美国国家公共电台 NPR Why Would Millions Tune Into 'Slow TV'?

Why Would Millions Tune¹ Into 'Slow TV'?

GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's the TED² Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So if you've been watching TV in Norway on a Friday night a couple of years ago and you tuned³ into the country's public broadcasting channel, you would have seen a train.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

RAZ: Actually, not a train but the view from the train's windshield. And what you see gliding⁴ down some tracks in the Norwegian countryside are these snow-covered hills flowing by, a low yellow sun flickering⁵ in and out of the trees, and the tracks stretching on and on right in front of you.

THOMAS HELLUM: We mounted one camera in front, constantly filming what you will see as an engine driver.

RAZ: Thomas Hellum produced this video.

HELLUM: And we had two cameras pointing, one to the left, one to the right, to see the view.

RAZ: Thomas and his team edited those three camera views into a single widescreen shot that's weirdly⁶ transfixing to watch and kind of peaceful.

HELLUM: Like you were sitting in a glass bubble in front of the train.

RAZ: If you wanted to, you could've watched this video shot from the front of this train traveling from the city of Bergen, Norway, to the capital, Oslo, for seven hours.

HELLUM: Seven hours and 14 minutes.

RAZ: Wow.

HELLUM: Everything is there.

RAZ: Wow.

HELLUM: The boring part is there and the good part is there.

RAZ: (Laughter) Who watched this? Like, who sat in front of the television and watched this?

HELLUM: This was - 1.2 million Norwegians...

RAZ: What?

HELLUM: ...Watched part of this program.

RAZ: (Laughter) What?

HELLUM: Yes (laughter).

RAZ: So this experiment by a Norwegian public broadcaster, NRK, was the start of what's come to be known as Slow TV. And it's become kind of a thing, which Thomas explained on the TED stage.

(SOUNBITE OF TED TALK)

HELLUM: How did we get there? We have to go back to 2009 when one of my colleagues got a great idea. Where do you get the ideas? In the lunchroom. So he said, why don't we make a radio program marking the day of the German invasion of Norway in 1940? We tell the story at the exact time during the night. Wow, brilliant idea, except this was just a couple of weeks before the invasion day.

So we sat in our lunchroom and discussed what other stories can you tell as they evolved. What other things takes real long time? So one of us came up with a train. The Bergen Railway had its 100-year anniversary that year, goes from western Norway to eastern Norway, and it uses exactly the same time as it did 40 years ago...

(LAUGHTER)

HELLUM: ...Over seven hours. And now we thought, yes, we have a brilliant program for the 2,000 trainspotters in Norway. 1.2 million Norwegians watched part of this program.

(APPLAUSE)

RAZ: Isn't that, like, a quarter of the population of Norway?

HELLUM: Yeah, it's - a fifth or a quarter of the population so it's...

RAZ: (Laughter) Oh, my God.

HELLUM: ...Because it's so - so slow, I think it's like when you - if you really stretch the time a bit and go deep into something, it gets more and more interesting the deeper you get into it.

RAZ: And the network Thomas works for - NRK - has gone on to produce more Slow TV, like for "National Firewood Night."

HELLUM: Eight hours of a burning fireplace.

RAZ: A show all about fishing...

HELLUM: Salmon⁷ fishing.

RAZ: A big deal in Norway.

HELLUM: That was 18 hours.

RAZ: Just 18 hours of...

HELLUM: Just fishing.

RAZ: ...People fishing?

HELLUM: It took three hours before we got the first fish.

RAZ: Three hours before the first fish was caught (laughter)?

HELLUM: (Laughter).

RAZ: They've done knitting...

HELLUM: For almost nine hours.

RAZ: ...For "National Knitting Night..."

HELLUM: Yes (laughter).

RAZ: ...A cover-to-cover performance of a book of Norwegian hymns⁸...

HELLUM: For 60 hours.

RAZ: ...And most ambitiously, a boat cruise along a famous Norwegian shipping⁹ route.

HELLUM: Took five and a half days.

RAZ: So no interruptions? No, like, late-breaking news, nothing?

