The Gender War Over ‘Obsession’ Has Come for Theme Parks
The Gender War Over ‘Obsession’ Has Come for Theme Parks
关于《Obsession》的性别战争蔓延到了主题公园
By any metric, the horror film Obsession has been one of the most extraordinary Hollywood success stories of 2026. Made on a budget of around $750,000 and released in May, it went on to earn $488 million worldwide, catapulting 26-year-old director and screenwriter Curry Barker—originally known for his YouTube sketch comedy—to the top of the industry’s “it” list. 无论从哪个指标来看，恐怖电影《Obsession》都是2026年好莱坞最非凡的成功故事之一。该片制作预算约为75万美元，于5月上映，最终在全球斩获4.88亿美元票房，将原本以YouTube短剧喜剧闻名的26岁导演兼编剧库里·巴克（Curry Barker）推向了行业“当红人物”名单的顶端。
So why, you might ask, are people creating a stink over Universal Studios, the international distributor of Obsession, adding its lead female character, Nikki, to the cast of the Halloween Horror Nights event at its Hollywood theme park? Even though the actor who plays her seems very much on board? To answer that, one has to review three months of fierce and enduring debate. 那么，你可能会问，为什么人们会对《Obsession》的国际发行商环球影业（Universal Studios）感到不满，仅仅是因为他们将片中的女主角妮基（Nikki）加入了其好莱坞主题公园的“万圣节恐怖之夜”（Halloween Horror Nights）活动阵容？尽管饰演该角色的演员本人似乎非常支持？要回答这个问题，必须回顾过去三个月里激烈且持续的争论。
Since the movie hit theaters, fans and critics have been at odds over a thorny question: Who is the victim in Obsession? The plot concerns an awkward, painfully insecure young man, Bear (Michael Johnston), who yearns to be in a romantic relationship with his friend, the seemingly unattainable Nikki (Inde Navarrette). In a moment of frustration, he snaps something called a “One Wish Willow”—believing it to be a whimsical and harmless novelty gift—and voices his desire that she love him more than anyone else in the world. 自电影上映以来，粉丝和影评人就一个棘手的问题产生了分歧：谁才是《Obsession》中的受害者？剧情讲述了一个笨拙、极度缺乏安全感的年轻人贝尔（Bear，迈克尔·约翰斯顿饰），他渴望与自己的朋友、看似高不可攀的妮基（英迪·纳瓦雷特饰）建立恋爱关系。在一次沮丧的时刻，他折断了一种被称为“心愿柳”（One Wish Willow）的东西——他以为这只是一个异想天开且无害的新奇礼物——并许愿希望她能像爱世界上任何人一样爱他。
From that moment forward, Nikki is an unnatural version of herself, moving as if controlled by another consciousness. Her need to be with Bear around the clock is marked by increasingly alarming performances of total devotion that finally escalate to murder. Bear recognizes almost right away that something is wrong but cannot resist acting out his fantasy with the helpless and brainwashed woman who has taken to his bed. 从那一刻起，妮基变成了一个不自然的自己，行动仿佛被另一种意识所控制。她全天候陪伴贝尔的需求，表现出越来越令人担忧的绝对忠诚，最终升级为谋杀。贝尔几乎立刻就意识到出了问题，但他无法抗拒与这个无助且被洗脑、主动爬上他床的女人一起实现他的幻想。
As a consequence, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing as to whether viewers understood that Nikki was not the true villain or monster of the story, regardless of the acts she was cursed to commit. “Nikki was the victim and only Nikki,” insisted one representative X user in a viral post in June, adding that it would be “delusional” to apply the same label to Bear. 因此，人们非常焦虑，担心观众是否理解妮基并非故事中真正的反派或怪物，无论她被诅咒犯下了什么行为。“妮基是受害者，唯一的受害者，”一位具有代表性的X用户在6月的一篇病毒式传播的帖子中坚持道，并补充说给贝尔贴上同样的标签是“妄想”。
Whether anyone did try to defend Bear (as, for example, a guy who had no idea he was casting a real magic spell) seemed beside the point. Commentators wanted to hammer home that Nikki was robbed of her autonomy and that she was effectively raped due to her inability to consent to sex. Again and again, they invoked some theoretical viewer who saw her as the monster in the situation, decrying this reading of the film. 是否有人试图为贝尔辩护（例如，认为他只是一个不知道自己在施展真正魔法的普通人）似乎并不重要。评论者们想要强调的是，妮基被剥夺了自主权，并且由于她无法对性行为表示同意，她实际上遭到了强奸。他们反复引用一些将她视为该情境中怪物的理论观众，并谴责这种对电影的解读。
Then, on Monday, Universal Studios Hollywood officially announced that an actor portraying Nikki would haunt the park during its upcoming Halloween Horror Nights, which will run from late September 3 to November 1 and will also feature attractions like a haunted house based on Sinners. Mentioning the addition of Nikki to the event in a press release, Universal teased that “guests may find themselves face-to-face with the latest victim of the One Wish Willow’s terrifying curse,” apparently agreeing with the consensus that the character is at the mercy of a paranormal force rather than intentionally malicious. 周一，好莱坞环球影城正式宣布，一名饰演妮基的演员将在即将到来的“万圣节恐怖之夜”期间在公园内出没。该活动将于9月下旬至11月1日举行，并将推出以《Sinners》为主题的鬼屋等景点。环球影业在新闻稿中提到妮基的加入时调侃道，“游客们可能会发现自己与‘心愿柳’恐怖诅咒的最新受害者面对面”，这显然认同了大众的共识，即该角色是超自然力量的受害者，而非故意作恶。
