闭路电视（CCTV）装置逐渐泛滥。

He also did much to turn Britons into a nation of voyeurs. On “Candid Camera”, they did not merely twitch the lace curtains; they stared boldly, and laughed cruelly, as unsuspecting people had their cars pranged by Mr Routh attempting to park, or were levitated as they made calls from a public kiosk, or jumped as the post box talked to them. Hiding behind the petrol pumps, viewers could watch the astonishment of a mechanic as he discovered that the car Mr Routh had coasted into the garage contained no engine-neither under the bonnet, nor under the chassis, nor in the boot. “How did you drive in here, sir?” “I just came from Basingstoke.” From a safe but nosy distance, they could watch as a frantic woman attempted to pack cakes on a conveyor belt that had been made to run three times as fast as usual.
他的所作所为很大程度上激起了英国人的偷窥欲。《偷窥》节目播出的时候，英国观众并不是拉上窗帘偷偷观看，而是肆无忌惮地看着不明就里的车主驾着罗斯给动过手脚的车，怎么也停不了边；看着有人走进公共电话亭打电话，结果被连亭带人抬到半空中；看着邮筒突然朝着路人喊话，把他吓一大跳，一边欣赏一边极尽嘲弄之能事。在一期节目中，罗斯驾车去加油站，结果技师发现那辆车没有引擎–引擎盖下没有，底盘下没有，行李箱里也没有。”先生，您到底是如何把车开到这儿的？””我刚从贝辛斯托克（Basingstoke）来。”技师惊愕不已的表情全被藏在后面的摄像机拍个正着。在另一期节目中，蛋糕包装传送带被故意调快两倍，摄像机则放在安全又适中的距离上，以便观众看到女工抓狂的模样。

Car-racing nuns修女玩赛车

British post-war formality was always useful to him. A prank of serving tea in a cup stuck to the saucer was all the better because people-having tried and failed to lever them apart with spoons or brute strength-still attempted to sip nicely. A trick where a pickpocket removed not only wallet, but also braces, was made wonderful by the indifference of everyone standing by; and Mr Routh’s journey as registered “livestock” through the post from Sheepwash in Devon to Fleet Street, accompanied, as required, by a postal official, was deeply enhanced by the official’s polite silence all the way. As Britons lost their patient obsequiousness, Mr Routh’s pranks played less well. He turned to books: “The Good Loo Guide” (with three-star establishments “worth travelling out of your way to experience”), “The Good Cuppa Guide” and “Leonardo’s Kitchen Notebooks”, in which every invention was in fact a pasta machine.
英国的战后礼仪都是罗斯搞怪的好材料。把茶杯和茶碟粘连起来就是经典恶搞–茶客怎么也无法将它们分开，用茶匙撬、用手掰都不行–饶是如此，他仍得装出优雅的样子小口品茶。或者设计一出顺手牵羊的好戏–不仅顺走钱包，还顺带解开吊裤带–周围人群事不关己的样子让这一幕笑料十足。罗斯还曾给自己贴上”牲口 “后从Sheepwash镇邮递到德文郡（Devon），并要求有邮政官员押运。整个旅程十分搞笑，而这位官员在整个旅程中所保持的彬彬有礼的沉默更是令人忍俊不禁。后来英国人不再那么隐忍奉承，因此罗斯搞起恶作剧也不再那么得心应手了。于是他转向了出书：《高级厕所地图（The Good Loo Guide）》（附”值得改变旅行计划去体会”的三星级设施）、《好茶指南（The Good Cuppa Guide）》和《莱昂纳多厨房笔记（Leonardo’s Kitchen Notebooks）》（其实书中的所有发明都是意大利面条机）

Some pundits believed that “Candid Camera” led directly to modern TV reality shows. Certainly Mr Routh, like a demon in a Gothic tale, was after the unexpected, the moment of shock that would reveal the true character of the victim. But his victims were innocent. They had not pushed themselves forward, like the self-promoters of “Big Brother” or “Survivor”, and had no thought of seeking fame through humiliation on the screen. They were simply caught in the act of being themselves.
有专家认为《偷窥》直接孕育了现代电视真人秀节目。毋庸置疑，罗斯就像哥特传说（Gothic tale）中的恶魔那样躲在毫无防备的受害者身后，揭露他们在惊魂一刻时的本色表现。（这句话怎么看结构都不完整啊，哪位达人研究研究）但被他恶搞的都是无辜群众。他们并不想走向前台，像《老大哥（Big Brother）》和《幸存者（Survivor）》中的嘉宾那样借助上节目自我炒作，更不想因为在荧屏上出丑而出名。他们只是在按自己的习惯过生活，却被无端卷进了电视节目。

After the show’s demise Mr Routh continued to lead a prankish and other-worldly life, shifting from England to Italy and Jamaica as the sun shone, running through various affairs, and bartering bright primitive paintings to settle his restaurant bills. As a painter, he showed a penchant for formal figures suddenly released from all constraints. He painted nuns driving racing cars and flying balloons, the pope windsurfing, Mona Lisa naked or smoking. His favourite subject was the aged Queen Victoria, on an imaginary trip to Jamaica in 1871, doing the hula-hoop or the limbo dance, riding a zebra and driving dodgem cars. He could have found a more prosaic explanation for the missing three months of her reign. But he preferred, as ever, the shock of the absurd, and the sense of the detached voyeur intruding on private space.
《偷窥》节目停播之后，罗斯仍然引领着恶作剧和其他另类生活方式，跟随太阳的步伐在英国,意大利和牙买加之间游走,纵情声色,韵事无数，用自己的原生态简笔画冲抵餐厅账单。作为一个画家，他癖好以一本正经的人物入画，表现他们猛然摆脱繁文缛节后的形象。在他的画里，修女驾着赛车和热气球，主教在玩帆板冲浪，蒙娜丽莎（Mona Lisa）要么赤身裸体，要么吞云吐雾。他最喜欢的主题是晚年的维多利亚女王（Queen Victoria）。在虚构的1871年牙买加之旅中，女王转呼啦圈，跳林波舞（limbo dance），骑斑马，玩碰碰车。罗斯其实大可以白描手法展现女王这段三个月的落跑期，但他就是喜欢荒诞的冲击效果，喜欢以冷峻偷窥癖的姿态蹂躏个人空间。

译者：majer   http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12335&extra=page%3D1