美国国家公共电台 NPR--Director Noah Baumbach tackles misinformation in 'White Noise,' wryly

Director Noah Baumbach tackles misinformation in 'White Noise,' wryly¹

Transcript²

As theaters went dark and the world ground to a halt in 2020, filmmaker Noah Baumbach picked up a novel that spoke³ of a different apocalyptic⁴ tragedy. Baumbach hadn't read Don DeLillo's White Noise since it came out in 1985, when he was a teenager.

"It had a big effect on me at the time," Baumbach told NPR's Steven Inskeep about the film, now out in U.S. and U.K. theaters. "I kept stopping and reading it aloud to Greta (Gerwig, his partner) or to anybody who would listen and just saying, I can't believe how much this book speaks really to all time... then it coincided with the pandemic. And that's really when I thought, well, maybe I'll try to see if there's a movie here."

Baumbach's eponymous film, like DeLillo's novel, is a highly stylized, preposterous⁵ satire⁶ of consumerism and mass media that also manages to parody⁷ academia, reflect on family life ("the cradle of misinformation") and middle age, and wrap it all in an extravagant⁸ disaster plot.

"I kept turning on the TV news and seeing toxic⁹ spills and it occurred to me that people regard these events not as events in the real world, but as television — pure television," DeLillo himself told NPR at the time that White Noise was published. The novel won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

In the film, the supermarket doubles as a kind of candy-colored temple. Don Cheadle's character, Professor Murray Siskind, extols¹⁰ its merits as a "gateway¹¹" between death and spiritual rebirth.

"Look how bright. Look how full of psychic¹² data, waves and radiation. All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of the spectrum¹³, all the voices and sounds, all the code words and ceremonial phrases," he says. "You just have to know how to decipher it."

Jack¹⁴ Gladney (played by Adam Driver), the head of the Hitler studies department at a small liberal arts college, narrates¹⁵ the film. Gladney is also behind the very concept of Hitler studies. He lives a comfortable life in a Midwestern suburb with his fourth wife, Babette (played by Gerwig) and four children from their collective six previous marriages. That comfort is upended by a menacing cloud — or airborne toxic event, as it's called in the film.

With its $100 million budget, White Noise is the most ambitious project to date for Baumbach, whose breakout film was The Squid and the Whale (2005) and whose last film was the critically acclaimed¹⁶ Marriage Story (2019).

Baumbach describes the movie, shot on film, as a "period piece." The costumes and cars very much belong to the 1980s and it features a complex car chase (with a flying family station wagon) and a fully¹⁷ staged train crash.

"It was a rig but it was pulled into the train and timed out and everything. We did a lot of the detail work separately of the canisters hitting each other," Baumbach said. "It does have a lot of visual effects in it as well, but they're designed to work with the same aesthetic¹⁸."

Baumbach describes the eeriness¹⁹ that permeates²⁰ his film as "this sort of otherness, this other reality that's like floating above the ground" — in short, the same sort of strangeness that accompanied pandemic era lockdowns.

"We all recognize when we have those times in our lives, you know, when we we we acknowledge that the world feels very strange to us. It's like things are familiar and not familiar," Baumbach said.

In one scene, Gladney gives a lecture on the crowds that listened to Hitler, and in the process inadvertently reveals his preoccupation with death.

"To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone," he tells assembled students and professors, his black cape²¹ spread out like some bird of doom²². The scene is superimposed with images of the crash between a tractor-trailer carrying toxic waste and a train, which triggers the catastrophe²³.

Throughout the story there are competing narratives²⁴ for what is or isn't "the truth." The Gladneys constantly speaking over one another combines with the incessant²⁵ drone of the television and radio to create a cacophony²⁶ of sound that sometimes becomes a symphony.

"That was even my direction to the kids. I said, you're like a radio that was turned down at the beginning of the movie and then you're just on for the whole time. So even even when you're off camera, just imagine you're still having this conversation," Baumbach said. "I saw the family in this movie as a kind of microcosm of the culture at large, which is how we both contribute to and also collaborate²⁷ in false information. This story opens it up to the culture at large, this notion of fake news that we've been living with for the last few years."

