21年後《老友記》在紐約的青少年中再度走紅
Twenty-one years ago last month, “Friends” made its debut on NBC, to almost instant acclaim and popularity, beginning a 10-year run that ushered into the culture various styles and mannerisms — Jennifer Aniston’s haircut, most notably — in a way that now rarely occurs, because the television landscape has become drastically more diffuse.
21年前的上個月，《老友記》(Friends)在全國廣播公司(NBC)開播，幾乎立刻就贏得讚譽，成爲熱門劇目，一連播出十季，爲文化注入了各種時尚和習性，最有名的就是詹妮弗·安妮斯頓(Jennifer Aniston)的髮型。如今，這樣的情況比較罕見了，因爲幾乎沒有哪部電視劇能獨領風騷。On “Friends,” characters emphasized their adjectives (with “very” and “really” and “so”) to such an extent that the habit prompted a study by linguists at the University of Toronto. In 2005, they published a paper asserting that the word “so” was the intensifier used 45 percent of the time on the show. In British English, researchers had found, it was used only a quarter as often. “So” was on the rise in the American vernacular, and the series was, theoretically, the cause.
《老友記》中的人物喜歡（用very、really和so）加強語氣，多倫多大學(University of Toronto)的語言學家們甚至對這個習慣進行了研究。2005年，他們發表了一篇論文，稱該劇中用so加強語氣的比例高達45%。研究者們還發現，在英式英語中，so的使用頻率只有該劇的四分之一。從理論上講，so在美式英語中使用頻率的上升是這部美劇引起的。If you are 32 or 50, there is a good chance that you are not currently occupying the world of “Friends,” which outlines a ’90s Manhattan circumscribed by a coffeehouse and a West Village apartment that, true to the period, conjures a Pottery Barn designer’s vacation in the lower-tier flea markets of Tuscany. If you are somewhere between 13 and 20, however, and particularly if you live in New York, you may find yourself very much in the “Friends” zone. This is not because you landed on an episode, after coming home semi-wasted, on late-night television, where it is almost always on in syndication, but because you watch it methodically, on Netflix, in sequence, through its more than 230 shows.
如果你現在32歲或50歲，你很可能不處在《老友記》的世界裏。它描繪的是90年代的曼哈頓，主要講述發生在一個咖啡館和西村一個公寓裏的故事；那個公寓給人的感覺是波特里巴恩傢俱連鎖店(Pottery Barn)的設計師度假去了托斯卡納那些廉價的跳蚤市場，不過倒是符合那個時代。不過，如果你在13歲至20歲之間，尤其是如果你住在紐約，你可能會發現自己就生活在《老友記》的世界裏。這不是因爲你累得半死回到家，碰巧看到晚間劇場在播其中一集（不管什麼時候總有一個臺在播），而是在Netflix上按順序看完了那230多集。
On Facebook, more than 19 million people like “Friends,” nearly four times as many as like “Seinfeld.” (So forgotten is “Mad About You,” another Manhattan-based totem of ’90s situation comedy, that when you enter the name into Facebook’s search function, you get “Mad Men.”) The currency that “Friends” has generated among young people was even the subject of a joke during the second and otherwise entirely humorless season of “True Detective.” Last spring, the “Friends” theme song was performed at a choral concert at the Bronx High School of Science; students at Brearley and Saint Ann’s are enthralled. All of this despite the fact that “Friends” is a laugh-tracked network enterprise predating the era of social media.
Facebook上有1900多萬人喜歡《老友記》，幾乎是喜歡《宋飛傳》(Seinfeld)的人的四倍（同樣被遺忘的還有《我爲卿狂》[Mad About You]，它也是一部以90年代曼哈頓爲背景的情景喜劇，你要是在Facebook上搜《我爲卿狂》，你搜到的只會是《廣告狂人》[Mad Men]）。《老友記》在年輕人中的流行甚至成爲《真探》(True Detective)第二季中的一個笑話，要是沒有這個笑話，那一季就完全沒有幽默可言。今年春天，布朗克斯科學高級中學(Bronx High School of Science)的合唱音樂會甚至演唱了《老友記》的主題曲；布里爾利高中(Brearley)和聖安妮高中(Saint Ann)的學生們也都被該劇迷住了——儘管《老友記》只是社交媒體時代之前一部配有背景笑聲的喜劇。As a portrayal of post-collegiate life in New York, “Friends” offers neither the Cristal and Bergdorf’s rendering of “Sex and the City” nor the jolie-laide bohemianism of “Girls,” let alone the stoner chaos of “Broad City,” which makes its resurgent appeal additionally curious. Shot on a set in Los Angeles, “Friends” gives us a vision of New York that is ostentatiously fake but rarely makes use of fantasy.
