Unit 5 The Tapestry of Friendship课文翻译综合教程四

Unit 5

The Tapestry of Friendship

Ellen Goodman

1 It was, in many ways, a slight movie. Nothing actually happened. There was

no big-budget chase scene, no bloody shoot-out. The story ended without any cosmic conclusions.

2 Yet she found Claudia Weill’s film Girlfriend gentle and affecting. Slowly, it

panned across the tapestry of friendship – showing its fragility, its resiliency, its role as the connecting tissue between the lives of two young women.

3 When it was over, she thought about the movies she had seen this year –

Julia，The Turning Point and now Girlfriends. It seemed that the peculiar eye, the social lens of the cinema, had drastically shifted its focus. Suddenly the Male Buddy movies had been replaced by the Female Friendship flicks.

4 This wasn’t just another binge of trendiness, but a kind of cinema vérité. For

once the movies were reflecting a shift, not just from men to women but from one definition of friendship to another.

5 Across millions of miles of celluloid, the ideal of friendship had always been

male – a world of sidekicks and ―partners‖ of Butch Cassidys and Sundance Kids. There had been something almost atavistic about these visions of attachments – as if producers culled their plots from some pop anthropology book on male bonding. Movies portrayed the idea that only men, those direct descendants of hunters and Hemingways, inherited a primal capacity for friendship. In contrast, they portrayed women picking on each other, the way they once picked berries.

6 Well, that duality must have been mortally wounded in some shootout at the

You’re OK, I’m OK Corral. Now, on the screen, they were at least aware of the subtle distinction between men and women as buddies and friends.

7 About 150 years ago, Coleridge had written, ―A woman’s friendship borders

more closely on love than man’s. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly acts, whilst women ask fewer proofs and more signs and expressions of attachment.‖

8 Well, she thought, on the whole, men had buddies, while women had friends.

Buddies bonded, but friends loved. Buddies faced adversity together, but friends faced each other. There was something palpably different in the way they spent their time. Buddies seemed to ―do‖ things together; friends simply ―were‖ together.

9 Buddies came linked, like accessories, to one activity or another. People have

golf buddies and business buddies, college buddies and club buddies. Men often keep their buddies in these categories, while women keep a special category for friends.

10 A man once told her that men weren’t real buddies until they had been

―through the wars‖ together – corporate or athletic or military. They had to soldier together, he said. Women, on the other hand, didn’t count themselves as friends until they had shared three loathsome confidences.

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12 Buddies hang tough together; friends hang onto each other. It probably had something to do with pride. You don’t show off to a friend;

you show need. Buddies try to keep the worst from each other; friends confess it. 13 A friend of hers once telephoned her lover, just to find out if he was home. She

hung up without a hello when he picked up the phone. Later, wretched with embarrassment, the friend moaned, ―Can you believe me? A thirty-five-year-old lawyer, making a chicken call?‖ Together they laughed and made it better.

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15 Buddies seek approval. But friends seek acceptance. She knew so many men who had been trained in restraint, afraid of each

other’s judgment or awkward with each other’s affection. She wasn’t sure which. Like buddies in the movies, they would die for each other, but never hug each other. 16 She had reread Babbitt recently, that extraordinary catalogue of male

grievances. The only relationship that gave meaning to the claustrophobic life of George Babbitt had been with Paul Riesling. But not once in the tragedy of their lives had one been able to say to the other: You make a difference.

17 Even now men shocked her at times with their description of friendship. Does

this one have a best friend? ―Why, of course, we see each other every February.‖ Does that one call his most intimate pal long distance? ―Why, certainly, whenever there’s a real reason.‖ Do those two old chums ever have dinner together? ―You mean alone? Without our wives?‖

18 Yet, things were changing. The ideal of intimacy wasn’t this parallel playmate,

this teammate, this trenchmate. Not even in Hollywood. In the double standard of friendship, for once the female version was becoming accepted as the general ideal. 19 After all, a buddy is a fine life-companion. But one’s friends, as Santayana

once wrote, ―are that part of the race with which one can be human.‖

友谊面面观

埃伦·古德曼

1 从多方面看来，这是一部不足挂齿的小制作电影。平淡无奇。没有大成本制作的追逐画面，没有血腥的枪战。故事结尾也没得出什么意味深长的结论。

2 然而她还是觉得克劳迪娅·韦尔的电影《女朋友》温婉动人。它缓缓地向我们展现了友谊的全貌——它的脆弱、生命力，以及它连接两个年轻女子人生的纽带作用。

3 电影放完了，她回想起这一年看过的几部电影——《茱莉亚》、《转折点》，还有现在这部《女朋友》。似乎电影作品镜头这一特殊视角已经大大改变了聚焦对象。一转眼哥俩好的电影已经被反映闺蜜友谊的影片所替代。

