by Aaron Swartz
作者: Aaron Swartz
Spoilers, obviously.
显然，以下内容会有剧透
As we’ve discussed, in Batman Begins 1960s-style full employment and antipoverty programs lead to skyrocketing crime while in The Dark Knight Rises 1980s-style tough-on-crime policies and neoliberal economics lead to a revolt of the economic underclass. The films are mirror images, one about the failure of liberal policies; the other about the failure of conservative policies. In this sense, The Dark Knight is truly the final film in this nihilistic trilogy, documenting the hopelessness of anything outside that usual left-right struggle.
正如我们所讨论的，在《蝙蝠侠: 侠影之谜》(Batman Begins)中，60年代风格的充分就业和反贫困计划导致犯罪率飙升，而在《黑暗骑士崛起》(The Dark Knight Rises)中，80年代风格的严厉打击犯罪政策和新自由主义经济学导致了经济下层阶级的反抗。
这些电影就像当时情况的翻版，一部讲述自由主义政策的失败，另一部讲述保守主义政策的失败。从这个意义上说，《黑暗骑士》确实是这个虚无主义三部曲的最后一部电影，它记录了除日常左右摇摆不定外的所有绝望。
From the start, the city is torn about how to handle the Batman, who has inspired a wave of second-rate imitators. Some believe it’s wrong to be idolizing a masked vigilante, but most (including the new DA, Harvey Dent) approve of his results.
从一开始，这座城市就纠结于如何对付蝙蝠侠，他激发了一波二流的模仿者。
有些人认为盲目崇拜一个戴面具的治安维持者是错误的，但是大多数人(包括新任地方检察官哈维 · 登特)都认可蝙蝠侠带来的现状。
Dent is doing his own part to lock up the criminals, working inside the system. He’s arrested all the mob bankers (except Lau) and is now going after the gangsters themselves, starting with mob boss Maroni (who took over for mob boss Falcone). But while the prosecutions bring him a great deal of political attention, they don’t seem to achieve much in the way of concrete results — new gangsters spring up to take the place of whoever Dent arrests.
登特正在尽自己的力量把罪犯关起来通过动用自己作为检察官的权力。
他已经逮捕了所有的黑帮银行家(除了刘)，现在正在追捕黑帮分子，首先是黑帮老大马罗尼(他接替了黑帮老大法尔科内)。但是，虽然这些起诉在政治上引起了极大的关注，但似乎在取得具体成果方面并没有取得多大进展ーー新的黑帮成员涌现出来，取代了登特逮捕的那个人。
Dent decides the only way to win is to go big — really big. He arrests everyone at once, on charges that are unlikely to stick. Dent doesn’t care that he’s breaking the rules, as long as it solves the problem. He cites the Romans who suspended democracy to protect their city. (Although, as Rachel points out, they ended up losing democracy.) “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” Dent explains. He hopes to take up Batman’s mantle, but do it from inside the system.
登特决定唯一的获胜方式就是大干一场ーー真正的大干一场。他立刻逮捕了所有人，这些指控不大可能成立。
登特不在乎自己是否违反了规则，只要能解决问题就行。他引用了罗马人为了保护他们的城市而中止民主的例子。(尽管正如雷切尔指出的那样，他们最终失去了民主。)“你要么像英雄一样死去，要么活得足够长，看着自己变成恶棍,”登特解释说。他希望继承蝙蝠侠的衣钵，但是要借助自己作为检察官的权力。
But, as the mayor explains, Dent isn’t just taking on his own sense of ethics, he’s taking on the entire system: “the mob, politicians, journalists, cops — anyone whose wallet’s about to get lighter”. If he fails, both of their careers are over.
但正如市长解释的那样，登特不仅仅是在出于自己的道德感，他还在出于对整个体系的责任: “暴徒、政客、记者、警察ーー任何钱包将要变得更轻的人。”。如果他失败了，他们俩的职业生涯都完了。
Just as Dent is frustrated with the justice system, the Joker is frustrated with the criminals. He tells them they need to go big: they need to kill the Batman. He offers to do it for a sizable sum of money, which the gangsters eventually agree to. The Joker is obsessed with the homo economicus of game theory (from whence his name?): when the gangsters ask why he needs the money to kill the Batman, he explains “Like my mother used to tell me: if you’re good at something, never do it for free.”