同樣是描繪大學畢業後在紐約的生活，《老友記》既不像《慾望都市》(Sex and the City)那樣光鮮奢華，也不像《都市女孩》(Girls)那樣玩世不恭，更不像《大城小妞》(Broad City)那樣是講述癮君子的混亂生活，所以你很難理解它爲什麼能重現魅力。《老友記》是在洛杉磯的攝影棚裏拍攝的，它給我們呈現的紐約場景顯然是假的，但並不是幻想出來的。Having debuted during the first few months of the Giuliani administration, the show keeps things dingy and menacing way past the point at which the city itself had exfoliated its grimier layers. The seemingly genial neighborhood tailor is likely to grope his male clients before altering their trousers. The guy you can see outside your apartment window is naked and creepy. Phoebe and Ross are mugged in a back alley seemingly borrowed from the set of “Rent” near their coffee bar, Central Perk, well into the first Bloomberg term. At another point, Phoebe and Rachel decide they need to learn self-defense to ward off predators.
該劇開播之時，朱利亞尼(Giuliani)剛擔任紐約市長几個月。當時的紐約市已經煥然一新，但是該劇所展示的生活環境卻還是骯髒、危險。貌似友好的街坊男裁縫很會在改褲子之前揩男顧客的油。住在對面公寓裏的男人總是光着身子，讓人感覺怪怪的。菲比(Phoebe)和羅斯(Ross)在他們最愛的中央公園咖啡館(Central Perk)附近的一條背街裏被打劫，那條街似乎是借用《吉屋出租》(Rent)的佈景。那時候，布隆伯格(Bloomberg)在紐約市長位置上的首任任期已經過了相當一段時間。在另一集裏，菲比和蕾切爾(Rachel)決定學習防身術來抵擋罪犯。What’s novel about “Friends,” or what must seem so to a certain subset of New York teenagers of whom so much is expected, is the absence among the six central characters of any quality of corrosive ambition. The show refuses to take professional life or creative aspirations too seriously. What does Chandler Bing actually do? I was never entirely sure. In the series’ ninth season he is an advertising intern. On “Girls” you have writers who are trying to be Mary Karr; on “Friends” you have actors who want to be on “Days of Our Lives.”
至少對一部分被寄予厚望的紐約青少年來說，《老友記》的新奇之處在於，六位主人公沒有任何有害的野心。這部電視劇無意強調事業或創造性志向。錢德勒·賓(Chandler Bing)到底是做什麼工作的？我從來也沒弄清。在該劇的第九季裏，他做過廣告公司的實習生。《都市女孩》中的作家夢想有一天像瑪麗·卡爾(Mary Karr)一樣出名；而《老友記》中的演員只是想出演《我們的日子》(Days of Our Lives)。The dreamscape dimension of “Friends” lies in the way schedules are freed up for fun and shenanigans and talking and rehashing, always. “In the back of our minds we know it’s unrealistic,” Maggie Parham, a 15-year-old who lives on the Upper West Side, told me. The characters “have nice apartments and lots of free time but there is something about that perfect lifestyle that is fun to watch,” she said, adding, “They all work, but they seem to be able to get out of work easily.”
《老友記》的幻景在於主人公們總是有空玩樂，搞惡作劇，閒聊，翻舊賬。“從內心深處，我們知道這是不現實的，”住在上西區的15歲的瑪吉·帕勒姆(Maggie Parham)說。她又補充，那些人“住着很好的公寓，有很多空閒時間，但是這種看起來很有趣的完美生活有個問題。他們都工作，但他們似乎都可以隨便離開工作崗位”。Another high school girl I spoke to, a 17-year-old who lives in Brooklyn, told me she had watched every episode of “Friends” and half of them twice. “That’s true for a lot of my friends,” she said. “We are really into categorizing each other as a Rachel or a Monica; it’s fun to play into that.” This girl asked that I not use her name because she was in the process of applying to colleges, and in the world as it is, a public statement about an entertainment produced not in the 18th century — a statement a college-admissions officer might find on the Internet and regard as frivolous — is considered perilous. “I think, for people my age, it’s such a stressful time in terms of school and college applications, and ‘Friends’ is a funny show that you can watch before bed and just chill out,” she said.
另一位住在布魯克林的17歲高中女孩說，《老友記》的每一集她都看了，有一半看了兩遍。“我的很多朋友也是這樣，”她說，“我們非常喜歡討論對方是蕾切爾型的還是莫妮卡(Monica)型的，很好玩。”那個女孩讓我不要透露她的名字，因爲她正在申請大學。在如今這個社會，公開評論一部非18世紀文娛作品被認爲是危險的。大學招生處的人可能在網上看到她的評論，認爲她太過輕浮。“我覺得，我這個年紀的人因爲學業和大學申請都覺得很有壓力，而《老友記》很好玩，你可以在睡覺前看一下，放鬆心情，”她說。It did not escape her attention that the characters are almost never stressed out about their jobs. “All they do is hang out in a coffee shop or a really nice apartment,” she said. “It’s the ideal situation.”
她也注意到，劇中人物幾乎從未爲工作感到壓力。“他們成天在咖啡館和一個很不錯的公寓裏閒聊消遣，”她說，“那是一種理想化的狀態。”
