紐時賞析／肉毒桿菌素的藝術

The Art of Botox

肉毒桿菌素的藝術

Last spring, Botox rolled out a series of ads directed by filmmaker Errol Morris. Styled like very short documentary films, the ads featured Botox users — a widower, a single mother, a drag performer — telling touching, sad, ultimately redemptive anecdotes. In 2019, a typical Botox commercial pitched the product as a girlboss tonic that could infuse fantasy women with pluck as they slunk from boardroom to bar stool. Now it was being recast as a kind of truth serum, a tool of deep personal introspection. The mother gazed upon nostalgic photographs. The widower recalled his husband’s eyes and wept. Though the subjects did not mention Botox, the camera regarded their restful foreheads with sympathy and implied that the procedure had a profound therapeutic effect. The tagline was: “Still you.”

今年春天，「保妥適」肉毒桿菌素推出一系列由電影製作人埃洛．莫里斯執導的廣告。這些廣告就像非常短的紀錄片，由鰥居者、單親媽媽和變裝皇后三位保妥適使用者，訴說動人、悲傷和最終具救贖力量的故事。2019年，一支典型的保妥適廣告把產品描繪成女強人的補品，能讓夢幻女子從董事會會議室溜到酒吧高腳凳時，賦予她們勇氣。現在保妥適被重新定位成一種能讓人吐露真相的藥，一種個人深刻自省的工具。這名母親凝視著舊照片。鰥居者回想起他丈夫的眼神而落淚。雖然這三人沒提到保妥適，但鏡頭拍攝她們平滑的額頭時帶著讚許意味，暗示這個療程有深刻療效。廣告語寫著「你還是你」（譯註：此為雙關語，也有「撫平你」的意思）。

Botulinum toxin is a poison that by some macabre coincidence both causes botulism and cures wrinkles. When injected at low doses into a crinkled forehead, it blocks nerve signals to muscles and smooths the skin atop them.  Though there are several competing brands, Botox is the Kleenex of the category. It presents the kind of bargain one might strike with a nefarious sea witch: She will grant you eternal youth, but at the price of being able to move your face.

肉毒桿菌素是一種毒素，可怕的巧合是，它既能讓人肉毒桿菌中毒，又能除皺，低劑量注射到有皺紋的額頭上，能阻斷給肌肉的神經訊號，因而撫平肌肉上方的皮膚。雖然市面上有幾種競爭品牌，但保妥適是其中佼佼者。這種藥提供你可能和邪惡海巫達成的那類交易：她能讓你青春永駐，但價格之高足以讓你動容。

There was a moment when this trend was seen as a bad thing — for acting, for society, and especially, for women.  A Botoxed face used to strike viewers as an uncanny spectacle, but uncanny spectacles fuel reality television and internet culture, and thanks to those ascendant forms, Botox has accumulated a gloss of campy pageantry, helping disarm cultural fears around its use.

以前有一陣子，用肉毒桿菌素除皺的趨勢被視為是不良風氣，對演藝人員、社會，尤其是女性都如此。打過肉毒桿菌素的臉曾經被觀眾認為是不自然的奇觀，但這種奇觀助長了電視實境秀和網路文化，多虧了這些日益興盛的類型，肉毒桿菌素累積了一種搞笑虛飾的光環，有助於消減使用上的文化恐懼。

Botox once suggested vanity, delusion and self-consciousness, but now it has fresh associations: with confidence, resilience, even authenticity, as the idea of “having work done” has come to be seen as a legitimate form of work.

肉毒桿菌素一度意味虛榮、錯覺和侷促不安，但現在給人新的聯想：自信、堅韌，甚至真實可靠，因為「進廠維修」已經被認為是正經事。

It strikes me that wrinkles on women are not only stigmatized because they make them seem old but because they make them look angry, sad, surprised, distressed — they make them look alive. Even as Botox has become a way station for women at risk of being catapulted from Hollywood, it presents as a vivid reminder of what has been lost. Female movie stars are no longer buried after a certain age; instead they are embalmed. The new Botox tagline is “Still you,” but it could be “Still here.”

在我看來，女人皺紋被汙名化的原因，不只是顯老，還會讓女人看似在生氣、難過、驚訝和焦慮，也就是讓女人看來活生生。即使肉毒桿菌素成了可能被逐出好萊塢女人的停靠站，仍鮮明地顯示了失落的東西。女性影星過了某個年紀不再被埋葬，而是做防腐處理。新的保妥適廣告語是「你還是你」，但其實可能是「你還在這裡」。

文／Amanda Hess 譯／李京倫