正如登特对司法系统感到失望，小丑对罪犯也感到失望。他告诉他们，他们需要大干一场: 他们需要杀死蝙蝠侠。他提出出一大笔钱来做这件事，匪徒们最终同意了。小丑痴迷于博弈论中的理性人(理性人从何而来?) 当匪徒们问他为什么需要钱来杀蝙蝠侠时，他解释说: “就像我妈妈曾经告诉我的: 如果你擅长某件事，那就永远不要免费做。”
The film opens with the Joker hiring five men to rob a mob bank: Dopey silences the alarm, Happy shoots him and drills through the vault, Grumpy shoots him and empties the cash into duffel bags, a bus runs him over, Bozo shoots the bus driver. Finally, Bozo pulls off his mask to reveal he’s the Joker. This is a classic pirate game and, just as in the theory, the Joker gets to keep almost all the cash.
电影一开始，小丑雇佣了五个人去抢劫一家黑帮银行: Dopey关闭了警报，Happy开枪打死了Dopey，钻过了保险库，Grumpy开枪打死了Happy，把钱倒进了行李袋，一辆公交车碾过了Grumpy，Bozo开枪打死了公交车司机。最后，Bozo 揭开了自己的面具，露出了他就是小丑。这是一个经典的海盗游戏，就像游戏里那样，小丑可以拥有几乎所有的现金。
Batman eventually tries to track down the Joker by threatening the gangster Maroni. But it’s no use, as Maroni explains: “No one’s gonna tell you anything—they’re wise to your act—you got rules. The Joker, he’s got no rules. No one’s gonna cross him for you.” This is a straightforward application of game theory’s Davies-Folk theorem: the rational thing is to seem irrational so your opponents can’t count on you doing the rational thing.
蝙蝠侠最终试图通过威胁黑帮老大马罗尼来追捕小丑。但这是没有用的，正如马罗尼解释的那样: “没有人会告诉你任何事情ーー他们对你的行为很了解ーー你有规矩。小丑，他没有规则。没人会为了你背叛他。”这是博弈论的戴维斯-民间定理的一个直接应用: 理性的事物看起来是非理性的，所以你的对手不能指望你做理性的事情。
Alfred sees this quickly, because it reminds him of a story from his own past:
阿尔弗雷德很快看出了这一点，因为这让他想起了自己过去的故事:
I was in Burma. A long time ago. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders, bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. We were asked to take care of the problem, so we started looking for the stones. But after six months, we couldn’t find _anyone_ who had traded with him. … One day I found a child playing with a ruby as big as a tangerine. … __The bandit had been throwing the stones away. … Some men just want to watch the world burn.__
很久以前。我在缅甸和我的朋友们为当地政府工作。政府试图用宝石贿赂当地的部落首领来获得他们的效忠。但是他们的商队在仰光北部的森林里遭到了强盗的袭击。
政府要求我们来处理这个问题，所以我们开始寻找那些宝石。但六个月后，我们找不到任何与他交易的人。有一天，我发现一个小孩在玩一颗像橘子那么大的红宝石。强盗一直在不停的挥霍抢来的宝石。他们只想看着世界毁灭。Note the parallels. In Alfred’s story the entire status quo (including the local government and tribal leaders) is totally corrupt: the official plan is to bribe people. But the plan is defeated by someone even crazier, someone willing to steal the money but not interested in keeping it for himself.
注意两者的相似之处。在阿尔弗雷德的故事中，整个现状(包括地方政府和部落首领)是完全腐败的: 官方的计划是贿赂人民。但是这个计划被一个更疯狂的人打败了---- 一个愿意偷钱却不想为自己保管的人。
Sure enough, when the Joker finally does get his hands on the money, he merely lights it on fire.
果然，当小丑最终拿到钱的时候，他只是把它点着了。
Meanwhile, Dent’s ethical compromises begin to grow and grow. When he kidnaps one of the Joker’s thugs, he tries to threaten information out of him. This is something Batman does routinely, but Batman reminds Dent that Dent can’t get away with that sort of thing — it’d destroy his credibility as an insider.
