Pub Date : 2005-01-01DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511618178.010
S. Roberts
www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Vol 3 May 2016 413 In September, 1973, New Scientist published a story about a sonic weapon called a squawk box, designed for crowd control. “The rubber bullet”, said author Robert Rodwell, “leaves visible bruises at best, and at worst smashed eyes... what does the squawk box leave”? Histories of weaponised sound are scant and—like the sq uawk box—shrouded in something that might be secrecy. It is known that in the 19th century Nikola Tesla experimented with infrasound, or sound below the level of human hearing, as did a scientist called Vladimir Gavreau in the 1950s. The Nazis are said to have built something called a Luftkanone, or sound canon, which they hoped would zap British bombers from the sky. If weaponised sound seems to dwell on the esoteric fringes of science, it is a notion with a vivid life in fi ction. “They told us all they wanted was a sound that could kill someone”, sings Kate Bush in her tale of sonic research gone wrong, Experiment IV. David Lynch’s Dune features weapons that channel the human voice into an instrument of death. Bad things are done to Michael Caine with sound in The Ipcress File. The writer Robert Graves was well acquainted with the impact sound could have on the human body and mind. In Goodbye to All That, his World War 1 memoir, he wrote that on return to civilian life from the front, “the noise of a car backfi ring would send me fl at on my face, or running for cover”. In The Shout, a short story he wrote in 1926, Graves explores the notion that the human voice can kill. At the time, he wrote, “I was still living on the neurasthenic verge of nightmare”. The Shout tells the story of Richard and Rachel Fielding, whose home and marriage are invaded by a mysterious vagrant, Charles Crossley. Crossley claims to have lived among Aborigines in Australia, and to have learnt from them how to kill a man with a “death shout”. In 1978 the story was made into a fi lm by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (Moonlighting, Deep End), starring Alan Bates as Crossley, Susannah Yorke as Rachel Fielding, and John Hurt as Richard, who Skolimowski renames Anthony and turns from the musician of Graves’s original story into an experimental composer. Adapting The Shout for the screen poses a question— what does a sound that could kill someone actually, well, sound like? When the BBC adapted the story for radio a few years later they drafted in the Radiophonic Workshop’s Roger Limb to tackle the problem. Skolimowski deployed the still relatively new Dolby Optical Stereo system, explaining to an interviewer from Sight and Sound, “the human voice is helped on forty or more tracks by all the things that came into my mind that might be helpful, the Niagara Falls, the launching of the moon rocket, everything. But over the top is the real human voice of a man shouting like hell”. Sonically thrilling though this Niagara-enhanced, rocket-propelled roar is, the real horror in The Shout (which won the Grand Jury Priz
www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Vol 3 May 2016 413 1973年9月，《新科学家》杂志发表了一篇关于一种名为squawk box的声波武器的报道，这种武器是为控制人群而设计的。“橡皮子弹”，作家罗伯特·罗德威尔说，“充其量只能留下看得见的瘀伤，最坏的情况是打烂眼睛……嘎嘎箱会留下什么?”武器化声音的历史很少，就像方形步行街的盒子一样，笼罩在某种可能是秘密的东西中。众所周知，在19世纪，尼古拉·特斯拉(Nikola Tesla)试验了次声，即低于人类听觉水平的声音，一位名叫弗拉基米尔·加夫罗(Vladimir Gavreau)的科学家在20世纪50年代也做了同样的实验。据说纳粹建造了一种叫做“声炮”的东西，他们希望它能从空中击落英国的轰炸机。如果说武器化声音似乎停留在科学的深奥边缘，那么它是一个在小说中有着生动生命的概念。“他们告诉我们，他们想要的只是一种可以杀人的声音”，凯特·布什在她关于声音研究出错的故事《实验四》中唱道。大卫·林奇的《沙丘》以将人声转化为死亡工具的武器为特色。在《ipress File》中，迈克尔·凯恩用声音做了坏事。作家罗伯特·格雷夫斯非常了解声音对人体和心灵的影响。在第一次世界大战回忆录《告别一切》(Goodbye to All That)中，他写道，从前线回到平民生活后，“汽车后座的噪音会让我扑面而来，或者跑去找掩护”。在1926年写的短篇小说《呐喊》(The Shout)中，格雷夫斯探讨了人类声音可以杀人的概念。当时，他写道:“我仍然生活在噩梦般的神经衰弱边缘。”《呐喊》讲述了理查德和雷切尔·菲尔丁的故事，他们的家和婚姻被一个神秘的流浪汉查尔斯·克罗斯利入侵。克罗斯利声称曾与澳大利亚的土著居民生活在一起，并从他们那里学会了如何用“死亡呐喊”杀死一个人。1978年，这个故事被波兰导演耶日·斯科利莫夫斯基(《月光》、《深尾》)拍成了电影，由艾伦·贝茨饰演克罗斯利，苏珊娜·约克饰演雷切尔·菲尔丁，约翰·赫特饰演理查德，斯科利莫夫斯基把理查德改名为安东尼，从格雷夫斯原著中的音乐家变成了一个实验作曲家。把《呐喊》搬上银幕带来了一个问题——一个能杀死人的声音到底是什么样的?几年后，英国广播公司将这个故事改编为广播节目，他们请来了radioophonic Workshop的罗杰·利姆(Roger Limb)来解决这个问题。斯科利莫夫斯基使用了相对较新的杜比光学立体声系统，他向《视觉与声音》的一位采采者解释说:“人类的声音在40多个音轨上得到了我脑海中可能有用的所有东西的帮助，尼亚加拉大瀑布，月球火箭的发射，一切。但最上面是一个男人的真实声音，像地狱一样大喊大叫。”虽然这段尼亚加拉瀑布般的、火箭推进的轰鸣声令人激动，但《呐喊》(获得戛纳评审团大奖)中真正的恐怖之处在于一些小魔术的时刻。一天下午，菲尔丁一家在沙丘上睡着了，他们又做了一个同样的梦，梦见被一个穿着燕尾服的土著男子追赶。他带着一根削尖的骨头，在沙滩上曲折地走着，不知怎么的，他的脸从来都看不清。后来，克罗斯利似乎用他从瑞秋那里偷来的一个鞋扣把她迷住了。他捡起来，她就是他的了。他抛弃了它，她像从恍惚中醒来一样，重新回到了过去的生活。再加上斯科利莫夫斯基对英国乡村怪异生活的不平衡观察，这些细节创造了一个日常神秘的故事，就像作者一样，生活在噩梦的边缘。
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