编辑&播音&后期：任宸皞
Hello everyone, welcome to English Panorama. I’m Ryan, what a pleasure to meet you for the very first time.
各位好啊，欢迎来到福说英语。这里是新人主播Ryan，初次见面，还请大家多多关照。A brief self-introduction. I’m a loyal fan of TV shows, a reader and a football maniac.
简单地介绍一下自己呢，我就是传说中的宅宅一族，我喜欢追剧、喜欢看书，还是个狂热的球迷，but no mistaking，我的热情只停留在荧幕上，却从未踏上过绿茵场。I hope, from this day on, by sharing my enthusiasm with you all, we can improve our English together in a more amusing way, an easier way.
OK, enough with the small talk. Let’s get to today’s topic, closet, 也就是衣柜。看到标题的你可能会有些发懵，或者觉得有些好笑： Are we talking about the same closet that we open every morning to pick out an outfit from? What’s so special about it? And if I tell you there is a magic portal inside your closet, connecting to an unknown world full of tales, adventures and wonders, you probably would think that I’m mad. But be patient, 在接下来的节目里，我将会解答这些问题。
To answer the question，let’s first take a look at the history of closets.
A closet, by its definition, is an enclosed space used for storage, particularly that of clothes. The history of closets can be traced back to the Middle Ages, in which having a bedroom was a bit of a privilege. Only very wealthy people had bedrooms, and they used their bedrooms not only for sleeping but also for working and entertaining guests. The bedroom, at this time, was not a very private place.
衣柜的历史可以追溯到中世纪。在当时，只有相当有钱的人才可以拥有自己的卧室。即便如此，这间卧室也不单单是用来睡觉的，它还是工作间和会客室。由此可见，那时候的卧室并不是一个很私密的地方。
那么，当你想要一些私人空间的时候，你该去哪呢？
Just enter the closet.
At the end of the Medieval period, well-to-do homeowners began adding ‘closets’ adjoining their bedrooms. The closet was a place to store treasured possessions, but it was also a place for prayer, reading, and quiet contemplation. It was by far the most private place in the house. In Europe the closet eventually disappeared, as houses grew larger and other rooms afforded opportunities for privacy. But the Puritans took the idea of a closet with them to the New World.
在中世纪的末期，富裕的房主们开始往他们的卧室里添置衣橱。那时的衣橱不仅用来存放衣服，还是一个用来祈祷、阅读和凝神思考的空间。在当时，衣橱是一座房子里最私密的地方。不过伴随着房屋空间逐渐变大以及其它房间开始提供了私人空间的职能，衣柜在欧洲日渐消失了。但清教徒们把衣柜的概念一起带到了新大陆。
Today the mania for luxury closets has even led to closets outfitted with sofas, vanities, or desks, making them a sort of retiring room or boudoir in addition to a storage space. Which means that these closets have, in fact, come completely full circle.
如今，衣柜广受欢迎，对于豪华衣柜的狂热甚至导致衣柜配备了沙发，梳妆台或书桌，使其在储藏空间以外，还是一间休息室或者闺房。这意味着衣柜，在功能上，已经回到了原点。
事实上，closet这个词本身也承载了它的演变史，除了作为名词“衣柜、橱柜”的本意，它作为形容词，还带有隐秘、隐藏之意。A closet racist,用于形容一个对外界隐藏自己观点的人。它还可以用作动词，如果两个人在一个僻静的地方谈话，就可以被称为be closeted together。
衣柜中内含的隐蔽空间给艺术工作者们带来了无尽的遐想。What’s hiding inside it? What’s lurking in the dark? 富有想象力的人们用他们的浪漫主义情怀，以衣柜为载体，创作了一个个生动的形象，一个个奇妙的故事。
Let’s start with the scary ones.
We, as kids, all have dreams of a spooky monster hiding inside the bedroom closet, scratching the closet door, grinding its teeth and waiting patiently to break out of the door.而这些牙尖嘴利、在我们的衣柜中蠢蠢欲动的童年噩梦，化为了创作者笔下灵感的源泉。
In the 2001 Pixar movieMonsters Inc., skilled monsters employed as "scarers" venture into the human world to scare children and harvest their screams, through doors that activate portals to children's bedroom closets. In the film, the closet is the channel linking between the human world and the city of Monstropolis, which is powered by energy from the screams of human children.
就像在皮克斯电影《怪兽电力公司》中，衣柜就是连接人类世界和怪兽世界的通道。受过专业训练的怪兽们穿过传送门，给人类小孩带来一夜惊吓，从而为怪兽城带来充足的电力。Venture，在此用作动词，意为冒险，它的名词原意也是a risky or daring journey，一段冒险的旅程。这是由于在怪兽们的认知里，人类小孩是有毒的，他们到人类世界的小小穿越自然也就危机重重。因此，instead of simply using “ go into ”, we use “ venture into ” to make our expression more accurate.
