解码乔布斯，纪录片勾画英雄还是恶棍？

Decoding Steve Jobs, in Life and on Film
解码乔布斯，纪录片勾画英雄还是恶棍？

Nearly four years after Steve Jobs died, a debate is still raging.

在史蒂夫・乔布斯去世将近四年后，一场有关他的辩论仍在激烈进行着。

Does Jobs deserve to be so admired?

乔布斯值得被如此赞扬吗？

That’s the underlying question that emerged in a new documentary released over the weekend by Alex Gibney in “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.” It is also a question that lies beneath the surface of the coming biopic by Aaron Sorkin, “Steve Jobs,” which had its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend and will open on Oct. 9.

在亚历克斯・吉布尼(Alex Gibney)执导、上周末上映的纪录片《斯蒂夫・乔布斯：机器人生》(Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine)中，这是一个暗含的主题。它还深藏在艾伦・索尔金(Aaron Sorkin)即将上映的传记片《史蒂夫・乔布斯》(Steve Jobs)中，该片已于上周末在特柳赖德电影节(Telluride Film Festival)上举行首映，并将于10月9日正式上映。

Steve Jobs was a complicated leader: brilliantly creative and obsessive about details yet so maniacal that he could make his colleagues cry and, yes, he created his own truth at times. (That’s the polite way of putting it.)

史蒂夫・乔布斯是个复杂的领导者：他极富创造力，痴迷于细节雕琢，但又如此疯狂，会把同事惹哭，而且，没错，有时他会自创真相。（这是比较委婉的说法。）

Mr. Gibney, who directed the recent HBO documentary “Going Clear” about Scientology, explained what appeared to be his rationale for pursuing a documentary about Jobs in a voice-over at the beginning of the film.

最近还为HBO导演了有关山达基教的纪录片《拨开迷雾》(Going Clear)的吉布尼，似乎通过《斯蒂夫・乔布斯：机器人生》开头的一段旁白，解释了他拍摄这样一部有关乔布斯的纪录片的根本原因。

“When Steve Jobs died, I was mystified,” Mr. Gibney said, as he showed images of people all over the world mourning his loss. “What accounted for the grief of millions of people who didn’t know him? I’d seen it with John Lennon and Martin Luther King, but Steve Jobs wasn’t a singer or a civil rights leader.” He added: “The grief for Jobs seemed to go beyond the products he left behind. We mourned the man himself. But why?”

“乔布斯去世的时候，我感到很困惑，”吉布尼的声音伴随着全世界的人们为乔布斯的去世而哀悼的画面。“为什么会有成千上万和他素不相识的人为此悲伤？约翰・列侬(John Lennon)和马丁・路德・金(Martin Luther King)去世时，我也见到过这种情况，但史蒂夫・乔布斯不是歌手，也不是民权运动领袖。”他还说：“人们悲伤似乎不仅仅是由于他给后世留下的产品。我们悼念的是这个人本身。但为什么呢？”

Mr. Gibney, a talented and persuasive filmmaker, uses the next two hours to seemingly make the case that Jobs, the man, doesn’t deserve the iconic status he attained. Through a series of interviews ― including one with the mother of a child Jobs denied for years was his own ― Mr. Gibney paints Jobs as “ruthless, deceitful and cruel.” Mr. Gibney goes through a laundry list of Jobs’s sins: backdated stock options, factory conditions in China and secret agreements with Silicon Valley rivals to prevent employee-poaching.

接下来的两个小时，颇具才能和说服力的吉布尼似乎在纪录片中证明，乔布斯本人与他所获得的偶像地位并不相称。通过对一系列人的采访，吉布尼将乔布斯塑造成一个“无情、诡诈且残忍”的人，受访者包括乔布斯其中一个孩子的母亲，他曾多年拒绝认这个孩子。吉布尼历数乔布斯的一系列罪过：股票期权回溯，中国代工厂状况，为防止被挖人与硅谷竞争对手达成的秘密协议。

But all these efforts to paint Jobs as a hero or a villain miss a larger truth: He can be both and still be worthy of acclaim. More than 700 million of his iPhones have been sold around the world, and a new version is to be announced on Wednesday. Hundreds of millions of people spend more time with their iPhones ― and all the copycat and derivative devices ― than just about anything else on any given day. He managed to create an emotional attachment between humans and a device.

但所有将乔布斯勾画成英雄或恶棍的努力，都忽略了一个更大的事实：他可以二者皆是，而依然值得被称颂。他打造的iPhone在全世界卖出了7亿多部，本周三将发布一个最新款。每时每刻都有成千上万的人在使用自己的iPhone――以及其他模仿iPhone的手机和衍生设备，比花在其他任何东西上的时间都多。他成功地在人和设备之间制造了一种情感联系。

You don’t have to be an “Apploonian” to appreciate that he has an authentic claim on changing the world during this last generation.

在过去几十年，乔布斯有着改变世界的真诚意愿，这一点即便不是“苹果信众”(Apploonian)也能看到。

Not surprisingly, most people who have had a huge influence on the world have been flawed, some deeply so. Most people are flawed in one way or another.