与此同时，登特在道德上开始逐步妥协。
当他绑架了小丑的一个手下，他试图威胁那个手下说出小丑的情况。这是蝙蝠侠经常做的事情，但是蝙蝠侠提醒登特，他不能让这样的事不了了之ーー这会毁掉他作为官员的信誉。
In a climactic scene, the Batman finally confronts the Joker in the middle of the street. The Joker knows Batman lives by just one rule (“I will not be an executioner”) and encourages him to break it and kill him. But Batman can’t bring himself to do it, he swerves at a key moment and ends up smashed while the Joker survives. (Yep: the Joker has just won the game of chicken).)
在一个高潮场景中，蝙蝠侠终于在街道中央与小丑对峙。小丑知道蝙蝠侠的生活只有一条规则(“我不会成为刽子手”) ，并鼓励他打破这条规则，杀死自己。但是蝙蝠侠不能让自己这么做，他在关键时刻突然转向，结果在小丑活下来的时候撞车了。(是的: 小丑刚刚赢得了胆小鬼游戏。)
When he comes to, the Joker tells Batman that despite nominally working outside the system, he’s actually just the system’s pawn:
当他醒来时，小丑告诉蝙蝠侠，尽管名义上他活在体制之外，但实际上他只是体制的一颗棋子:
To them you’re a freak like me. They just need you right now. … But as soon as they don’t, they’ll cast you out like a leper. … Their morals, their code… it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world _allows_ them to be. You’ll see—I’ll show you…
对他们来说，你和我一样是个怪胎。他们现在需要你。但是一旦他们不再需要你，他们就会把你像麻风病人一样赶出去。... 他们的道德，他们的准则... 就是个糟糕的笑话。这些东西一遇到麻烦就被丢弃了。他们只能在这个世界允许的范围内做到最好。你会看到... 我会让你看到..。
You have these rules. And you think they’ll save you. … But the only sensible way to live in this world is _without_ rules.
你相信这些规则。你认为他们会救你。但是在这个世界上，唯一明智的生活方式就是没有规则。Gordon arrests the Joker and takes him to the major crimes unit, only to find the Joker claiming Gordon does not actually control the unit — his people actually working for mob boss Maroni. “Does it depress you, Lieutenant, to know how alone you are?” he asks (a classic principal-agent problem).
戈登逮捕了小丑，把他带到重案组，却发现小丑声称戈登实际上并没有控制这个组织ーー戈登的手下实际上为黑帮老大马罗尼工作。__“中尉，你知道自己有多孤独，是不是很沮丧?”他问道(一个典型的委托代理问题)。
The Joker has kidnapped both Dent and Rachel and set them both to blow so that Batman can only rescue one (opportunity cost). Batman goes to rescue Rachel but the Joker has switched their addresses and he actually ends up rescuing Dent1. Rachel dies and Dent loses half his face, becoming Two-Face.
小丑绑架了丹特和瑞秋，并且让他们两个都爆炸，这样蝙蝠侠只能救一个人(机会成本)。蝙蝠侠前去营救瑞秋，但小丑改变了他们的地址，最终营救了登特。瑞秋死了，登特丢了半边脸，变成了双面人。
Reese, one of Bruce Wayne’s employees goes on TV and threatens to reveal the identity of the Batman, but the Joker calls in and asks him to stop. “I had a vision,” he says. “Of a world without Batman. The mob ground out a little profit and the police tried to shut them down, one block at a time… and it was so… boring. I’ve had a change of heart.” He threatens to blow up a hospital unless someone kills Reese. (He has thus constructed a trolley problem: people must decide whether it’s better to let the 100 die or kill the 1.)
布鲁斯 · 韦恩的一个雇员里斯上了电视，威胁要揭露蝙蝠侠的身份，但是小丑打电话叫他停下来。“我有一个愿景,”他说。“一个没有蝙蝠侠的世界。暴徒们挣了一点钱，警察试图把他们一个街区一个街区地关闭... ... 这真是太... ... 无聊了。我改变主意了。”他威胁要炸掉一家医院除非有人杀了里斯。(他因此构造了一个电车难题: 人们必须决定是让100个人死去还是杀死1个人。)
At the hospital, the Joker explains things to Dent:
在医院里，小丑向登特解释了一些事情:
Do I really look like a guy with a plan, Harvey? I don’t have a plan… The mob has plans, the cops have plans. … Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I’m not a schemer, I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.
