Romance Novels: Escape or Addiction?

Bill: Ready for an escape? A lot of people are. In addition to escapist movies and TV programs, romance novels provide hours of escape to people the world over.
Samantha: The genre has been around a long time, but seems to be enjoying unprecedented popularity.
Bill: Right. The romance novel industry churns out thousands of books a year in America and other countries.
Samantha: Books that are snapped up by about 45 million readers, the vast majority of whom are women.
Bill: But not everyone thinks this great escape is all that great. Critics say some readers develop an unhealthy addiction to the books.
Samantha: Let’s hear what the worldwide love affair with the romance novel is about, in Dateline USA.

EJ: Hello, and welcome to Dateline USA! Sigmund Freud, famously wondered, "What does a woman want?" Part of the answer may lie in romance novels, which are a billion-dollar-a-year industry in America. Thousands of romance novels are published annually, all telling the same story-girl gets boy. Critics call the books anti-feminist, unrealistic fluff; but can approximately 45 million female readers be wrong? So why are these books so popular with so many women? We’ll talk to a sociologist and a romance writer, to understand more about this unique phenomenon.

 浪漫爱情小说：是逃避还是沉迷于其中？

比尔：准备好逃避了吗？许多人都已准备就绪。除了那些逃避现实的电影和电视节目之外，浪漫爱情小说也可以让全世界的人有数小时的时间来逃避现实。
萨曼莎：这类小说已经存在很长时间了，但似乎现在正受到空前的欢迎。
比尔：没错。浪漫小说产业在美国和其它国家每年都会产出成千上万册的书。
萨曼莎：会有4千5百万的读者抢购这些书，其中绝大多数是女性。
比尔：但并不是每个人都认为这种大逃避很好。评论家们说有些读者对这种书形成了一种病态的沉迷。
萨曼莎：在美国报道中，让我们来听听全世界与浪漫小说的相恋吧。

《魔力英语》：大家好，欢迎收听《美国报道》！大家都知道西格蒙德·弗洛伊德曾有个非常著名的疑问：“女人想要什么？”答案的一部分也许就出在浪漫爱情小说上，在美国，浪漫小说已经成为一个一年十亿美元的产业。每年都有成千上万种浪漫小说出版，它们都说着同样的故事——女孩得到了男孩的心。评论家们称这种小说是反女权主义的，毫不现实，没有意义；但将近4千5百万的女性读者会错吗？那为什么这些书会受到如此众多女性的欢迎呢？我们将采访一位社会学家和一位浪漫爱情小说家，来更好地理解这一独特的现象。

Voice 1
Fantasy as Escape

EJ: Today, we’re speaking with Dr. Pepper Schwartz. She is a professor of sociology at the University of Washington. Dr. Schwartz, in the U.S. an astonishing one in five adult books sold is a romance novel. Why are they so popular with American women?
Schwartz: Well, American women are fed with romance right along with mother’s milk, I think, is a first romance novel and the first idea of romantic destinations that is your birthright as an American woman.
So to my mind, the reason it’s so popular is because we love romance, we have romantic movies, we have romantic books, we have romantic television shows; it’s all about love and lust and the highest soul mate connection you could make, and then we get to real life where we pick our own mate, we do everything that we could possibly do to find love the way we read about it, and it doesn’t happen that often.
EJ: Some feel the rift between those who dote on and those who disdain romance novels centers on the question of fantasy and its proper place in the adult imagination. What do you think?
Schwartz: That’s a good question. I think that fantasy is something that either people see as a delicious little treasure or as something delusional, something that’s escapist and not a guilty little pleasure, but rather, if it isn’t an escape, then it is reinforcing an ignoble part of the human-of human capability. So I would say that those two camps are unalterably opposed to each other, because one believes one is a pleasure that has nothing to do with real life, and the other feels that it either keeps real life alive or makes something dishonorable more likely, or it keeps focusing on what they would think of as a flaw in someone.
I personally am on the pro-fantasy camp. I think that there’s nothing wrong with a journey into some other state of being and into some other perfect world, much the same way science fiction encourages you to go there. And there’s always some reality, even in science fiction, that makes you ponder about the nature of human relationships. ... ...

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Voice 1
把幻想当作逃避

《魔力英语》：今天我们采访的是佩珀·舒尔茨博士。她是华盛顿大学的社会学教授。舒尔茨博士，在美国售出的5本成年人书中就会有一本是浪漫小说，这是个惊人的比例。为什么这些书如此受美国女性的欢迎呢？
舒尔茨：呃，美国女性是边吃妈妈的奶边受浪漫的熏陶而长大的，我想，第一本浪漫小说和第一个浪漫归宿的念头是身为美国女性的天生权利。
    所以，在我看来，浪漫爱情小说如此受欢迎，是因为我们喜欢浪漫，我们有浪漫的电影，浪漫的书籍，浪漫的电视节目；它们讲的全是爱呀、人的欲望呀，还有你能交往上的最佳心灵伴侣，然后，我们在现实生活中，寻找我们自己的伴侣，我们想方设法寻找书本中所描述的那种爱情，可是，那样的爱情很少发生。
《魔力英语》：有些人发现那些喜爱浪漫小说和看不起浪漫小说的人存在的分歧是——都集中在幻想和其在成年人想象中的适当位置上。你是怎么看的？
舒尔茨：这个问题问得好。我想幻想是这样的一种东西，要么人们把它看成是怡人美妙的小宝藏，要么把它看作是错觉，一种逃避，不是带有负罪感的一点儿小乐趣，而是，如果不是一种逃避的话，那么就是在强化人的——人的能力中的不体面的一面。所以我想说，这两大阵营会永远互相对峙，因为一方相信这是一种乐趣，与现实毫无关系，而另一方却觉得这要么会使现实生活生动有趣，要么就使一些不光彩的事情更可能发生，或者，会一直使他们关注别人身上的缺点。
    我个人是站在支持幻想的阵营这一边的。我觉得走进另一种存在的状态，另一种完美世界的旅程没什么不好，这和科幻小说对你的鼓励没什么两样。而且浪漫小说里总会有某些现实的东西，甚至在科幻小说里也是这样，让你思考人与人之间关系的本质。...