1 wryly   

adv. 挖苦地，嘲弄地

参考例句：

• Molly smiled rather wryly and said nothing. 莫莉苦笑着，一句话也没说。
• He smiled wryly, then closed his eyes and gnawed his lips. 他狞笑一声，就闭了眼睛，咬着嘴唇。 来自子夜部分

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

4 apocalyptic   

adj.预示灾祸的，启示的

参考例句：

• The air is chill and stagnant,the language apocalyptic.空气寒冷而污浊，语言则是《启示录》式的。
• Parts of the ocean there look just absolutely apocalyptic.海洋的很多区域看上去完全像是世界末日。

5 preposterous   

adj.荒谬的，可笑的

参考例句：

• The whole idea was preposterous.整个想法都荒唐透顶。
• It would be preposterous to shovel coal with a teaspoon.用茶匙铲煤是荒谬的。

6 satire   

n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品

参考例句：

• The movie is a clever satire on the advertising industry.那部影片是关于广告业的一部巧妙的讽刺作品。
• Satire is often a form of protest against injustice.讽刺往往是一种对不公正的抗议形式。

7 parody   

n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文

参考例句：

• The parody was just a form of teasing.那个拙劣的模仿只是一种揶揄。
• North Korea looks like a grotesque parody of Mao's centrally controlled China,precisely the sort of system that Beijing has left behind.朝鲜看上去像是毛时代中央集权的中国的怪诞模仿，其体制恰恰是北京方面已经抛弃的。

8 extravagant   

adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的

参考例句：

• They tried to please him with fulsome compliments and extravagant gifts.他们想用溢美之词和奢华的礼品来取悦他。
• He is extravagant in behaviour.他行为放肆。

9 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

10 extols   

v.赞颂，赞扬，赞美( extol的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Everyone extols his noble qualities. 人人称颂他的崇高品德。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Dance Art is an art in which sentiment enlightens genuineness, extols benevolence, and arouses beauty. 舞蹈艺术是以情启真、以情扬善、以情唤美的艺术。 来自互联网

11 gateway   

n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法

参考例句：

• Hard work is the gateway to success.努力工作是通往成功之路。
• A man collected tolls at the gateway.一个人在大门口收通行费。

12 psychic   

n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的

参考例句：

• Some people are said to have psychic powers.据说有些人有通灵的能力。
• She claims to be psychic and to be able to foretell the future.她自称有特异功能，能预知未来。

13 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

14 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

15 narrates   

v.故事( narrate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• It narrates the unconstitutional acts of James II. 它历数了詹姆斯二世的违法行为。 来自辞典例句
• Chapter three narrates the economy activity which Jew return the Occident. 第三章讲述了犹太人重返西欧后的经济活动。 来自互联网

16 acclaimed   

adj.受人欢迎的

参考例句：

• They acclaimed him as the best writer of the year. 他们称赞他为当年的最佳作者。
• Confuscius is acclaimed as a great thinker. 孔子被赞誉为伟大的思想家。

17 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

18 aesthetic   

adj.美学的，审美的，有美感

参考例句：

• My aesthetic standards are quite different from his.我的审美标准与他的大不相同。
• The professor advanced a new aesthetic theory.那位教授提出了新的美学理论。

19 eeriness   

n.怪诞，胆怯，阴森

参考例句：

20 permeates   

弥漫( permeate的第三人称单数 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透

参考例句：

• Studies show that water vapor quickly permeates plastic packaging material. 研究证明水蒸汽能迅速渗入塑料封装材料。
• Democracy permeates the whole country. 民主主义（的思想）普及全国。

21 cape   

n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风

参考例句：

• I long for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope.我渴望到好望角去旅行。
• She was wearing a cape over her dress.她在外套上披着一件披肩。

22 doom   

n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定

参考例句：

• The report on our economic situation is full of doom and gloom.这份关于我们经济状况的报告充满了令人绝望和沮丧的调子。
• The dictator met his doom after ten years of rule.独裁者统治了十年终于完蛋了。

23 catastrophe   

n.大灾难，大祸

参考例句：

• I owe it to you that I survived the catastrophe.亏得你我才大难不死。
• This is a catastrophe beyond human control.这是一场人类无法控制的灾难。

24 narratives   

记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分

参考例句：

• Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning. 结婚一向是许多小说的终点，然而也是一个伟大的开始。
• This is one of the narratives that children are fond of. 这是孩子们喜欢的故事之一。

25 incessant   

adj.不停的，连续的

参考例句：

• We have had incessant snowfall since yesterday afternoon.从昨天下午开始就持续不断地下雪。
• She is tired of his incessant demands for affection.她厌倦了他对感情的不断索取。

26 cacophony   

n.刺耳的声音

参考例句：

• All around was bubbling a cacophony of voices.周围人声嘈杂。
• The drivers behind him honked,and the cacophony grew louder.后面的司机还在按喇叭，且那刺耳的声音越来越大。

27 collaborate   

vi.协作，合作；协调

参考例句：

• The work gets done more quickly when we collaborate.我们一旦合作，工作做起来就更快了。
• I would ask you to collaborate with us in this work.我们愿意请你们在这项工作中和我们合作。