上海今秋降温第一天，从老锦江出来直接钻进国泰电影院。爸爸妈妈是年纪最大的观众，老爸整个都处于半睡半醒状态。还是想起半年前The Economist上的这一篇。美文，共赏。

Michael Jackson

转载The Economist Jul 2nd 2009
From The Economist print edition

Michael Jackson, pop star, died on June 25th, aged 50

FIRST, the songs. The light, infectious lilt of “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough”. The sheer, vicious swoop of “Speed Demon”. The soft, syncopated sadness of “Billie Jean”, or the raucous shouts of “Bad”. His high, pure tenor was shot through with the little yips and sighs he had learnt from Diana Ross. And behind it lay the astonishing confidence of child-star Michael in “I’ll Be There” or “Rockin’ Robin”, with each note treble-true and each time-change as natural as taking breath.

Next, the dancing, springing from the music like a bird out of a trap. Pointing, jerking, thrusting, with rage in his feet, as Fred Astaire said once. He was at war with the floor as it slid away in the Moonwalk, and with the air as he spun through it. He danced with his knees, on tiptoe, hunching his shoulders to his ears. His splayed hand pulled at his crotch as if emasculation would be sweet to him.

The show was everything. Lights made a giant of him as he stood motionless: one white, glittering, gloved hand raised, fedora pulled down at a slant. Under the tight, too-short trousers, sequinned socks (“No one would recognise Bruce Springsteen by his socks”). On stage he felt truly alive, invincible, “unlimited”. He would appear in explosions of smoke and fire, or fly away like an astronaut. On his videos he was a leader of crowds, prowling the city in “Thriller” (1983) in an outfit red as blood. P.T. Barnum was his model, crossed with Walt Disney. He wanted his life to be “the greatest show on earth”. And so, for much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was, with “Thriller” the biggest-selling album ever, eight Grammys in 1983, his dark, lavish videos a staple of the fledgling MTV channel and his place as the King of Pop assured.

In Neverland

What lay behind it? He told his biographer, Randy Taraborrelli, that he had “deep, dark secrets”. They were encased in a voice as soft as a whisper, a handshake that felt like a cloud, a face as pale and delicate as plastic surgery and Porcelana skin-bleach could make it. Dark glasses and surgical masks kept the world away from him. On his estate at Neverland in southern California, remote from the “normal people” who might grab and scratch him, he lived like a child with blank-eyed mannequins, pet snakes and Ferris wheels. He shared his meals with a chimpanzee and his bed with young boys, “the most loving thing to do”. People spread rumours about him, even twice accused him of sexual abuse, but he was never proved guilty of anything: except love, and desire for lost childhood, and a longing to be Peter Pan.

But that too was a show. Behind it was a man who could not bear to hear that Elvis still surpassed him, or that Madonna had won a Grammy when he hadn’t. He could force hard deals and millions of dollars out of Motown, CBS and Sony in face-to-face confrontations; he could fire his manager and his lawyer, after years of service, without a trace of sentiment, for letting down the brand; he could beat Paul McCartney to the Beatles’ back catalogue and exploit it ruthlessly, despite their friendship. He performed for 18 years with his four elder brothers in the Jackson 5, the bouncing, grinning child from Gary, Indiana transforming into a global megastar, then left them as brutally as he had always upstaged them. But the family never left him. He blanked Joseph Jackson from his life and excised him from his face, but could not forget his father’s exhortation to be “a winner, not a loser”. Perfectionism, like distrust, had been beaten into him.

What show business required, he had also learnt, was to give the fans what they wanted. If they demanded fantasies, he would provide them. (“The longer it takes them to discover [who I am], the more famous I will be.”) From the end of the 1980s he devised ever more headline-grabbing ventures: bidding for the bones of the Elephant Man, sleeping in an oxygen chamber, appearing in toyshops and galleries in garish wigs and moustaches. Dates were arranged with Tatum O’Neal and Brooke Shields to prove he was all man, rather than the shrinking virgin of his other public self. Two marriages were undertaken, three children vicariously produced.

Oddness overshadowed his real, hard-won achievements: world adulation for a black pop star, the birth of video celebrity, and millions of dollars given to black causes. If the press stayed on his weird story, he believed, his records would sell. The risk was that the weirdness would multiply until he was hardly human.

His last public appearance, before his death of apparent cardiac arrest, was to announce a series of 50 sold-out concerts in London. Hours before his death he was rehearsing for them, exuding joy, energy and sharp judgment. His glitter jackets, the tabloids claimed later, hid a body that was half-starved, subsisting on painkillers. Though he was worth $1.3 billion, said the Sun, he died with debts of $300m.

But he had sold 750m albums and, from Riga to Rio, children danced like him. In the words of his “Dirty Diana”,

That’s OK

Hey baby do what you want

I’ll be your night lovin’ thing

I’ll be the freak you can taunt

And I don’t care what you say

I want to go too far

I’ll be your everything

If you make me a star

In the wake of Britain's triumph at the Baftas and Grammys, Tom Horan examines what inspires us to be one of the world's most creative nations.

By Tom Horan

What makes Britain such a creative nation? Last weekend's awards ceremonies, the Baftas in London and the Grammys in Los Angeles, brought further confirmation, if it were needed, that when it comes to artistic excellence and innovation our small and often troubled country is a mighty performer.