It didn’t matter. X users called it a “catastrophically bad idea,” said it was in poor taste to portray “a victim of sexual assault” as a frightening figure, and worried about the actor’s safety as they interacted with park guests. A few argued that it should be Bear wandering the park, overlooking the problem that the character has no distinguishing visual shorthand, whereas Nikki, as in the climax of the film, will be “all bloody,” with tattoos scribbled on her body, according to John Murdy, the creative director and executive producer of Halloween Horror Nights. 但这并不重要。X用户称这是一个“灾难性的坏主意”，认为将“性侵受害者”描绘成一个可怕的人物品味低劣，并担心演员在与游客互动时的安全。一些人认为应该让贝尔在公园里游荡，却忽略了一个问题：该角色没有明显的视觉特征，而根据“万圣节恐怖之夜”创意总监兼执行制片人约翰·默迪（John Murdy）的说法，妮基在电影高潮中将是“浑身是血”，身上涂满涂鸦纹身。
Others pushed back on the outrage, noting that many horror legends were molded by abuse; Regan from The Exorcist, a female character Universal has previously included in their seasonal programming, likewise suffers from a form of possession. WIRED contributor John Semley observed that the nuances of scary stories are typically lost in the cheap thrills of an immersive Halloween experience, writing, “You don’t go to a haunted house to see the mob who persecuted Frankenstein(’s monster) for being different.” 其他人则反驳了这种愤怒，指出许多恐怖传奇都是由虐待塑造的；《驱魔人》中的里根（Regan）——环球影业此前曾将其纳入季节性节目中的女性角色——同样遭受着某种形式的附身。WIRED撰稿人约翰·塞姆利（John Semley）观察到，恐怖故事的细微差别通常会在沉浸式万圣节体验的廉价刺激中丧失，他写道：“你不会去鬼屋看那些因为弗兰肯斯坦（的怪物）与众不同而迫害他的暴民。”
These colliding arguments eventually turned into disagreements about the very nature of horror fiction. 这些相互冲突的论点最终演变成了关于恐怖小说本质的分歧。
Gretchen Felker-Martin, an acclaimed horror author whose novels include Manhunt, Cuckoo, and Black Flame, tells WIRED that the heated discourse is an outgrowth of the genre’s function. “Horror movies are about our cultural anxieties,” she says. In the case of Obsession, she explains, these anxieties are “the vulnerability it takes to form genuine human connections, which Bear magically circumvents with disastrous results,” and “fear of women’s agency, which Bear’s wish destroys in Nikki.” 格雷琴·费尔克-马丁（Gretchen Felker-Martin）是一位备受赞誉的恐怖小说作家，其作品包括《Manhunt》、《Cuckoo》和《Black Flame》。她告诉WIRED，这种激烈的讨论是该类型功能的一种延伸。“恐怖电影关乎我们的文化焦虑，”她说。她解释说，就《Obsession》而言，这些焦虑是“建立真正人际关系所需的脆弱性，而贝尔通过魔法规避了这一点，导致了灾难性的后果”，以及“对女性自主权的恐惧，而贝尔的愿望摧毁了妮基的这种自主权”。
“Horror asks us to sit with this,” Felker-Martin says, because it will “get a physical and emotional response from us, which is horror’s goal as a genre.” In her view, the strong reactions to Obsession “stem from the fact that women’s agency is brutally curtailed right now in virtually every sector of American life,” leading audiences to identify with Nikki and dread a similar fate. “I don’t know that having an actress walk around a Halloween party impersonating Inde Navarrette’s performance is any worse than the basic fact of the existence of theme parks, which flatten complex art into prepackaged commercial entertainment, but I understand why people are angry about it,” Felker-Martin adds. “They don’t want to see a frank representation of their pain trivialized.” “恐怖片要求我们直面这些，”费尔克-马丁说，因为它会“从我们身上获得生理和情感上的反应，这就是恐怖作为一种类型的目标。”在她看来，对《Obsession》的强烈反应“源于这样一个事实：女性的自主权目前在美国生活的几乎每个领域都受到残酷的限制”，这导致观众与妮基产生共鸣，并恐惧类似的命运。“我不知道让一位女演员在万圣节派对上模仿英迪·纳瓦雷特的表演，是否比主题公园本身的存在更糟糕——主题公园将复杂的艺术扁平化为预包装的商业娱乐——但我理解人们为什么对此感到愤怒，”费尔克-马丁补充道。“他们不想看到自己痛苦的真实写照被轻描淡写。”
For Universal Studios, though, the calculus is clear: Obsession was a massive hit—the highest-grossing original horror film of this century. When Murdy revealed on Sunday at the Midsummer Scream horror convention that Nikki would be a part of the festivities as a roaming scare actor, he noted what a late decision it had been and how much overtime work had gone into organizing the logistics, making it sound as if Universal coul 然而，对于环球影业来说，算盘打得很清楚：《Obsession》是一部巨大的成功之作——本世纪票房最高的原创恐怖电影。当默迪周日在“仲夏尖叫”（Midsummer Scream）恐怖大会上透露妮基将作为游荡的惊吓演员参与庆祝活动时，他指出这是一个多么仓促的决定，以及在组织后勤工作上投入了多少加班时间，这听起来好像环球影业……