The Cube is Jim Henson’s little-known proto-Black Mirror masterpiece
The Cube is Jim Henson’s little-known proto-Black Mirror masterpiece
《立方体》（The Cube）：吉姆·亨森鲜为人知的《黑镜》式先驱杰作
His surreal teleplay from 1969 is weird, funny, and filled with existential dread. 这部 1969 年的超现实电视短剧既怪诞又幽默，且充满了存在主义的恐惧。
I’m sure we’re all familiar with Dark Crystal, so we know that Jim Henson can be weird and tackle slightly more mature subject matter. But there is little in his oeuvre that is quite as mind-bending as the Muppetless The Cube. This 1969 teleplay was produced for an NBC anthology series called Experiment in Television, which featured, appropriately enough, various experimental films, plays, and documentaries. One episode even featured Marshall McLuhan explaining his oft-cited theory that “the medium is the message.” 我相信大家都对《黑水晶》（Dark Crystal）很熟悉，所以我们都知道吉姆·亨森（Jim Henson）不仅能玩转怪诞风格，还能驾驭稍显成熟的主题。但在他的作品集中，很少有像这部没有布偶参与的《立方体》那样令人费解。这部 1969 年的电视短剧是为 NBC 的选集系列《电视实验》（Experiment in Television）制作的，正如其名，该系列涵盖了各种实验性电影、戏剧和纪录片。其中一集甚至还邀请了马歇尔·麦克卢汉（Marshall McLuhan）来阐述他那句常被引用的理论——“媒介即讯息”。
Even among all these oddities, however, Jim Henson’s The Cube stands out. It’s a 53-minute bottle film — taking place almost entirely in a single room. A man awakes in a white cube, unsure of where he is or how he got there. There are no windows, no door. Just walls of white panels. 即便在这些奇特的作品中，吉姆·亨森的《立方体》依然显得格外突出。这是一部 53 分钟的“密室电影”，几乎全程发生在一个房间里。一名男子在一个白色的立方体中醒来，不知道自己身在何处，也不知是如何来到这里的。这里没有窗户，没有门，只有白色的墙板。
It doesn’t take long for someone to open a section of the wall and bring in a stool for our nameless man in the cube. But when he closes the “door” behind him, our protagonist can’t open it back up. And thus begins the parade of people, dozens of them, taking turns going in and out of various invisible doors in the titular cube. 没过多久，就有人打开了一面墙，为立方体中这位无名男子送进了一张凳子。但当那人关上身后的“门”时，我们的主角却无法再将其打开。于是，一场人群的“游行”开始了，几十个人轮流进出这个同名立方体中各种隐形的门。
The interactions start off strangely enough — why is there strawberry jam on the stool? Who is this woman who claims to be the protagonist’s wife even though he doesn’t recognize her? But they quickly escalate, calling into question the nature of reality, our protagonist’s sanity, and raising questions about what the cube is exactly. Jim Henson himself even makes an uncredited cameo as the voice of a gorilla in a tutu. 互动起初就十分诡异——为什么凳子上有草莓酱？这个自称是主角妻子、但主角却完全不认识的女人又是谁？但这些互动迅速升级，开始质疑现实的本质和主角的理智，并引发了关于这个立方体究竟是什么的疑问。吉姆·亨森本人甚至还在片中客串了一个未署名的角色，为一只穿着芭蕾舞裙的大猩猩配音。
As people come and go, delivering supplies to the man, harassing him, or even attempting to seduce him, the room changes around him inexplicably. Beds, couches, fully stocked liquor cabinets, and other furniture mysteriously appear. A full band slips in and sings a song with the line “you’ll never get out ‘til you’re dead,” before it’s revealed to be a recording as the record skips repeatedly on the word “dead.” 随着人们来来去去，给男子送补给、骚扰他，甚至试图诱惑他，房间也在他周围莫名其妙地发生着变化。床、沙发、装满酒的酒柜和其他家具神秘地出现。一支完整的乐队溜进来唱了一首歌，歌词中有一句“除非你死了，否则你永远出不去”，随后唱片在“死”（dead）这个词上反复跳针，揭示出这其实只是一段录音。
The Cube offers many questions but no answers. Is the man living in a simulation? Is he on TV? Are the people around him actors? Is any of it real at all? Does matter exist? 《立方体》提出了许多问题，却没有给出任何答案。这个男人生活在模拟世界中吗？他在电视节目里吗？他周围的人是演员吗？这一切是真的吗？物质真的存在吗？
Even in a post-Twilight Zone world, The Cube feels uniquely bizarre, more akin to the modern dystopian anthology series Black Mirror than anything else. While it’s not true lost media, it remains relatively obscure. It only aired twice, there’s a sold-out DVD listing on Amazon, and it only occasionally makes an appearance on streaming services in any official capacity. 即使在《阴阳魔界》（Twilight Zone）之后的世界里，《立方体》依然显得极其怪异，比起其他任何作品，它更像现代反乌托邦选集剧《黑镜》。虽然它算不上真正的“失传媒体”，但依然相对冷门。它只播出过两次，亚马逊上的 DVD 已经售罄，且仅偶尔以官方形式出现在流媒体服务中。
Your best bets right now are a pair of YouTube uploads, both embedded above. One is a much higher-quality transfer of a black-and-white kinescope film with remastered audio. Unfortunately, it also cuts out most of the song due to copyright. The other upload is full color and retains the song, but is a generally lower quality rip with muddier image and audio. Regardless of which one you choose, it’s a wild and thoroughly enjoyable ride that shows just how twisted the mind of Jim Henson could be. 目前最好的观看方式是 YouTube 上的两个上传版本（均已嵌入上方）。其中一个版本是黑白电视录影带的高质量转录，音频经过了重制，但遗憾的是，由于版权原因，它剪掉了大部分歌曲。另一个版本是全彩的，保留了歌曲，但整体画质和音质较差。无论你选择哪一个，这都是一段狂野且极其有趣的旅程，它展示了吉姆·亨森的思维可以有多么扭曲。