泰勒?斯威夫特的聲譽(yù)管理

Ill repute outweighs good in pop and rock. “It gives a strange fascination,” Thin Lizzy admitted in their song “Bad Reputation”. Joan Jett recorded an identically titled song in which the “queen of rock ‘n’ roll” bragged that she didn’t “give a damn about my reputation”, yowling defiance at prudes tut-tutting about young women doing what they want: “You’re living in the past, it’s a new generation.”

流行音樂(lè)和搖滾音樂(lè)領(lǐng)域的壞名聲超過(guò)好名聲。“瘦利茲樂(lè)隊(duì)”(Thin Lizzy)在他們的歌曲《壞聲譽(yù)》(Bad Reputation)中承認(rèn)，“它賦予了一種奇怪的魅力”。瓊•杰特(Joan Jett)錄制了一首同名歌曲，這位“搖滾女王”在歌中吹噓說(shuō)，她“根本不在乎我的聲譽(yù)”，并對(duì)那些非議我行我素的年輕女性的假正經(jīng)人士嗤之以鼻：“你們生活在過(guò)去，現(xiàn)在是新一代”。

That was in 1980. Several generations later, Jett’s fellow Pennsylvanian Taylor Swift is releasing the year’s most anticipated album, Reputation. It follows a downturn in the singer’s own standing. Previously lauded as a paragon of apple-pie goodness who wrote all her own songs, Swift has been traduced by haters as the precise opposite — a publicity-obsessed schemer who is accused of devising fake romantic relationships with other celebrities, who does cryptic things in pursuit of world domination as a supposed member of the Illuminati and is seen to have contracted out her music to the world’s slickest, most soulless pop producers.

那是在1980年。幾代人以后，和杰特一樣來(lái)自賓夕法尼亞的泰勒•斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)發(fā)布了年度最受期待的專輯《聲譽(yù)》(Reputation)。此前斯威夫特自身的地位遭到削弱。此前她被譽(yù)為像蘋果派那樣良善的典范，所有的歌曲都是自己寫的，但斯威夫特現(xiàn)在被憎恨者詆毀為完全相反——一個(gè)好出風(fēng)頭的算計(jì)者，被指捏造與其他名人有浪漫關(guān)系，被猜測(cè)是“光明會(huì)”(Illuminati)成員，為了追求世界統(tǒng)治而做著神神秘秘的事情，而且被視為將自己的音樂(lè)外包給世界上最華而不實(shí)、最沒(méi)有靈魂的流行音樂(lè)制作人。

Reputation’s cover shows Swift with one side of her face covered by a black rash of newsprint, a shady counterpart to the unblemished other side of her face. It recalls Abraham Lincoln’s saying: “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” All reputations are suspect, in other words. They provide a distorted approximation of a person’s true nature.

《聲譽(yù)》的封面顯示，斯威夫特的一側(cè)臉上疊加著一層報(bào)紙，與另一側(cè)沒(méi)有遮擋的臉相比顯得有些陰暗。它讓人想起了亞伯拉罕•林肯(Abraham Lincoln)的名言：“品行如樹(shù)，名聲如影。行實(shí)名虛。”換言之，所有的聲譽(yù)都是可疑的。它們是對(duì)一個(gè)人真實(shí)品性的失真寫照。

But that cannot be right. Reputation is a vital aspect of our public selves, not just a shadow of our real selves. Unlike status, which is high or low, it has a moral component, spoken about in terms of good and bad. It relates to one’s good name, the loss of which can feel like a death. The sacked army officer Cassio in Othello bewails his drunken disgrace: “Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”

但是這不可能是正確的。聲譽(yù)是我們公眾自我的一個(gè)重要方面，而不僅僅是我們真實(shí)自我的一個(gè)影子。與有高有低的地位不同，它有一個(gè)道德要素，可以用好和壞來(lái)評(píng)論。它與一個(gè)人的好名聲有關(guān)，失去好名聲的感覺(jué)可能像是死了一樣。在《奧賽羅》(Othello)里，被免職的軍官凱西奧(Cassio)為自己醉酒后的失態(tài)悲嘆道：“哦，我失去了我的名聲!我失去了自己不朽的一部分，剩下的就是獸性。”

We like to imagine ourselves as more liberated than in Shakespeare’s day, less trammelled by conventions about how we should behave. Surely the modern Cassio could do a Thin Lizzy and admit to a strange fascination with his bad reputation. But the opposite turns out to be the case. The public persona that we present to the world grows ever more significant.