HELLUM: No, they...

RAZ: ...Five and a half days?

HELLUM: ...Put the news away. They put everything else away and gave us the channel for five and a half.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HURTIGRUTEN COASTAL¹⁰ CRUISE")

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Cheering).

RAZ: Watching that boat leave the harbor...

(SOUNDBITE OF FOG HORN)

RAZ: ...And then sail for hours and hours and hours, it's hard to remember that even though this is called slow TV, you're not watching something slow. You're watching something real, something happening exactly as it did.

HELLUM: And we are living in times when coherent stories and context is somehow exotic. People are longing¹¹ for some kind of connection or an unbroken story.

RAZ: So today on the show, slowing down, a social scientist who says doing it can give you more original ideas, a story about the lost art of letter writing and even a master procrastinator¹², all with ideas about why taking it slow is hard but important for all of us.

HELLUM: People ask me about Slow TV. They ask could this be done elsewhere in the world, or are Norwegians particularly crazy? And I don't think we are. I think we have, with the slow TV, we have done something that reacts to a need among people. Trying to tell a story in full length, it can be a window to the world. And if you go on a train journey, if you go on a boat journey, you experience in the same slow way. And that's made me appreciate slowness because it gives the viewer a possibility to take back some of the control.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Foreign language spoken).

RAZ: You can watch all of Thomas Hellum's TED Talk at ted.com. And in answer to whether slow TV is just for Norwegians - not anymore. Norwegian Slow TV is now available on Netflix. Why not take some time to check it out?

1 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

2 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

3 tuned   

adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调

参考例句：

• The resort is tuned in to the tastes of young and old alike. 这个度假胜地适合各种口味，老少皆宜。
• The instruments should be tuned up before each performance. 每次演出开始前都应将乐器调好音。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 gliding   

v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的

参考例句：

• Swans went gliding past. 天鹅滑行而过。
• The weather forecast has put a question mark against the chance of doing any gliding tomorrow. 天气预报对明天是否能举行滑翔表示怀疑。

5 flickering   

adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的

参考例句：

• The crisp autumn wind is flickering away. 清爽的秋风正在吹拂。
• The lights keep flickering. 灯光忽明忽暗。

6 weirdly   

古怪地

参考例句：

• Another special characteristic of Kweilin is its weirdly-shaped mountain grottoes. 桂林的另一特点是其形态怪异的岩洞。
• The country was weirdly transformed. 地势古怪地变了样。

7 salmon   

n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的

参考例句：

• We saw a salmon jumping in the waterfall there.我们看见一条大马哈鱼在那边瀑布中跳跃。
• Do you have any fresh salmon in at the moment?现在有新鲜大马哈鱼卖吗？

8 hymns   

n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• At first, they played the hymns and marches familiar to them. 起初他们只吹奏自己熟悉的赞美诗和进行曲。 来自英汉非文学 - 百科语料821
• I like singing hymns. 我喜欢唱圣歌。 来自辞典例句

9 shipping   

n.船运（发货，运输，乘船）

参考例句：

• We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
• There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。

10 coastal   

adj.海岸的，沿海的，沿岸的

参考例句：

• The ocean waves are slowly eating away the coastal rocks.大海的波浪慢慢地侵蚀着岸边的岩石。
• This country will fortify the coastal areas.该国将加强沿海地区的防御。

11 longing   

n.（for）渴望

参考例句：

• Hearing the tune again sent waves of longing through her.再次听到那首曲子使她胸中充满了渴望。
• His heart burned with longing for revenge.他心中燃烧着急欲复仇的怒火。

12 procrastinator   

n. 拖延者, 拖拉者, 因循者

参考例句：

• General Peckem's communications about cleanliness and procrastination made Major Major feel like a filthy procrastinator. 佩克姆将军谈到清洁和拖延的那些简报，使梅杰少校感到自己象一个邋遢的、作风拖拉的家伙。
• This is also a great help if you are a procrastinator. 如果你是一个拖拉的人，这样会对你很有帮助。