在我还没长大时，经常幻想出现在好莱坞电影里会是什么样的感觉。不过这种幻想一直都不着边际，我的职业生涯开始于学术界，在塔吉克斯坦的偏僻山区对当地婚俗进行人类学研究，后来我成了《金融时报》的记者，报道一些同样专业化的问题，如日本银行业和债务抵押债券(CDO)。
然而信贷紧缩以各种出人意料的方式改变了这个世界。不久前，索尼影视(Sony Pictures)发布了一部叫做《监守自盗》(Inside Job)的纪录片，主题就是金融危机。讲述者是以出演《谍影重重》系列电影而知名的好莱坞影星马特•戴蒙(Matt Damon)。这部影片还采访了乔治•索罗斯(George Soros)、克里斯汀•拉加德(Christine Lagarde)、保罗• 沃尔克(Paul Volcker)和鲁里埃尔•鲁比尼(Nouriel Roubini)等重要人物。此外，我还首次在电影银幕上亮相，可惜特写镜头暴露了皮肤的真相。（要提醒自己：下次上镜时要多用睫毛膏。）
虽然对马特•戴蒙可能不算意外，但对我而言无论按照什么标准，这个职业转变都十分奇特。我五年前刚开始写金融文章的时候，这个话题显得十分枯燥，专业范儿十足，因此社会主流对此视而不见。银行业激发不起好莱坞的兴趣。虽然马特•戴蒙扮演的杰森•伯恩(Jason Bourne)在剧中参与了中情局(CIA)的“绊脚石”秘密行动，对其他见不得光或账目隐秘的组织大概并不陌生，但英武如戴蒙者想必连做梦也不会想到CDOs（担保债务凭证，Collateralized Debt Obligation的缩写）。
然而现在金融业变得臭名昭著，甚至几乎有些性感。除了戴蒙在这部低成本电影中出镜以外，今年秋天还有其他几部与金融业有关的电影上映，其中包括《华尔街：金钱永不眠》(Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps )，以及讲述艾略特•斯皮策(Eliot Spitzer)与金融大鳄的斗争的《九号客户》(Client 9)。明年还有一部讲述雷曼(Lehman)破产的电影公映，华尔街传言，在剧中劳埃德•布兰克费恩(Lloyd Blankfein)将由谢顶贫嘴的丹尼•德维托(Danny DeVito )扮演，高盛(Goldman Sachs)大概不会喜欢这个安排。而杰米•戴蒙(Jamie Dimon)则会由万人迷老男人里察•基尔(Richard Gere)扮演。
金融业突然走红是一件好事吗？对我而言并非如此。上个月我参加了《监守自盗》在多伦多国际电影节(Toronto International Film Festival)上的首映礼，当时我感到深深的沮丧。我的大部分职业生涯中，有幸能够躲在镜头背后观察别人，看到自己的脸摊在30英尺的大银幕上着实让我惊愕。
但在更广的社会意义上讲，这样的电影拍摄出来我倒很激动。因为在摄制《监守自盗》背后，隐藏着对西方世界权力运作方式的重要阐述。
. . .
在过去几年，或者说自金融危机发生时开始，公众对银行家的所作所为爆发了愤怒。毕竟流行的叙述是，那些银行家穷尽各种复杂的把戏，让自己变得异常富有。这种富有牺牲了其他所有人的利益，所以人们经常想当然地认为银行家蓄意隐瞒了他们复杂的游戏。
事实上，流行的叙述只有一半正确。一些银行家的确做出了很多极端愚蠢、极不负责的举动，许多人也的确变得富有。然而这并不是因为银行家在蓄意隐瞒他们的经营活动（的确有一些人有所隐瞒），更重要的问题是，信贷泡沫堆积期间所有人都没有关注，对于金融业没有提出有力的问题。借用人类学术语，CDO代表着一个“社会沉默”的区域。所有人（包括好莱坞在内）对社会的这一区域都视而不见，所以银行家才能无所顾忌地从事隐藏在清晰视野之外的危险游戏。这并不是阴谋策划，而是因为西方社会一边把金融活动贴上了“枯燥”的标签，一边又享受着廉价的按揭贷款。
好消息是这一点正在改变——虽然程度有限。不会有人觉得马特•戴蒙“枯燥”。可惜坏消息是类似《监守自盗》的电影迟到了五年。毕竟，如果看电影的大众能够早一点关注金融业运行的原理，那些银行家可能不会变得如此疯狂。更多的镜头可能会催生更多行动，至少在一个好莱坞善于设定公共话语的世界里，能够改善监管。
在纽约市中心举办的《监守自盗》的发布会，会场酷得要死，我个人十分喜悦。但举杯庆贺时，我冷静地问了自己一个问题：21世纪还有多少其他定时炸弹被好莱坞和其他所有人所忽视，就因为它们看起来“太枯燥”而不值得注意？医药、工业、商业领域无人注意的阴暗角落里还在发生着多少事情，如果忽视就会造成新的冲击？请将答案写在明信片上，或者写一篇剧本交给索尼影视。
译者/王柯伦
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035027
When I was growing up, I often wondered how it would feel to appear in a Hollywood movie. It never seemed very likely: I have spent my career first as an academic, studying the anthropology of marriage rituals in the remote mountains of Tajikistan, and then as an FT journalist, writing about equally specialist subjects such as Japanese banking and collateralised debt obligations (CDOs).