我們喜歡認(rèn)為自己比莎士比亞(Shakespeare)時(shí)代更加自由，在行為方面受傳統(tǒng)的約束較少?，F(xiàn)代的凱西奧肯定可以像“瘦利茲樂(lè)隊(duì)”那樣，承認(rèn)壞聲譽(yù)有一種奇怪的魅力。但現(xiàn)實(shí)恰恰相反。我們向世界呈現(xiàn)的公眾形象越來(lái)越重要。

In the digital age reputation is inescapable. Not a day goes by without our judging something or being judged ourselves. We like each other’s tweets, get tracked by credit-rating agencies, give stars to Uber drivers and are given stars in return. The assignation of value unfolds in real time at an unprecedented scale. The Chinese government’s plan, now delayed, to set up a social credit system, awarding points to citizens based on analysis of their behaviour through their data trails, is the logical endpoint of such a process.

在數(shù)字時(shí)代，聲譽(yù)是不可避免的。我們每一天都在評(píng)判外界事物，或者受到評(píng)判。我們?yōu)楸舜说耐莆狞c(diǎn)贊，受到信用評(píng)級(jí)機(jī)構(gòu)的跟蹤，給優(yōu)步(Uber)司機(jī)打分，還會(huì)得到他們的評(píng)分。價(jià)值評(píng)定以空前規(guī)模實(shí)時(shí)進(jìn)行。中國(guó)政府計(jì)劃建立社會(huì)信用體系，通過(guò)公民的數(shù)據(jù)軌跡來(lái)分析他們的行為，并據(jù)此授予他們分?jǐn)?shù)(現(xiàn)在這一計(jì)劃被推遲了)。這類計(jì)劃是此類過(guò)程合乎邏輯的終點(diǎn)。

This is reputation as brand, a system of identification that treats behaviour as a transactional product, goods to be exchanged rather than goodness in the deeper sense. But the moral dimension cannot be erased. The sexual crimes and scandals that have emerged in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s disgrace have ruined a succession of reputations, bringing low powerful men previously uncensured by laws and institutions. Tax avoiders find their good names on the line following the Paradise Papers leak, hauled up before the court of public opinion in the absence of other forms of sanction.

這是把聲譽(yù)當(dāng)作品牌，一種將行為看作可交易產(chǎn)品的身份識(shí)別系統(tǒng)，是可以交換的商品，而不是更深層意義上的美德。但道德維度不能被抹殺。在哈維•韋恩斯坦(Harvey Weinstein)身敗名裂后浮出水面的性犯罪和丑聞破壞了一連串的聲譽(yù)，讓那些以前不受法律和制度懲罰的大人物們身敗名裂。在《天堂文件》(Paradise Papers)泄露后，避稅者發(fā)現(xiàn)自己的好名聲面臨危險(xiǎn)，在沒(méi)有其他形式處罰的情況下，他們受到輿論法庭的審判。

With her background in country music, a repository of traditional Christian values, Swift understands that reputation is more than skin deep and not just a branding exercise. Her new songs are full of the language of morality (“I Did Something Bad”, “Don’t Blame Me”). Reputation is an instrument of moral justice, sharpened by mass communication — a dangerously double-edged one, open to misuse and misappropriation, as the attacks on her own reputation attest. Unlike Jett, she gives a damn about it. She is right.

憑借在鄉(xiāng)村音樂(lè)領(lǐng)域的背景，以及傳統(tǒng)的基督教價(jià)值觀底蘊(yùn)，斯威夫特明白，聲譽(yù)并不膚淺，也不只是品牌推廣活動(dòng)。她的新歌充滿了道德語(yǔ)言(“我做了壞事”和“不要責(zé)怪我”)。聲譽(yù)是道德正義的工具，借助大眾傳播變得更加鋒利——這是一柄危險(xiǎn)的雙刃劍，容易被誤用和濫用，她本人的聲譽(yù)受到攻擊證明了這一點(diǎn)。與杰特不同，她在乎聲譽(yù)。她是對(duì)的。

The writer is the FT’s pop critic

本文作者是英國(guó)《金融時(shí)報(bào)》流行文化評(píng)論員