【英语科技】《孔子》不敌好莱坞？

If only Confucius had been blue, three metres tall and with a swishy tail, Chinese cinemagoers might have been more interested. Unfortunately, China's most revered philosopher – or at least his officially approved film version – is more grey than blue, his bushy beard and ambiguous aphorisms little match for the giant-bird-riding humanoids of James Cameron's film.

The high-tech, 3D Avatar has been such a hit and the plodding Confucius such a flop that China's film bureau has quietly dropped its unpopular decision to restrict showings of the US blockbuster to make way for the homegrown epic. Schoolchildren are now being bused in to watch Confucius to make up the numbers. But even the all-powerful Communist party cannot ensure they stay awake.

The critics and the online chatrooms – where Avatar has been generally lauded and Confucius lambasted – have also rebelled. Far from buying into efforts to polish Confucianism's credentials, many critics have rejected the film and questioned the validity of a two-and-a-half-millennia-old philosophy to modern-day society. Columnist Zhang Xi takes a bold line in China Daily, normally an official mouthpiece of the government,arguing that “Confucianism was generated to serve feudal rulers”. Ridiculing a local government campaign to worship Confucius, the writer adds that Confucianism has been used to “shackle people's thoughts” and render them docile.

The state-encouraged revival of Confucianism over the past decade is part of Chinese efforts to fill an ideological and ethical void. Communism, says Daniel Bell, author of China's New Confucianism, “has lost its capacity to inspire the Chinese”. After Mao Zedong's Red Guards tore down the symbols of tradition, religion and Confucianism, China was not left with much in the way of moral or ethical signposts. Deng Xiaoping's glory of getting rich has also worn a little thin, even among the minority who have attained that particular nirvana.

Most Chinese people are optimistic about the direction of China, but many are outraged at the state of public morals. Only this week, several companies were found to have mixed contaminated milk powder into other products as a way of getting rid of stock that poisoned 300,000 babies and killed at least six in 2008. Newspapers are full of charts showing the biggest bribes taken and the most corrupt officials sentenced.

Prof Bell describes the revival of Confucianism as a genuine search by civil society for a Chinese code of ethics. Minxin Pei, professor of government at the Claremont McKenna college, regards it as more of a state-directed “campaign to fill an intellectual vacuum”. On a recent discussion hosted by America's National Public Radio, he argued that Confucianism had been co-opted by a leadership that wanted to be seen as addressing social injustice, such as the wide gap between urban and rural standards of living.

There is much to appeal to the Communist party in the Confucian emphasis on social stability, hierarchy and the legitimacy of wise leaders. There is also much that is potentially subversive in Confucianism, including the idea that bad leaders can legitimately be overthrown by popular revolt. That has not stopped Beijing pouring vast resources into establishing Confucius institutes around the world which, rather like the British Council or Germany's Goethe Institute, are a way of projecting soft power.

Willy Lam, adjunct professor of China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, compares the Chinese leadership's adoption of Confucianism with that of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first prime minister, who borrowed Confucian robes to sanctify his paternalistic style of government. “This is an adulterated form of Confucianism to assure stability,” he says.

Yet the lack of interest in the Confucius film shows how difficult it is to impose an ideology on, or even recommend one to, a public with increasing access to information and ideas. Many Chinese would love to find an ethical code within their own traditions. But a state-sponsored, pick-and-mix Confucianism evidently does not fit the bill for everyone.

As with Google's threat to withdraw from China, public opinion can be torn. Nationalist anger over US arms sales to Taiwan is real. But so, among some, is disquiet at the impression that Google has been driven out of China by repressive censorship and state-sponsored hackers. Sometimes – by no means always – China's public is as susceptible to foreign soft power as to its own government's propaganda.

In Avatar, for example, many Chinese found in the story of the human pillage of the planet Pandora an allegory for the rapacious land-grab of Chinese government officials. For many, evidently, that had more relevance than pious preachings about filial piety.

At its simplest, the decision to restrict Avatar in favour of Confucius was a mis-step by authorities straining to understand – and control – public opinion. Raymond Zhou, another columnist writing in China Daily, says that even Mao failed to topple Confucius from his pedestal. China's film authorities, he argues, have done a much better job.