But the credit crunch has changed the world in many surprising ways. Last week, Sony Pictures released a documentary called Inside Job, which tells the story of the financial collapse. The narrator is Matt Damon, the Hollywood star best known for the Bourne films. The film also has interviews with luminaries such as George Soros, Christine Lagarde, Paul Volcker and Nouriel Roubini. And along the way, I also make my first appearance on the silver screen, filmed in unflattering close up. (Memo to self: if I ever appear in a film again, wear more mascara.)
By any standards it is a peculiar career twist – for me, if not Matt Damon. When I first started writing about high finance five years ago, the topic seemed so utterly dull and geeky that it was ignored by the mainstream world. Banking did not get Hollywood salivating. Hunks such as Damon did not wake up dreaming of CDOs, even though as Jason Bourne he is no stranger to other opaque or off-balance-sheet entities, given his role at the black-ops arm of the CIA, Treadstone.
These days, however, finance has become so notorious that it is almost sexy. Hence Damon’s appearance in this low-budget film and the fact that several other finance-focused movies are being released this autumn, including Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Client 9 (which narrates Eliot Spitzer’s fight with high finance). Next year, a film about the Lehman collapse is also due out. According to Wall Street gossip, the role of Lloyd Blankfein will go to the balding, wise-cracking Danny DeVito (a casting that may not delight Goldman Sachs.) Jamie Dimon, however, will be played by the ultimate ageing heartthrob, Richard Gere.
Is this sudden celebrity focus on high finance a good thing? Not for my own peace of mind. Last month I went to the premiere of Inside Job at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was a deeply unnerving experience. During most of my career I have enjoyed the luxury of hiding behind the lens, watching others. Seeing my face splattered on a 30ft screen came as a shock.
But in a wider social sense, I am thrilled that films like this are now being made. For behind the making of Inside Job is a much bigger and more important point about the way that power works in the western world.
. . .
Over the past couple of years, or since the financial crisis occurred, there has been an explosion of anger about what bankers have done. After all, the popular narrative goes, those bankers have engaged in all manner of complex tricks which made them fabulously wealthy; and since this came at the expense of everyone else, it is often presumed that bankers were deliberately hiding their complex games.
In reality, that popular narrative is only half correct. Yes, some bankers did many incredibly stupid and irresponsible things. Many also became rich. But this did not happen simply because bankers were deliberately hiding their activities (though some were); instead, the bigger problem was that during the credit bubble everyone else averted their eyes, and failed to ask hard questions about finance. Those CDOs represented an area of “social silence”, as an anthropologist might say; a part of society that everyone (including Hollywood) ignored. Thus bankers were free to engage in crazy games which were essentially hidden in plain sight, concealed not by any plot but because western society had labelled this activity “dull”. And was enjoying cheap mortgages.
The good news is that this is now changing – a bit. Nobody can call Matt Damon dull. But the bad news is that films like Inside Job have come five years too late. After all, if more of the movie-watching public had started paying attention to how finance worked at an earlier stage, those bankers might not have gone so mad. More cameras might have produced more action; or, at least, better oversight in a world where Hollywood is apt to define the public discourse.
The launch party for Inside Job was held last weekend in New York, at an achingly cool downtown location, and I, for one, was delighted to cheer. But as I raised my glass, I was asking myself a sobering question: how many other time bombs exist in the 21st century world that are being ignored – by Hollywood and everyone else – because they seem too “boring” to merit attention? What else is going on unnoticed in obscure corners of medicine, industry, business that could eventually produce new shocks, if ignored? Answers, please, on a postcard; or dispatched in a film script to Sony Pictures.
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