太空纳粹死光光 (Space Nazis Must Die - Mandarin Translation)

希特勒的打手在科幻的世界里留下了巨大的阴影。

纳粹士兵的身影，浮现在《星战》的帝国军队、Doctor Who 中的“达立克” (Dalek), 《萤火虫》系列影视剧中的联盟，以及 Blake’s 7 剧集中的地球联邦突击队这些虚构产物中。

“我们会在（冲浪）
沙滩上与敌人战斗到底……”
（图片来自 IMDB.com )

展现纳粹外延的电影中往往有意选用特定的外在形式，包括雨果博斯式精工剪裁的军服，行军如条顿骑士般马靴叩地发出的脆响，以及阅兵场和耀眼的军旗等里芬施塔尔风格的电影视觉元素（指 Leni Riefenstahl, 执导德国纳粹宣传片《意志的胜利》）。这一类电影中还时常或明或暗地显示其虚构的兵士是受某种形式的种族主义意识形态驱使而作战，不过其具体细节往往让人如坠五里雾中。

不过我们要把话讲明：纳粹不是什么好东西。

纳粹分子不管出没何处，都应该人人喊打：无论是战场还是选票上、大街上，乃至幽暗深邃的星际空间。只有这样，在作品中为纳粹反派（及其纳粹思想）着墨才有其价值。

相反，如果仅仅是加以塑造，而不去揭示其心理动机的深层次来龙去脉，这样的作品是先天不足的。“纳粹”作为恶势力的外在符号，拿来随便一用再方便不过了，很容易用来逃避“恶的意义”这一课题。不错，帝国兵在《星战·帝国反击战》中害死了不少人，不过《釜山行》中的僵尸、《龙卷风》电影中的暴风，或者《异形》中的外星生物同样杀人如麻。《帝国反击战》中没有个体面孔的茫茫兵海，起到的作用无非是充当激光枪的靶子。在护目头盔和雪白亚克力防弹服之下，我们感受不到内在世界。

在作品中使用抽象化的纳粹，带给观众或读者的是一种用来建构世界背景和人物的速记符号。它传达的是一种让人麻痹的（伪）二元对立，让受众舒舒服服地理解纳粹 = 反派，从而其敌对方 = 好人。这就给文化消费者免去了自己思考善恶的负担。

科幻题材中，还是时不时出现若干对法西斯主义或法西斯分子更加尖锐、更有价值的塑造。保罗·范霍文执导的《星船伞兵》电影就变出了一台精彩的戏法。首先，片中借用政治宣传片技巧将地球联邦一步步塑造成一股正面的英雄力量，然后才渐渐让观众醒悟过来，发现自己已经被骗得为纳粹叫好。诺尔曼·斯宾拉德的《铁梦》所探索的，是英雄主义幻想叙事与法西斯主义的神话谱写为什么植根于相近的传说式历史观。此外，弗诺·文奇的《天渊》则探讨了人的自由如何被纳粹利用。

用纳粹作为代码的反派在科幻中数见不鲜，
从《星战》到伍迪·艾伦的无厘头电影 Sleeper
皆如是。然而，
这些电影是否做到了引发观众思考着类符号的真正含义呢？
（图片来自 Overture 杂志 )

不过，科幻中主流的纳粹意象，还仅仅停留在一袭戏服的层面。

考虑这样的事实：现实世界中有些摆明了身份、不以为耻反以为荣的纳粹主义者，同时也是《星战》铁粉。但我们要问的是，他们看不到自己和《星战》间的联系吗？《星战正传》三部曲试图激发的批判性思考如此有限，以至于我们完全可以想到这样的场景——有这么一种人，在选举当天荷枪实弹地游弋于投票站附近，专门恐吓来自少数族裔的选民；完事后回到家中，打开电视播放一部《星战正传》之《曙光乍现》，为银河抵抗军呐喊助威。同样，虽然“501部队”粉丝团乐于摇身一变打扮成邪恶政权的军人，但这些假扮的暴风兵绝大多数其实是良好公民，而非达斯·维德的忠实鹰犬或者帕尔帕廷大帝思想的好学生。我们无意将这两类人不恰当地等同起来，只是想指出，《星战》中对法西斯主义的刻画向来有多含糊、多贫乏，从而给观众留下的自由感悟空间只能局限于多么肤浅的层次。

这也就是为什么最近几部的《星战》作品令人耳目一新。Andor 剧集带领观众以多层次的视角深入帝国内部，探索专制制度对其参与者的诱惑。其中描绘的，有资产阶级从压迫中获利，享受虚妄的安全感；有中层干部膜拜秩序，抓紧机会向上爬；还有一些底层的劳动者，为了在屠夫刀俎下苟延残喘，不惜出卖同道中人。这么说可能会被当作是夸张了，但我们的感觉是，这部剧集所构建的，堪称是法西斯主义者的分类学——《奥杜邦学会常见纳粹观测入门》。

