Friday, November 24, 2006
007: the number of the beastLast weekend, in a rare break from a work schedule that worryingly resembles Sisyphus’ day at the office, I went to see Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (a beautiful-looking folly with more plot holes than a slice of gruyere) in the Savoy with two of my fellow backseat drivers. When we came out of the cinema we encountered a queue of cinemagoers that went down as far as the taxi rank on Sackville Street. I hadn’t seen a queue like it outside a cinema in Dublin since Gangs of New York (a heavy-handed disappointment) was released. You get no prize for guessing that they were queuing to see the new Bond flick starring Daniel Craig in his first turn as her Satanic Majesty’s spy.
I had of course been prepared for this “major” cinematic event by the onslaught of speculation preceding the announcement that Brosnan had been replaced by Craig, and the subsequent calibrations regarding Craig’s suitability to play the part, and have been sufficiently warned by the billboards displaying Craig’s steely mug from around the corner to Timbuctu. By the way, if there are any Bondites out there that still harbour doubts as to whether Craig is a deserving successor to Brosnan, they will be put at rest by the said billboards. Boy, is Daniel trying hard, I haven’t seen the like of his pout outside a Playboy centrefold, only this time the pouting packs more testosterone than a monkey gland.
I have since heard good reports about the movie from fans and sceptics alike, and may even break my Scarlet O’Hara-like oath not to see a Bond movie again (uttered outside the Ambassador after Tomorrow Never Dies, if memory serves). Although I have the niggling feeling that I will hate this one as much as all the others, which is why I am dusting off this old piece summarising the reasons behind my disdain for all things Bond. The piece was actually my first online publication, and was published on an e-zine run by the Monkey Princess about 700 years ago…
007: the number of the beast
The enduring popularity of James Bond films: one of pop culture’s esoteric mysteries. Time has come to exorcise that demon shrouded in the glossy colours of the pop-savant, masked with the specs of the connoisseurs of everything post-modern. I have to admit that it has not been an easy exercise: is Bond really overrated? I asked myself. Yes and no, was the answer. It is not overrated in a Peter Greenaway sort of way. It is more that it is overrated in its underratedness. What I mean is that no Bond fan is under the illusion that the series constitutes a profound reflection on the nature of life and death, neither do they expect enlightenment after the chase in the snow. They know that the emperor is naked and they like it that way.
In an attempt at tempering the urgency of my task, I decided to listen to what the devil’s advocate had to say. With that purpose in mind I asked my Bond fetishist housemate to explain the appeal of the satanic spy. The most substantial argument he offered me to justify his devotion was to stress the wide-spread appeal of the series and its impact on pop culture: I retorted that the same could be said of margarine and Celine Dion and I also failed to see the point there. To no avail, I had underestimated the strength of the spell that Beelzebond casts on his victims. All things considered, I have to admit that I have more respect for this kind of argument than for the one that tries to give Bond kitsch credibility; those who think that Bond is the essence of kitsch are probably the same people who think that seventies-themed office parties constitute the pinnacle of wacky decadence. No, I don’t criticise Bond’s lack of depth, more the fact that its surface has less substance than a Bond girl’s bikini.
To the point: what does your average Bondite enjoy in a 007 flick? There’s the chase, there’s the explosion, there’s the chase with explosion, the gimmicks, the Bond girl, the Bond villain, and of course, the beast himself, Bond, James Bond.
The chase. The explosion. The chase with explosion.
