摘要：当现实中的信任跌入冰点，电视荧幕上便布满内鬼、叛徒与黑幕。《经济学人》这篇文化评论指出，从《夜班经理》到《真相捕捉》，阴谋惊悚片正迎来黄金时代——它们不仅映照出这个怀疑一切的时代心理，更在无形中加剧了公众对权力系统的腐蚀性想象。当整具“政治躯体”躺在电视停尸台

有趣灵魂说

当现实中的信任跌入冰点，电视荧幕上便布满内鬼、叛徒与黑幕。《经济学人》这篇文化评论指出，从《夜班经理》到《真相捕捉》，阴谋惊悚片正迎来黄金时代——它们不仅映照出这个怀疑一切的时代心理，更在无形中加剧了公众对权力系统的腐蚀性想象。当整具“政治躯体”躺在电视停尸台上，我们该如何看待这种流行？

译文为原创，仅供个人学习使用

The Economist ｜Culture

经济学人｜文化

Back Story 幕后故事

Turn on, tune in, trust no one: the paranoid style captures TV

开启，调频，谁都不信：偏执风格占领电视

Conspiracy thrillers are the favourite genre of a distrustful age

阴谋惊悚片成为怀疑时代最受喜爱的类型

陌生来电可能是骗子，邮件可能是钓鱼诈骗。一条条虚线构成的脏钱链条，将贪婪的西方人与敌对国家势力连接起来。当一名枪手试图闯入总统晚宴时，半数互联网用户认为这是一场骗局。似乎没有什么是可信的，也没有人是可信的——现实生活如此，而如今，电视屏幕上绝对也是如此。

正因为当下是阴谋论盛行的时代，电视剧中的阴谋题材也正迎来黄金时代。犯罪剧和惊悚片中的反派，传统上是恐怖分子、黑帮和连环杀手。如今，他们更可能是可疑的警察、双面间谍和腐败政客。危险来自内部——往往是白宫内部。这类故事所戏剧化的恐惧，并非来自某个孤身狂徒，而是一个失控的系统。

后台私信关键词“

特勤局

”获取资源

《特勤局》是英国荧屏上最新的“内鬼”故事。军情六处俄罗斯事务负责人（杰玛·阿特登饰）怀疑克里姆林宫在英国政府核心安插了内奸。这一设定与热播剧《夜班经理》有着明显的相似之处——无论是奢华的地中海取景地，还是将特工打入目标家庭的桥段，都如出一辙。而台词也与你所见过的每一部间谍剧有着明显的雷同。“我们都能对爱的人撒谎，”一位老套的间谍头子懒洋洋地说道。

点击链接

查看《夜班经理》剧评

经济学人｜《夜班经理》第二季回归！比剧情更迷人的，是那个看不透的男人

《夜班经理》里那些叛逆的特工并不稀奇。甚至连剧名也不稀奇：看看《夜班特工》——另一部多季连续剧，涉及一场伪造的爆炸、中情局的叛徒，以及（你猜对了）政府核心的内奸。事实上，如今电视上任何一个身居公职、值得公众信任的角色，都有可能背叛这份信任。《零日风暴》中，一个阴谋集团策划了一场网络灾难。《疯狂》则将白人至上主义者与虚假信息和企业欺诈结合在一起。还有更多的电视剧阴谋正在制作中。阴谋永不停歇。

荧幕上，如同现实中一样，阴谋论总是间歇性爆发。经历了20世纪60年代的系列刺杀事件和水门事件之后，70年代中期是一个狂热的时期，（电影界）催生了《唐人街》和《视差观点》。在当今现实世界的触发因素——以及叙事主题——中，包括外部势力对西方政治的干预、全景式监控，以及隐秘算法和人工智能的力量。上乘的阴谋剧《真相捕捉》聚焦于官方对深度伪造技术的滥用。

社交媒体是另一种较新的技术，也是阴谋论的主要传播渠道，让各地沉浸在负面信息中的刷屏者轻易相信“傀儡候选人”和“假旗行动”之类的故事。与此同时，人们对权威的态度充满敌意。民调机构报告称，在英国和美国，公众对政府的信任度已跌至愤世嫉俗的低点。美国人对科学、大企业、警察和媒体也失去了信心；27%的英国人认为存在针对他们个人的阴谋。政治极化是问题的一部分：如果自己憎恨的对手赢得了选举，那他们肯定是舞弊了。他们准没安好心。

在这种背景下，阴谋题材的电视剧——就像阴谋论本身一样——提供了令人宽慰的回报。是的，它们描绘了一个被暗黑势力控制的险恶世界。但是，就像“匿名者Q”的追随者和疫苗怀疑论者一样，观众从中获得了一种自己掌握真相的满足感。无论如何，作为对世间苦难的解释，阴谋比混乱和运气不好（尤其是在季终集才被揭露的那种）更容易理解。