Whether the work be individual (a best actress Bafta to Kate Winslet, a best newcomer Grammy for young singer Adele), or collaborative (the seven awards for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, the Grammys for Robert Plant's bluegrass project and for the group Coldplay), there is clearly something in the British character that throws up great art, art that the whole world wants and celebrates. So what is it that drives the British creative engine?

One of the reasons the British are great creators is that they're great haters. This is putting it in rather extreme terms, but it is a powerful element of the national psyche to be critical, to have strong opinions. Here, after all, is a country that supports 22 national newspapers. This appetite for criticism can be a negative trait, as seen in the dismissiveness bordering on contempt that the British have for other people's success. It is the classic cri de coeur of the expatriate British star – a Phil Collins in Switzerland, a Michael Caine in Beverly Hills – that they had to move away from Britain because as soon as you are successful here people want to knock you down. It is undoubtedly true that they do. Curiously, the repercussions of this can be extremely healthy.

An acceptance of the status quo can only ever produce more of the same. What we see so often in Britain is a cussed desire to do something different, to do the opposite to what everyone else is doing. Out with the old, in with the new. There is a strong sense throughout the British film and music industries that much of what they do defines itself in opposition to something – in particular, the American mainstream and Hollywood. Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle is a great example. Boyle did flirt with Hollywood after the huge success of his Trainspotting in 1996, making movies such as The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio, but he has remained in the UK, pursuing projects that he is passionate about, rather than primarily commercial ventures.

Figures such as artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen, who won a Bafta for his debut feature film Hunger, and documentary-maker James Marsh, who won best British film for Man on Wire, seem to thrive on their outsider status. In another example of the British gift for turning a negative into a positive, it seems that the parlous state of the British movie business throws up better filmmakers. It's so difficult to get funding and distribution here that only the most impassioned, the
most committed succeed in turning their idea into a finished work.
It's Darwinian: only the strongest make it to the multiplex. Doggedness may not be an attitude automatically associated with creativity, but it is part of the armoury of the successful British artist.

Somehow, the continuing low status of the creative industries in this country perpetuates this sense of being an underdog. The global popularity of British artistic endeavour is not a new phenomenon: it has made Britain money for decades. Nevertheless, there is still a sense here that working in the arts is "not a proper job". This produces a kind of amateur spirit, a feeling of succeeding against the odds, and that appeals to something deep in the British pysche. Adversity acts as a spur. It's as if it wouldn't be worth the bother making your name in the creative world if it were establishment-endorsed, well organised, a recognised career path.

For decades, British fashion and pop music have embraced this penchant for the perverse. As soon as a type of music or a way of dressing establishes itself as fashionable and then popular, so a new subset of Brits will emerge who are intent on doing the opposite. When the haircut of the day seems to be the No 3 crop, you can bet that in some part of the country a new set of contrarians will be furiously cultivating Afros and matching beards. Thus did punk oust prog rock in the Seventies, and then Britpop see off house music when that, too, became ubiquitous in the mid-Nineties. There's a fantastic rigour to all this, a constant striving for individuality and a thirst for the original.

It is the embracing of daring, of risk, that is a unifying quality of British artists across all disciplines. From the jaw-dropping designs of architects such as Zaha Hadid or Thomas Heatherwick, to the audacious works of Damien Hirst, and Danny Boyle making a mainstream film half in Hindi, achievement in itself is not enough – the badge of honour is always to be innovating.

And surely the setting in which such people work, surrounded by massed ranks of critical countrymen, ever hungry for the new, helps focus the creative mind. Thus, 60-year-old Robert Plant, rich beyond measure from Led Zeppelin sales, eschewed the easy option of the reunion circuit to win five Grammys after making a brilliant bluegrass album with a singer, Alison Krauss, whom few in Britain had heard of.

Of course, there are other, more prosaic reasons behind Britain's high standing in the great league table of creativity. Be you a playwright, a concert pianist or a fashion designer, it will always be in your favour that English has become the language of the world. It helps, too, that alongside the purely creative parts of the arts, there is a parallel world of technical and practical excellence in which imaginative flair can flourish. It was fascinating, if faintly bizarre, to see the film studios of Pinewood and Shepperton being awarded a Bafta.

In a few weeks' time, it will be the Academy Awards and again Britain's creative wares will be judged through the eyes of the outside world. Slumdog may not match its showing at the Baftas, but with 10 nominations it is a strong contender for awards, as is Kate Winslet. In the traditional fashion, there are already many in the UK – in pubs, in the papers, at dinner parties – who are "fed up" with the film, and have "had enough" of Winslet. Already, too, there will be those who have been inspired by Boyle and Winslet, and those who think they're terribly old hat and that they themselves can do better. This is the best and worst of Britain as a creative nation.

What cannot be denied is that time and again, in fields as diverse as painting, theatre, literature and heavy metal, the world responds to the British sensibility. To understand why, perhaps it's better to look at the equation the other way round. What is it that all art tries to do? Why do we create stuff? And is it something that British people are naturally suited to doing?

These are big questions, but around them floats the idea of art as a search for truths about life. The constant questioning to which we subject creativity in this country is mirrored in the constant questioning that informs the works themselves. Although we have our share of the fake and dishonest in Britain, you only have to step outside the country for a short time to find that it is still viewed in many parts of the world as a place synonymous with a kind of integrity, with things done from the heart, with doing it like you mean it.

And perhaps that's why, in our curious mixture of bloodymindedness and open-mindedness, cynicism and utter conviction, we continue to fascinate the world.