So you’re in a car and it explodes and you manage to miraculously (and predictably) jump out of the car in the last minute, landing on a passing helicopter piloted by a gang of clueless but villainous minions who try to push you off the (yes) helicopter, whilst you try to disentangle your handy parachute when you notice out of the corner of your eye that the Transiberian train loaded with nuclear weapons is cruising at high speed right under the helicopter with the evil minions. Do you…a) jump and fight a nebulous and pantomime evil organization, b) gasp with delight as you munch your popcorn, he will take off his snowboarding shoe and safely land on the snow-covered roof of the Transiberian, c) recoil with horror in your seat, break in a sweat and then proceed to fall asleep throughout the next two hours. If you chose a) you will probably have vigorous but meaningless intercourse with a “hilariously”-monikered amazon within the next ten minutes of reel; if you chose b) I am afraid that you are a Bondite and there is nothing I can do for you, if you chose c) please read on…
The pen loaded with poisonous gas
So, James Bond is a suave and cunning individual with a brain of gold and nerves of steel. So, how come he needs the snowboarding shoe and the pen loaded with poisonous gas? I mean, if I had the pen loaded with poisonous gas in my pocket I would also have nerves of steel. Imagine being told ‘no way you are getting in’ by a bouncer and having the pen loaded with poisonous gas in your pocket: I would certainly need no Q to tell me that you open the pen to release the gas. How many variations of a crime-fighting car can anyone muster throughout his/her life without being seriously brain damaged anyway?
The Bond Villain
Bond villains are exactly like Bond himself: vain and stupid. The only difference between Bond and his villains is that the latter are uglier/fatter/balder/older/have a funny accent and lack the poisonous pen at a crucial moment in the plot. Proof #1: they both love gimmicks, proof #2: Bond will invariably fondle the same women the villain has fondled, proof # 3: Bond brandishes a huge gun in the opening credits, the villain always has a handy missile in his rocket-launcher (someone please call Dr. Freud).
The Bond Girl
I will spare you the obvious: the day it makes sense to call Ursula Andress in the famous bikini scene a girl, is the day John Paul II will be rightly referred to as Pope boy. By the way, there is nothing to the Bond girl but a famous bikini scene; only some are less famous than others, a sad thought if ever there was one. But I digress. If anything epitomises the subservience and dependence of working women in Western Capitalist societies it must be the unfortunate fate of the Bond girl: aspiring actresses sell their scantly clad talents to Satan, and in return, they are told that their best and only line (they tend to be the same thing) in the movie is going to be: “You certainly are a cunning linguist, Mr. Bond”; thespian dreams and erotic potential are thus dropped with the gold knickers. Ex-Bond girls cannot even complain about being pigeon holed, the character does not have enough substance for that. Of course there is no other one to blame but Bond (the beast) and his all devouring egocentrism: there is no place for an intelligent and resourceful female character in the series. They could make obvious that the poisonous pen doth not a cunning spy make.
The beast
There are only two possible perspectives from which to admire the beast. Number one: the man’s perspective. The man has a beer belly and therefore cannot pinch an unsuspecting woman’s arse without tearing the lining of his white dinner jacket. He cannot tell the difference between a cocktail stick and a pint of lager either. He, however, fantasises about these things: voila, here is a wanker who is slim enough to wear the white dinner jacket and pinch the arse, and who also knows something about cocktails; rumour has it that he has a pen loaded with poisonous gas…His name is Bond, James Bond.
Number two: the woman’s perspective. In this case the woman probably is thinking of Sean Connery, and if there is anything that puzzles me more than Bondites, it has to be women who find Sean Connery sexy. I still break into a cold sweat when I recall the unspeakable horror of the first time a woman told me that she thought Sean Connery got sexier as he got older. This kind of woman gets erotic thrills out of a man who looks over your shoulder while he unfastens your bra, shields his hairy chest from treacherous weaponry with your vulnerable naked body, and is at his most energetic in bed when he rolls under it to shelter himself from the bullets of his assailants (which I am sorry to say have landed on your naked butt). By rights the next Bond should be gay, since Bond, despite (or perhaps because of) his sexist bravado lacks any serious interest in women. He picks them, fucks them, drops them, and moves on. Incidentally the only big O here is in Bond. No surprises, though, considering that our obscure object of desire, Sean/Bond, once declared in an interview that there are times when women "want a smack" . Sorry, I forgot, the accent: shometimes women want a "shmack". Now that is shexy.
posted by Diana Perez Garcia at 9:10 PM | link |
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