这类题材也有缺点。一位电视剧导演透露，要把一个阴谋拍得令人信服很难，而且反派和告密者的组合变化也有限（正如《特勤局》所体现的那样）。政府叛徒、持枪男子以及每集结尾的反转都是必不可少的元素。更严重的是，阴谋剧在反映“当权者都是狡诈的”这一普遍直觉的同时，也可能加剧这种腐蚀性怀疑。（一个热衷阴谋论的评论家可能会想：所有这些剧集的幕后黑手到底是谁？）

话说回来，其他类型的电视犯罪剧也并非完全无害。华丽惊悚片中阴谋元素的蔓延，恰逢另一类题材的退潮：即那些描写女性被杀、通过死亡让男性侦探一举成名的耸人听闻的故事。业内人士称，最近一些编剧和制片人对这种老套情节越来越谨慎，他们更喜欢塑造尖锐的女性角色——包括间谍和刺客——而不是作为装饰品的女性尸体。

“死去的女孩”这一套路，不仅意味着想象力的匮乏，也反映了对女性的肤浅看法。但犯罪剧和惊悚片中的偏执风格，就其本身而言，至少同样令人不安。如今，电视停尸台上的不仅是女性的尸体。而是整个政治体系。■

Cold-callers might be fraudsters and emails could be phishing scams. Dotted lines of dirty money connect venal Westerners with hostile powers. When a gunman tries to storm a presidential dinner, half the internet thinks it’s a hoax. Nothing and no one can be trusted, it may seem—not in real life and, these days, definitely not on TV

For just as this is a heyday of conspiracism, it is becoming a golden age of conspiracies on television. The villains of crime shows and thrillers have traditionally been terrorists, mobsters and serial killers. Now they are likely to be dodgy cops, double agents and corruptpoliticians. The danger is coming from inside the house—often the White House. The fear such stories dramatise is not of a lone maniac but a rogue system.

“Secret Service” supplies the latest inside job on British tellies. The head of the Russia desk atMi6(played by Gemma Arterton, pictured) suspects the Kremlin has a mole at the heart of Britain’s government. The set-up has distinct echoes of “The Night Manager”, a hit about spies and skulduggery, in both the sumptuous Mediterranean locations and the slipping of an agent into a target’s family. The dialogue has distinct echoes of every espionage show you’ve ever seen. “We can all lie to someone we love,” drawls a spymaster on autopilot.

The renegade spooks of “The Night Manager” are not unusual. Even its name is not unusual: see also “The Night Agent”, another multi-series yarn, this one involving a staged bombing, CIAturncoats and (you guessed it) moles at the heart of government. These days, in fact, anyone on tvin a position of public trust is liable to betray it. In “Zero Day” a cabal orchestrates a cyber-catastrophe. “The Madness” combines white supremacists with disinformation and corporate chicanery. More television conspiracies are in the pipeline. The fix goes on.

On screen, as in reality, conspiracism comes in bursts. After the assassinations of the 1960s and Watergate, the mid-1970s was a febrile period, yielding (at the cinema) “Chinatown” and “The Parallax View”. Among today’s real-world prompts—and narrative motifs—are foreign meddling in Western politics, panopticonic surveillance and the power of occult algorithms and artificial intelligence. “The Capture”, a superior conspiracy saga, focuses on official misuse of deepfakes

Social media, another newish technology, are the chief vector of conspiracism, making doomscrollers everywhere amenable to stories of Manchurian candidates and false flags. Meanwhile attitudes to authority are poisonous. In Britain and America, pollsters report, trust in government is at a cynical low. Americans have also lost faith in science, big business, police and the media; 27% of Britons think there is a conspiracy against them personally. Polarisation is part of the problem: if hated opponents win an election, they must surely have cheated. They are bound to be up to no good.

In this context, conspiracist dramas, like conspiracy theories themselves, offer a consoling pay-off. Yes, they depict a sinister world controlled by shadowy forces. But, like QAnonersand vaccine truthers, viewers derive a gratifying sense that they are in the know. In any case, as an explanation for global woes, conspiracies are more comprehensible than cock-ups and chaos, especially those uncovered in the season finale.

The genre has drawbacks, too. It is hard to make a conspiracy seem convincing, a tv director confides, and the permutations of baddies and whistleblowers are limited (as “Secret Service” suggests). Government traitors, men with guns and end-of-episode twists are de rigueur. More gravely, as well as reflecting an ambient hunch that the mighty are crooked, conspiracy shows may corrosively reinforce it. (Who exactly is behind them all, a conspiracy-minded critic might wonder?)

Then again, other kinds of tvcrime aren’t entirely victimless. The creep of conspiracy in glitzy thrillers coincides with the retreat of a different genre: lurid tales of murdered women, whose deaths let male gumshoes earn their spurs. Of late some writers and producers have grown wary of that default scenario, say insiders, preferring spiky female roles, including spies and assassins, to decorative female corpses.

The dead-girl trope implies a failure of imagination as well as a shallow view of women. But the paranoid style of crime shows and thrillers is, in its way, at least as disturbing. No longer is it just a woman’s body on the TVmortuary slab. Now it is the entire body politic.■

来源：深度剖析者