要是孔子皮肤是蓝色的，身高3米，长着一根甩来甩去的尾巴，中国的影迷或许会更感兴趣。可惜，这位中国最受尊崇的哲人（或至少是官方批准的荧幕形象）肤色要浅得多，他浓密的胡子和微言大义，也完全无法与詹姆斯?卡梅隆(James Cameron)影片中驾着大鸟的类人动物匹敌。

高科技的3D影片《阿凡达》(Avatar)如此火爆，而沉闷冗长的《孔子》则一败涂地，这促使中国电影局悄然作出了一个不受人欢迎的决定：限制放映美国大片，为国产史诗巨制让路。为了凑数，成批的学生被大公共拉到影院去观看《孔子》。但是，就算是无所不能的共产党，也无法确保学生们在观看过程中会一直保持清醒。

影评界和网络聊天室也一片哗然。在网络聊天室，《阿凡达》好评如潮，《孔子》被贬得一无是处。对于美化儒教背景之举，许多影评家非但不买账，还跳出来抵制这部影片，质疑2500年前的哲学对现代社会是否有用。在通常作为政府喉舌的《中国日报》(China Daily)上，专栏作家张希（音译）大胆陈词，提出“儒教的产生，是为封建统治者服务的”。作者在文中嘲讽了某地方政府的祭孔活动，并表示，儒家学说一直是“桎梏人民思想”、让民众变得温顺听话的工具。

过去十年，中国政府鼓励复兴儒学，是为了填补意识形态和伦理思想空白。《中国新儒家》(China's New Confucianism)的作者贝淡宁(Daniel Bell)表示，共产主义“已失去鼓舞中国人的能力”。在毛泽东的红卫兵摧毁了传统、宗教和儒家的象征后，中国的道德或伦理标杆已经所剩无几。随着时间的流逝，邓小平致富理念的光环也日渐黯淡，即便对于少数先富起来的人也是如此。

对于中国今后的发展方向，多数中国人都很乐观。但中国的公共道德现状也让很多人深感愤怒。就在上周，一些企业被查出产品中掺杂了毒奶粉，而这些毒奶粉正是2008年导致30万名儿童中毒、至少6名儿童死亡的那些奶粉的残余。报纸上满是各种图表，列举最大的受贿案件，以及被判刑的严重腐败官员。

贝淡宁把儒学的复兴，形容为民间在真诚寻找一种中国伦理准则。克莱蒙特-麦肯纳学院(Claremont McKenna College)政治学教授裴敏欣(Minxin Pei)则认为，儒学复兴更多的是一场政府引导的“填补思想真空的活动”。在美国公共广播电台(National Public Radio)近期主办的一次讨论会上，裴敏欣指出，儒学遭到了中国领导人的“征用”，他们希望人们认为他们是在解决社会不公，如巨大的城乡生活水平差距。

儒学强调社会稳定、等级制度和英明领导人的合法性，因此对共产党很有吸引力。但儒家文化中也有许多可能具有颠覆性的思想，比如可以通过民众起义合法推翻不好的领导人。这未能阻止中国政府投入巨大资源，在世界各地创办孔子学院。就像英国文化协会(British Council)或德国的歌德学院(Goethe Institute)一样，这是一种展现软实力的手段。

香港中文大学(Chinese University of Hong Kong)中国研究兼任教授林和立(Willy Lam)把中国领导人对儒学的借鉴，与新加坡首任总理李光耀(Lee Kuan Yew)的做法进行了比较。李光耀借用儒家的外衣，把他的家长式治理方式神圣化。“这是为了确保稳定而采用的一种掺了水的儒学。”他表示。

然而，人们对影片《孔子》缺乏兴趣，说明在一个接触信息和思想的途径越来越多的社会，要向民众强行灌输甚至是推荐一种意识形态有多么困难。许多中国人愿意在本国传统中寻找伦理准则。但是由政府发起的、经过拼凑而成的儒家文化显然并不适合所有人。

从谷歌(Google)威胁退出中国一事就能看出，舆论可以分成对立的两派。美国对台军售引发的民族主义愤怒是真实的。但谷歌是在强制审查和政府支持的黑客逼迫下被赶出中国的，这种印象也让一些人感到不安。有时候——但并非一贯如此——中国民众不光会受到本国政府宣传的影响，也容易被外国的软实力所感染。

譬如，在《阿凡达》一片中，看到人类在潘多拉星球的掠夺行径，许多中国人会联想到中国政府官员强取豪夺的征地行为。对许多人来说，这显然比宣扬孝道更加切身相关。

简而言之，限制《阿凡达》、扶持《孔子》，对竭力要理解——和控制——舆论的当局来说，是个失策。在《中国日报》上撰稿的另一位专栏作家周黎明(Raymond Zhou)表示，就连毛泽东也没能把孔子推下神坛，中国电影局干得漂亮多了。

译者/杨远