2008：不可能实现的梦想？

Just ran across this new post by TIME’s Austin Ramzy about a recent government-sponsored Olympics survey in which Chinese people selected “another gold for Liu Xiang” over “a successful Olympics” as their greatest hope for Beijing 2008. The reigning world record holder in the 110m hurdles, Liu is arguably China’s most beloved athlete and has been subject to unbelievable 2008-related pressure ever since he took gold in Sydney in 2004. Now Chinese people appear to being saying they would rather see the Beijing Games end up in failure than see him lose. Or, to put it another way, if he loses, the Games may be considered a failure.

刚刚看见了《时代》上面Austin Ramzy的文章，里面提到，在最近的一次政府关于奥运的调查当中，人们对2008年北京奥运会最大的期待是“刘翔再得一块金牌”，甚至“举办一个成功的奥运会”都排在了它的后面。作为110米跨栏的世界记录的保持者，刘翔已经在实际上成为了中国人最喜欢的运动员，自从他在2004年的悉尼奥运会上取得了金牌以后,就受到了很多关于2008年的奥运会的压力。现在中国人民甚至看起来宁可看到北京奥运会失败也不愿意看到刘翔失败，或者我们也可以说，如果刘翔失败了，北京奥运会就失败了。

Reading Austin’s post puts me in mind of a topic I meant to mention here before I got sucked into my thesis vortex: the new “Impossible is Nothing” advertising campaign Adidas just launched in China and its excruciatingly vivid illustration of the kind of heat Chinese athletes face as the big dance approaches.

Austin的文章让我想起了一件事，在我又陷进我的论文这个漩涡之前想提一下，就是最近阿迪达斯在中国新投放的“没有不可能”系列的光告，这个广告的图片极其生动地展现了当这个盛大的舞会临近的时候，中国的热门运动员们正在面临什么。

I wouldn’t ordinarily devote space on this blog to advertising, particularly when it comes from a company that gets plenty of exposure on its own. Every so often, however, one has to suck it up and recognize that a marketing firm (in this case, TWBA) has done something truly noteworthy.

我一般不会浪费我的博客空间来做广告，尤其是给这种自己的曝光率已经足够高了的公司，但是即使这样，有时候我们也应该认真地看看，有的广告公司（在这个广告里是TWBA）真的做了一些值得一写的事情。

What’s noteworthy about the Adidas campaign, which launched late last year, is its imagery: Color shots of various Chinese athletes doing their thing with the help of–sometimes on top of–millions of their compatriots, the latter strikingly sketched in black-and-white. According to the Shanghaiist, the campaign took six months to put together. In an earlier post on the TIME China Blog, Austin mentioned seeing immense crowds on Wangfujing, Beijing’s tawdry shopping street equivalent of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, queuing up in icy weather last month for a chance to have their photos inserted into post-card versions of the ad. The campaign has attracted massive, largely adoring, attention in the PR world. The Shanghaiist and Austin also both appear to have been inspired by it.

值得一写的是阿迪达斯去年投放的这个广告的画面:很多不同的中国运动员在成千上万的同胞的帮助下——有时候甚至是踩在他们身上——做自己的运动，运动员是彩色的，和别的黑白色的中国人形成了强烈的视觉冲击。根据《上海人》的报道，这个广告花了六个月的时间来完成，在《时代》的中国博客上早一些的一篇文章中，Austin也提到上个月在王府井，这个北京的就像芝加哥的“华丽的一英里”一样俗气的商业街上，不计其数的人在冰天雪地里排着队，就是希望自己的照片能出现在这个广告的明信片版本里。这个活动吸引了广告界大量的注意力，大多是赞许的。《上海人》和Austin看起来也被这个广告打动了。

I’ll admit, the ads are breathtaking. Transcendent even. Like Apple’s legendary ad for the Macintosh during the 1984 Super Bowl. But there is also something undeniably disturbing about them, particularly in the spot (see above) featuring Olympic champion diver Hu Jia, in which people have replaced both the diving platform and the water.

我承认，这个广告很棒，甚至可是说是卓越的。就像苹果公司在1984年职业橄榄球联赛冠军赛Super Bowl中为苹果电脑那个传奇性的广告一样。但是这里也有一些让人不安的东西,尤其是在奥运会跳水冠军胡佳的那张图片中,水和跳水的跳板都由人民来代替了。

The image reminds me of a painting I once saw in a Confucian temple in Jilin that depicted a precarious human pyramid composed of thousands of Imperial exam candidates climbing on top of each other in a bid to reach the highest official position. The Adidas ad’s message for Chinese people may be unity rather than competition, but it’s no less frightening for that reason.

这张图片让我想到了我有一次在吉林的孔庙里看到的东西,描述了参加科举的考生们踩在别人的身上,形成一个危险的人肉金字塔,以争夺最高职位的画面。阿迪达斯的广告想表现中国人比起竞争性来更具有团结性，但是就算是这样这幅画也很可怕。

The socio-political and nationalist implications of the campaign are deep and textured, and I’m sure someone with better deconstructionist chops than myself will eventually have a go at those. In the meantime, I worry what the ads mean for the poor individuals at the center of them. I’m sure there isn’t a Chinese Olympic athlete alive who hasn’t spent hours alone in the dark worrying about how the country’s billion-plus will react if they fail to meet expectations. But now the nightmare is rendered for them in vivid detail and broadcast everywhere–on billboards, on their friends’ TV sets, in the subways. Sure, the people in the ads are all hopping around in exuberant anticipation of victory, but how difficult it is to imagine that same writing mass shouting in the rage of defeat?

这组广告有很深很明显的社会政治和国家主义的意味，我确定那些有更丰富的解构主义思维的人更有志于此，我同时还在为广告上正中央的可怜的人们担心。我确定在中国，没有一个活着的奥林匹克运动员没有在暗处独自长时间地担忧过如果他们没有达到大众的期望，这个国家超过十亿的人会有什么反应。但是现在，他们的恶梦被生动地细致地描述出来，并且张贴得到处都是——在广告牌上，在朋友的电视上，在地铁里，等等。当然，广告里的人们都兴高采烈地期待着他们的胜利，可是，难道我们不能很容易的联想到同样的人群因为失败而怒吼？

Athletes of that caliber probably thrive on pressure in ways mortal people don’t. Liu Xiang, at least, claims to revel in it. But certainly there must be a limit beyond which that pressure becomes counter-productive, when athletes get overloaded with it, like car engines flooded with too much gas.

虽然普通人不会，可是有能力的运动员可能会因为压力超常发挥。起码刘翔就声称很享受。但是当然这样的压力必须是有限度的，否则当运动员承受太多的时候，压力就会变成阻力，就像加了太多油的汽车引擎一样。

Of course, in a sense, that’s precisely what makes the ads so brilliant. Whether Hu Jia wins and sends the crowd into mass hysteria or loses and gets torn apart, the message is the same: There’s no way you can miss this.

当然，在某种意义上，这就是为什么这个广告如此杰出的原因。不管胡佳是赢了，让大家都陷入歇斯底里的狂欢之中，还是输了被大家撕成碎片,这个广告都传递了同样的信息：“你必须面对，别无选择。”