我看起来像是有计划的人吗，哈维？我没有计划... 黑帮有计划警察也有计划。马罗尼有计划。戈登有自己的计划。阴谋家们试图控制他们的世界。我不是阴谋家，我向阴谋家们展示他们控制事物的企图是多么的可悲。
It’s the schemers who put you where you are. You were a schemer. You had plans. Look where it got you. … Nobody panics when the _expected_ people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it’s all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? … It’s _fair_.
是那些阴谋家把你置于如此境地。你是个阴谋家。你有自己的计划。看看你的下场。当预期中的人被杀害时，没有人会恐慌。当事情按计划进行时，没有人会感到恐慌，即使这个计划很可怕。
如果我告诉媒体明天一个少年犯会被枪杀，或者一卡车的士兵会被炸死，没有人会感到恐慌。因为这都是计划的一部分。但是当我说一个老市长会死的时候，所有人都疯了！引入一点无政府状态，你打乱了已经建立的秩序，使得一切都变得混乱。我是混乱的代理人。你知道混乱是怎么回事吗，哈维？这个世界很公平。This pushes Dent over the edge. He starts going after everyone responsible for killing Rachel: He starts with Weurtz, who kidnapped him. Weurtz gives up Maroni, who points to Ramirez, who helps him get Gordon’s family, who naturally gets Gordon.
这就把登特推向了悬崖边缘。他开始追查每一个杀害瑞秋的人: 他从绑架他的韦尔茨开始。韦尔茨供出了马洛尼，马洛尼指向拉米雷斯，拉米雷斯帮他指向了戈登的家人，通过戈登的家人又指向了戈登。
Batman, meanwhile, is also crossing lines. In his attempt to find the Joker, he has turned every cell phone into a spy device. Even he admits this might be too much power for one man to have.
与此同时，蝙蝠侠也在越界。为了找到小丑，他把每部手机都变成了一个间谍设备。甚至他也承认，对于个人来说，这种权力可能太大了。
The Joker scares the city onto its two ferries. Once the ferries are in the middle of the water, he cuts their power and gives them both a button to blow up the other ferry, thereby constructing a prisoner’s dilemma (one boat is filled with real prisoners). The passengers discuss and vote. One of the prisoners makes a Ulysses pact and credibly commits by tossing the detonator overboard.
小丑把整个城市的人都吓上了两艘渡轮。一旦渡轮进入水中，他就切断它们的电源，给它们一个按钮来炸毁另一艘渡轮，从而构建一个囚徒困境(其中一艘船上坐满了真正的囚徒)。乘客们讨论并投票。其中一个囚犯把引爆器扔出船外，这有点像尤利西斯契约。
The Joker also took a busload of people from the hospital to the Prewitt Building where, through the window, you can see Joker’s thugs with guns holding hospital people hostage. Gordon rushes in to get the thugs, but Batman discovers the thugs are hostages and the hostages are the thugs. (The Joker is illustrating “The Market for Lemons”: if the Joker is making it easy for you to kill his henchmen, why should you believe they’re actually his henchmen?)
小丑还把一车人从医院带到了 Prewitt Building，在那里，透过窗户，你可以看到小丑手下的暴徒持枪劫持了医院的人来做人质。戈登冲进去抓暴徒，但是蝙蝠侠发现暴徒是人质，人质是暴徒。(小丑是在解释《柠檬市场》：如果小丑让你轻而易举地杀死他的追随者，你为什么要相信他们就是他的追随者呢?)
(Batman saves the hostages (dressed as thugs) and stops the SWAT team and takes out the thugs (dressed as hostages). Neither of the boats decides to blow up the other and Batman prevents the Joker from triggering the failsafe.)