不足为奇的是，大多数曾对世界产生巨大影响的人都有瑕疵，有些人问题还很大。而且我们大多数人也都有着这样或那样的问题。

Mr. Gibney held out John Lennon and Martin Luther King Jr. as somehow more worthy than Jobs of the wave of grief that took place after they died. But both Lennon and King were terribly troubled, too.

吉布尼列举约翰・列侬和马丁・路德・金作为例子，认为他们从某种角度比乔布斯更值得在去世后受到如潮的悼念。但列侬和金也都是有很大缺陷的人。

Lennon’s son Julian told The London Telegraph in 1998: “I felt he was a hypocrite. Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world, but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces ― no communication, adultery, divorce?”

列侬的儿子朱利安(Julian)在1998年曾经对伦敦《每日电讯报》(The Telegraph)讲：“我感觉他是个伪君子。我爸会大声对世界宣讲着爱与和平，但对于那些本该对他而言最重要的人――妻子和儿子，他却不曾表现出爱。你怎么能一边大谈爱与和平，一边让自己的家庭陷入支离破碎――没有交流，通奸，离婚？”

King had his own personal demons: It is well chronicled that he was a serial adulterer.

金也有他的个人罪恶：他的一连串通奸行为，坊间多有记载。

That history is worth remembering not to cast judgment on their huge accomplishments, but to remind us that they are human. (Whether Jobs does or does not deserve to be compared to King is a different question.)

那些历史值得铭记，但不是为了可以据此对他们的巨大成就做出评判，而是为了提醒我们，他们也是人。（乔布斯是否能与金相提并论是另一个问题。）

Sadly, it does appear that being flawed in one area may help in others. In an article in The Atlantic titled “Why It Pays to Be a Jerk,” the author Jerry Useem quotes several studies that show that nice guys don’t usually win. Donald Hambrick, a management professor at Penn State, told the magazine, “To the extent that innovation and risk-taking are in short supply in the corporate world, narcissists are the ones who are going to step up to the plate.”

让人遗憾的是，在某一方面的瑕疵，似乎对一个人其他方面的发展有帮助。在《大西洋月刊》(The Atlantic)发表的一篇名为《当混蛋的好处》(Why It Pays to Be a Jerk)的文章中，作者杰里・尤里姆(Jerry Useem)援引了好几项研究结果，证明好人通常不会是赢家。宾州州立大学管理学教授唐纳德・汉布里克(Donald Hambrick)告诉该杂志，“这种现象如此普遍，以至现在的企业界缺乏创新和和冒险精神，只有孤芳自赏的人才会采取行动。”

Not everyone thinks Jobs was a jerk. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for Internet software and services, wrote on Twitter that he felt the Gibney film was “an inaccurate and meanspirited view of my friend. It’s not a reflection of the Steve I knew.”

并不是所有人都觉得乔布斯是个混蛋。苹果公司负责互联网软件和服务的高级副总裁埃迪・库埃(Eddy Cue)在Twitter上写道，他觉得吉布尼的影片“对我的朋友的看法是失实的，狭隘的。它展现的不是我所认识的史蒂夫。”

But the black hat-white hat version of Jobs may be too confining.

但对乔布斯进行各种非黑即白的描述，似乎太过狭隘。

In a fascinating interview last year with Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s famed designer and longtime friend of Jobs, recounted a telling story. He remembered a time when Jobs had been tough ― too tough, in Mr. Ive’s estimation ― on his team. Mr. Ive pulled him aside and told him to be bit nicer. “Well, why?” Jobs replied. “Because I care about the team,” Mr. Ive responded. “And he said this brutally, brilliantly insightful thing, which was, ‘No, Jony, you’re just really vain,’ ” Mr. Ive recalled. “He said, ‘You just want people to like you, and I’m surprised at you because I thought you really held the work up as the most important, not how you believed you were perceived by other people.’ ”

去年，《名利场》 (Vanity Fair)杂志主编格雷顿・卡特(Graydon Carter)与苹果的著名设计师、乔布斯的老朋友乔纳森・艾夫(Jonathan Ive)进行了有趣的采访。艾夫接受采访时讲了一个生动的故事。他记得乔布斯有段时间对他的团队很严厉――在艾夫看来过于严厉了。艾夫把他拉到一边，告诉他要友好一些。乔布斯问道，“为什么？”艾夫回答说，“因为我在乎这个团队。”艾夫回忆道，“他说了一句非常冷酷、精辟的话，‘不，乔尼，你其实是很虚荣，你只是想让人们喜欢你，我对你感到吃惊，因为我以为你最看重的是工作，而不是你觉得别人会怎么看你。’ ”

That story and the documentary left me with me with two questions: Would you rather do something extraordinary that benefits the lives of millions of people? Or be liked by several hundred? And does it have to be an either-or question?

这个故事和这部纪录片给我留下两个问题：你想做一些惠及数百万人生活的不同寻常的事情，还是想受到几百人的喜爱？这必须是一个非此即彼的问题吗？

The answer, like Jobs, is complicated.

答案像乔布斯一样，非常复杂。