4 这并不仅仅是另一场时尚狂欢，而是一种实录电影的潮流。就这一次电影反映一种转向，不只是从男性转向女性，而是从友谊的一种定义转为另一种定义。

5 纵观数百万英里长的电影胶片，友谊的理想主角总是男性——满世界都是类似布奇·卡西迪斯及其铁哥们山丹思·基德斯这样的密友、同伴的故事。这些形影不离的银幕形象似乎是来自远古社会——故事情节好像是制片人从诠释男性间密切关系的人类学通俗读物里选取出来似的。影片诠释了一个观点，即只有男性——那些猎人和海明威式硬汉的传人——才继承了对于友谊的原始的能力。相反，女人们总是被描绘成互相挑刺，就好像她们从前挑选浆果那样。

6 哦，那种两面性在OK牧场枪战中一定已经受了致命的枪伤了。现在，在银幕上，他们至少意识到男人作为哥们、女人作为闺蜜的微妙区别。

7 大约150年前，柯勒律治写道：―比起男性，女性的友谊更接近爱恋。男性之间相互影响体现在崇高或友善的举动中，而女性不需要这么多实实在在的例证，却需要更多依恋之情的外在表露。‖

8 好吧，她想，总体来说，男人有哥们，女人有闺蜜。哥们相互关联，闺蜜互相喜爱。哥们共同面对逆境，但闺蜜直面彼此。显然，两者共度时光的方式互不相同。哥们似乎一起―做‖事，闺蜜只不过―在‖一起。

9 哥们像同伙一样靠各种活动联系在一起。人们有一起打高尔夫的哥们，有商场上的哥们，大学时的哥们和俱乐部的哥们。男人经常按这些类别给哥们归类，而女人们把闺蜜专门归类。

10 一个男人曾经告诉她男人不会成为真正的哥们，除非他们曾经―并肩作战‖——在商场上，运动场上，或是战场上。他说，他们得在一起当兵打仗才成。另一方面，女人们除非共享了3个讨人嫌的秘密之后才视彼此为闺蜜。

11 哥们在一起共渡难关，闺蜜则相互依赖。

12 或许这和自尊有点关系。对一个闺蜜，你不会炫耀，你只会告之你的需要。哥们互相把最糟糕的情况藏着掖着，闺蜜会互相倾诉痛苦。

13 她一个闺蜜有一次给情人打电话，就是想确认他是否在家。他刚把电话接起来她就挂了。

事后，这个朋友觉得很尴尬，哀叹道：―你信吗？一个35岁的律师，打这种偷偷摸摸的电话？‖她们一起哈哈大笑，这样感觉好一些了。

14 哥们追求相互认同，而闺蜜追求互相接受。

15 她认识许多男人，这些人在自我克制方面训练有素。他们害怕来自彼此的意见，若彼此喜爱也很不自在。她不清楚是哪种情况。就像电影中的哥们，他们愿意为对方献出生命，却从来不彼此拥抱。

16 最近她重读了《巴比特》，这是关于男人难处的非凡作品。乔治·巴比特过着幽闭恐惧症的生活，唯一令他这种生活有意义的人际关系来自保罗·里斯令。然而在他们悲剧性的生活中没有任何一个人对对方说过一次这样的话：有了你，我的生活与过去不一样。

17 即便现在她有时还是会对男人关于友谊的描述感到震惊。这个人有最要好的朋友吗？―怎么啦，当然啦，我们每年2月都会见面。‖那个人会给他最好的朋友打长途电话吗？―怎么啦，当然啦，每次真的有事的话就会打啊。‖这两个老朋友真的在一起吃过饭吗？―你意思就两个人？不带上各自的老婆？‖

18 然而，情况正发生着变化。亲密的理想状态不是这种平行式的玩伴、队友、战友关系。即便是好莱坞影片也不是。在友谊的双重标准下，就这一次这种女性版本的友谊作为普遍理想正在被人们接受。

19 哥们毕竟是很好的终身伙伴。但正如桑塔雅那曾经写下的那样，人们的朋友―是种族中与之结交后人们就可成其为人的那部分人‖。

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