(蝙蝠侠解救了人质(打扮成暴徒) ，阻止了特警队，干掉了暴徒(打扮成人质)。两艘船都没有决定炸掉对方，蝙蝠侠也阻止了小丑启动故障保险。)
He then goes to rescue Gordon, who is trying to stop Dent from killing his family. Dent explains his new philosophy:
然后他去营救戈登，戈登正试图阻止丹特杀害他的家人。丹特解释了他的新哲学:
You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time. You thought we could lead by example. You thought the rules could be bent but not break…[2](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/tdk#fn:fn1) you were wrong. The world is cruel. And the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. _Fair._
你认为在这个不正派的时代我们可以成为正派的人。你认为我们可以以身作则。你认为规则可以改变，但不能打破... 你错了。这个世界是残酷的。不带偏见的公正的说，在这个残酷的世界里，机会是唯一可以相信的。Throughout the film, we’ve seen various desperate attempts to change the system by ignoring the usual rules: Batman originally thought he could inspire change by being a cultural exemplar, but only ended up causing a bunch of kids to get themselves hurt by dressing up as him. Dent thought he could clean up the system by pushing righteously from the inside, but ended up cutting more and more ethical corners until his own personal obsessions ended up making him a monster. The Joker had by far the most interesting plan: he hoped to out-corrupt the corrupters, to take their place and give the city “a better class of criminal”.
在整部电影中，我们看到了通过忽略通常的规则来改变系统的各种绝望的尝试: 蝙蝠侠最初以为他可以通过作为一个文化模范来激发改变，但最终只是导致一群孩子因为打扮成他的样子而受伤。丹特认为他可以通过从内部理直气壮地推动整个系统，但最终却越来越偏离道德准则，直到他自己的个人执念最终把他变成了一个怪物。到目前为止，小丑有一个最有趣的计划: 他希望能超越腐败分子，取代腐败分子的位置，给这座城市“一个更好的犯罪阶层”。
And the crazy thing is that it works! At the end of the movie, the Joker is alive, the gangsters and their money launderers are mostly dead, and their money has been redistributed (albeit though the deflationary method of setting it on fire). And, as we see from the beginning of the third movie, this is a fairly stable equilibrium: with politicians no longer living in fear of the gangsters, they’re free to adopt tough anti-crime policies that keep them from rising again.3
最疯狂的是，小丑的计划成功了！在电影的最后，小丑还活着，匪徒和他们的洗钱者大多已经死了，他们的钱已经被重新分配(尽管是以通货紧缩的方式让钱不值钱)。而且，正如我们从第三部电影的开头看到的，这是一个相当稳定的平衡: 政客们不再生活在对黑帮的恐惧之中，他们可以随意地采取严厉的反犯罪政策，阻止黑帮再次崛起。
The movie concludes by emphasizing that Batman must become the villain, but as usual it never stops to notice that the Joker is actually the hero. But even though his various games only have one innocent casualty, he’s much too crazy to be a viable role model for Batman. His inspired chaos destroys the criminals, but it also terrorizes the population. Thanks to Batman, society doesn’t devolve into a self-interested war of all-against-all, as he apparently expects it to, but that doesn’t mean anyone enjoys the trials.
电影的结尾强调蝙蝠侠必须成为反派，但是像往常一样，它无法阻止人们认为小丑实际上才是那个英雄。但是，尽管他的各种游戏只有一个无辜的伤亡，他太疯狂了，不可能成为蝙蝠侠那样的现实中的榜样。他激发的混乱摧毁了罪犯，但它也恐吓大众。多亏了蝙蝠侠，社会并没有像他预期的那样，退化成一场自私自利的所有人相互对抗的战争，但这并不意味着每个人都能经受住这种考验。
Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it’s no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide.
因此，韦恩大师没有解决办法了，难怪这个系列以他在剧中的自杀而告终。
I’m actually not sure which game this is supposed to be. It’s a bit like the poisoned goblets game in _The Princess Bride_, but I can’t find a name for it in the literature. ↩
实际上我不确定这应该是哪个游戏。这有点像《公主新娘》中的毒酒杯游戏，但我在这部作品中没找到它的名字。
These two sentences are in the shooting script but got cut from the film version: “You thought we could lead by example. You thought the rules could be bent but not break…” ↩
这两句话出现在剧本中，但在电影版中被删除了: “你认为我们可以以身作则。你认为规则可以改变，但不能打破... ...”
This also explains why the law-and-order crowd seems so miffed about succeeding — it wasn’t actually their policies that succeeded. ↩
这也解释了为什么维护法律和秩序的人们看起来对成功如此恼火ーー成功的事实上并不是他们的政策。
November 1, 2012
2012年11月1日