Andor 中出色地表现了将人视为工具的法西斯主义倾向，
以及监狱系统中的劳动剥削。
不过，还是有些粉丝不解其中意
（图片来自 [Polygon]）。

Andor 展示了《星战》宇宙中的法西斯主义者不只千人一面。因此，帝国在这样的描写下更能让人信服，其帝制政体也更加令人不寒而栗。科幻界需要更多这样的作品。虚构的故事可以发生在很远很远的星系……然而，法西斯主义其实一直没有滚到离我们足够远的地方。

(注：原标题 Space Nazis Must Die, 取自B级片 Surf Nazis Must Die, 见配图。）

本杂志编撰团队感谢雨果奖提名，并借此机会挑选了2022年度若干得意之作翻译成中文，以飨参加本年度世界科幻大会的中国友人。译者：Zoë C. Ma [https://zoe-translat.es/]

Space Nazis Must Die

Hitler’s goon squad casts a long shadow over science fiction.

 “We will fight them
on the beaches...”
(Image via IMDB.com)

It’s easy to see the outline of Nazi soldiers in the Impirial Military of Star Wars, Doctor Who’s Daleks, The Alliance in Firefly, or the Terran Federation shock troops in Blake’s 7.

Deliberate choices are made in films to offer the connotation of Nazi, often including immaculately tailored Hugo-Boss-style uniforms, Teutonic heel taps of the jackboots when marching, and Riefenstahllian visuals of parade grounds and iconic banners. Sometimes, there’s a suggestion that these fictional soldiers are motivated by some form of racist ideology, though the details of this are usually nebulous.

Let’s be clear here: Nazis are bad.

Nazis should be opposed wherever they exist: on the battlefield, at the ballot box, in the streets, and across the tenebrous depths of interstellar space. As such, depicting villains as Nazis — and therefore Nazism as villainous — has value.

But depiction without engaging with the premises of motivation is lacking. “Nazi” is such an easy signifier for evil, it often allows these narratives to avoid engaging with what evil actually means. Sure, Imperial Soldiers kill a lot of people in the Empire Strikes Back, but so do the zombies in Train to Busan, or the tornado in Twister, or the Xenomorphs in Alien. The faceless hordes provide little more than target practice for laser rays; there’s no interiority behind the mirrorshades and white perspex armour. 

Using the symbolic Nazi provides a type of worldbuilding and character shorthand for the viewer, or reader. It conveys a (false) dichotomy that provides comfort; a comfort in knowing that Nazi = bad and the other side = good. It gives the consumer a break from having to figure out bad from good for themselves.

Nazi-coded villains can be found in all kinds of SFF
from Star Wars to Planet of the Apes to Woody
Allen’s Sleeper. But do these movies invite the
viewer to consider what this iconography means?
(Image via Overture Magazine)

Science fiction’s depiction of fascism and of fascists is occasionally more pointed and valuable. Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers plays a brilliant bit of sleight of hand, first building up the Terran Federation as a heroic force through propaganda techniques, then slowly revealing to the audience that they’ve been duped into cheering for Nazis. Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream explores how heroic fantasy narratives are rooted in similar assumptions to the mythologized history that underpin fascist mythmaking. And Vernor Vinge’s Deepness In The Sky explores new ways for human freedom to be subverted by Nazis.

But the predominant conception of Nazis in science fiction is little more than a costume.

Consider: there are overt and unrepentant real-world fascists who are die-hard Star Wars fans. But we wonder – do they see the linkage? The classic trilogy encourages such minimal critical engagement that it would be easy to imagine someone spending a day at a polling station with an assault rifle intimidating BIPOC voters and then go home and watch the Special Edition of A New Hope and cheer for the Rebellion. Likewise, it’s not uncommon to see left-wing pro-democracy activists involved in

The fascist tendency to view human beings as
tools, and the prison system as a source of 
expendable labour is depicted well in Andor.
Some fans didn’t get the message. 
(Image via Polygon)

the 501st Legion and dressing up as fascist Stormtroopers on a regular basis. This is not to play any false equivalence between these two groups; but rather to point out how vague and tenuous the depiction of fascism has traditionally been in Star Wars and how this leaves the viewer free to engage with its narratives at a superficial level.

And all of this is why the most recent iteration of Star Wars is so refreshing. Andor presents a multi-layered view at the Empire that explores the seductive power that authoritarian systems can have on their participants: the capitalist class that profits from oppression and is lulled by the illusion of security; the mid-level bureaucrats who fetishize order and see the opportunity for advancement; the ground-level workers who sell out their peers just to escape the butcher’s block for another day. At the risk of hyperbole, it sometimes feels as if the series is building a taxonomy of fascists; an Audubon Guide to the Nazis In Our Midst.

Andor suggests that there is no one type of fascist in the Star Wars universe, and in doing so makes the empire more believable, and the imperial system to be far scarier. The genre needs more of this. These may be stories that are often set in a galaxy far, far, away … but fascism is never as distant as it should be.