And if you think the film is not scary enough, owing to its heart-warming theme, then the next one is a real deal.
Bogeyman, also known as the monster in the closet, is a mythical creature used by adults to frighten children into good behavior. Many of the Bogeyman are depicted as having claws, talons, and sharp teeth. At night, when little kids are asleep，suddenly they feel cold air breathing onto their faces. They wake up in horror, only to find that there’s a pair of glaring eyes staring at them. That’s Bogeyman, ready to teach misbehaving kids a lesson. The image of Bogeyman has been the inspiration to many notorious characters, such as Foxy, from the horror gameFive Nights at Freddy’s.
Bogeyman，又被称为柜中怪兽，是西方传说中一种专门在夜里吓唬小孩的怪物。许多Bogeyman被描述成带有利爪和锋利牙齿的生物。在夜里，小孩子们熟睡时，它们会溜出它们藏身的衣柜，沉默着站立于孩子的床边，用发亮的双眼死盯着他们，等待着他们从梦中惊醒，给不听话的小孩子好好上一课。Boegyman的形象启发了很多臭名昭著的角色，例如著名恐怖游戏Five Nights at Freddy’s中的Foxy.
然而衣柜并不仅为恐怖故事带来了灵感，更多的时候，它还是钥匙，通往一场场伟大的冒险。
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the first published and best known of seven novels in The Chronicles of Narnia. In the novel, four English children are relocated to a large, old country house following a wartime evacuation. The youngest, Lucy, visits Narnia, a land of talking animals and mythical creatures, three times by crawling into a magic closet. Lucy's three siblings are with her on her third visit to Narnia. In Narnia, the siblings seem fit to fulfill an old prophecy and find themselves adventuring to save Narnia and their own lives.
在系列奇幻小说《纳尼亚传奇》的第一部《狮子女巫魔衣柜》里，四个英国小孩因战争疏散被安排到了一座老农舍里。这四个孩子，就是通过了一个神奇的衣柜，来到了魔法世界纳尼亚，一个居住着许多神话生物的世界。在纳尼亚，四个孩子为了实现预言、拯救世界，展开了一系列激动人心的冒险。
Similarly，in the bestseller bookMy Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, written by Swedish author Fredrik Backman. The main character, seven years old Elsa, likes to hide inside her deceased grandmother’s old closet. The closet，to her， is a shelter， protecting her from all the anxiety and sorrow she’s suffering in the outside world. In the closet, she can imagine her being taken back to the Kingdom of Miamas, a secret realm that lives in her grandmother’s stories, where nobody needs to be normal, where she is no longer a rejected weird girl, but an adventurous heroine.
与之相似的，在瑞典作家佛雷德里克·巴克曼的畅销书《外婆的道歉信》里，7岁小女孩Elsa喜欢藏在其过世的外婆的旧衣柜里，借此来躲避外界施加与她的悲伤和焦虑。在衣柜里，她可以想象她回到了外婆故事里的密阿玛斯王国，一个每个人都独具一格，因此她不再感到格格不入的地方。在那里，她可以尽情做她自己——一个热爱冒险、有点古怪的女孩子。
如上所言，衣柜门后的秘密王国的奇妙之处就在于它的变幻莫测。 It can be where the monster hides. It can be the key to a magic land where all the greatest adventures begin. Or it can be a safe haven, like what it is to Elsa, healing our wounds, shutting the negativity out.
柜门的背后藏着什么？无论是一只怪兽，还是一个魔法王国，抑或是一个守护我们的港湾。只要拥有想象力，柜门背后的世界充满无尽可能。
When I was a kid, the closet was the perfect hideout when I played hide-and-seek. And every time after I closed the door, it felt like I was completely alone, and the closet is was secret realm that I owned.
柜门后的神秘国度，是一个只属于我们的、用想象力堆砌而成的国度。就像童年玩捉迷藏时的体验，衣柜，给予了我们一个尽情创造、只属于我们自己的空间。In the modern world, everybody is desperately seeking for a bit of private time. But as we grow into adults, the closet has become too small for us to hide in. And as the thrilling adventure we’ve experienced behind the closet door fades into oblivion, the magic of the closet dies.
但，尽管我们已经长得太大，大到小小的衣柜已经再也无法容下我们，那些衣柜背后的故事也已随风而逝。只要我们的想象力依旧存在，衣柜后的secret realm依旧等待着我们的回归。所以，今晚睡前，早点放下手机，闭上双眼，乘上你的想象力尽情翱翔吧，回到那个云端之后、隐藏着所有我们童年的梦的国度，和往日的朋友问声好吧。
And that’s what you call a quality “me” time.
(via.法国插画家JC Gotting)
OK. That’s the end of today’s program. 告诉我，正在收听的你和衣柜有没有什么故事呢？最后，我希望各位喜欢我的第一期节目，并祝各位一夜好梦。This is Ryan. Hope to see you next time.
封面图作者：Felicia Chiao
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