居必 食不厌精脍不厌细:巴黎展览揭示畸形展历史

展览中揭示的19世纪和20世纪早期把人当作畸形展中展品的做法令人震惊。

Half-naked Africans made to gnaw bones and presented as "cannibals" as they shivered in a mock tribal village in northern France; Native American children displayed at fairgrounds; families from Asia and the South Pacific behind railings in European zoos and dancing Zulus on the London stage.

在法国北部仿制的部落村庄中一边发抖、一边被迫啃着骨头的半裸的非洲人，他们被当作“食人族”介绍给人们；在露天马戏场被展出的美洲土著儿童；被关在欧洲动物园兽栏后面的来自亚洲和南太平洋的家庭，以及在伦敦的舞台上跳舞的祖鲁人。

Paris's most talked-about exhibition of the winter opened on Tuesday with shock and soul-searching over the history of colonial subjects used in human zoos, circuses and stage shows, which flourished until as late as 1958.

巴黎今冬最为公众热议的展览周二开幕了，带给人们震惊之余，这场展览也让人们深刻反省那段一直盛行到1958年的将殖民地的人民用于人类动物园、马戏团和舞台演出的历史。

Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage, curated by former French international footballer turned anti-racism campaigner Lilian Thuram, traces the history of a practice which started when Christopher Columbus displayed six "Indians" at the Spanish royal court in 1492 and went on to become a mass entertainment phenomenon in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

法国前世界杯国脚出身的反种族主义活动家利利安·图拉姆主办的这场名为“人类动物园：野蛮人的发明”的展览，追溯了这种从1492年克里斯托弗·哥伦布在西班牙宫廷里展示6名印第安人开始，并在19和20世纪发展成为一种大众娱乐现象的行为的历史。

Millions of spectators turned out to see "savages" in zoos, circuses, mock villages and freak shows from London to St Louis, Barcelona to Tokyo. These "human specimens", and "living museums" served both colonialist propaganda and scientific theories of so-called racial hierarchies.

从伦敦到圣路易斯，从巴塞罗那到东京，数以百万计的观众前往动物园、马戏团、仿造的村落布景和畸形展上参观“野蛮人”。这些“人类标本”和“活的博物馆”既为殖民主义者做了宣传，又符合所谓种族等级划分的科学理论的需要。

The exhibition at Paris's Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac's museum dedicated to once-colonised cultures – is the first to look at this international phenomenon as a whole. It brings together hundreds of bizarre and shocking artefacts, ranging from posters for "Male and Female Australian Cannibals" in London, which was the world capital of such stage shows, to documentation for mock villages of "Arabs" and "Sengalese", or juggling tribeswomen in France, which was renowned for its extensive human zoos. Thuram, who was born on the French Caribbean island Guadaloupe, said the exhibition explained the background of racist ideas and "fear of the 'other'" which persisted today.

这场在巴黎盖布朗利博物馆——雅克·希拉克为曾经遭受殖民统治的文明建造的博物馆——举办的展览首次全面审视了这种世界性的现象。展览集中了许多稀奇古怪、令人瞠目的展品，包括伦敦——当时是这类舞台演出的世界中心——的“澳大利亚食人族男女”的海报、关于仿造阿拉伯人和塞内加尔人村落的文献资料、以及在以数量众多的人类动物园闻名的法国杂耍卖艺的部落妇女的文献资料。出生于法属加勒比海瓜德罗普岛的图拉姆表示，这个展览说明了种族主义思想和一直持续至今的“对和我们不同的人的恐惧”产生的背景。

"You have to have the courage to say that each of us has prejudices, and these prejudices have a history," Thuram explained. He said he was appalled that Hamburg zoo still had sculptures of Indians and Africans at its entrance, a sign that humans as well as animals were on display.

“你必须要有勇气承认我们每个人都有偏见，而这些偏见由来已久，”图拉姆解释说。他说他对汉堡动物园的入口处仍然竖立着印第安人和非洲人的雕像一事感到十分惊诧，那是曾经把人类和动物一起展出的标志。

The exhibition reflects a trend in France to re-examine the exploitation of people for entertainment. The recent film Black Venus by acclaimed director Abdellatif Kechiche told the 19th-century story of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoikoi woman from South Africa, who was displayed in London and Paris as the "Hottentot Venus". Londoners derided her as "Fat Bum".

这个展览反映了法国国内对把人当作消遣对象的做法进行反省的趋势。由广受好评的导演阿布戴拉提夫·柯西胥执导的新片《黑色维纳斯》讲述了19世纪来自南非的科伊科伊族妇女萨尔蒂耶·巴特曼的故事，她被称作“霍屯督的维纳斯”，在伦敦和巴黎展出。伦敦人嘲弄地称她为“大屁股”。

In 1906, Congolese pygmy Ota Benga was exhibited in a cage at the monkey house at New York's Bronx zoo, causing a controversy before he was put in an orphanage for "coloureds". He later shot himself. A hairy woman from Laos, known as "Krao", was exhibited at the end of the 19th century as "the missing link" between man and orangutan.

1906年，刚果矮人奥塔·本格被关在纽约布朗克斯动物园猴山的一只笼子里对外展出，此举引起争议后他被送入一所收容“有色人种”的孤儿院。后来他开枪自杀了。一名来自老挝，被叫做“克劳”的毛发浓密的妇女在19世纪末作为人和猩猩之间“缺失的一环”被展出。

William Henry Johnson, an African American child with a small cranium, was bought from his parents aged four, exhibited in a hairy suit and made to grunt. The show was titled What Is It?

头颅窄小的美国黑人男童威廉·亨利·约翰逊在4岁时被人从父母手中买走，他在展出时穿着毛茸茸的衣服并被迫发出猪一样的咕噜声。演出的名称是“这是什么？”

The exhibition traces the lives of up to 35,000 people put on show in mock tribal scenes and taken to villages or zoos. In 1931, the great-grandparents of Thuram's World Cup team-mate Christian Karembeu came to Paris from New Caledonia. They considered themselves ambassadors but were displayed in a cage at the Jardin d'Acclimation in Paris. They were later shown in Germany, along with about 100 other New Caledonian Kanaks and described as "cannibals".

展览追溯了多达35000名参与模拟部落场景演出和被带去各地巡展或送进动物园的人们的生活。1931年，图拉姆在世界杯比赛时的队友克里斯蒂安·卡伦布的曾祖父母从新喀里多尼亚来到巴黎。他们认为自己是大使，但却被装在笼子里于巴黎物种驯化园展出。他们后来又和另外约100名新喀里多尼亚人一起在德国展出，并被称作“食人族”。

The phenomenon began to decline in the 1930s with changing public interest and the advent of cinema. The last "living spectacles" were Congo villagers exhibited in Belgium in 1958.

随着大众口味的转变和电影的出现，这种现象在20世纪30年代开始衰落。最后的“活人展”是1958年在比利时展出的刚果土著居民。