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| 'I Give You Bond, James Bond' |
| The movie's struck a chord with the critics, what about the values? |
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Bright B. Simons (baronsimon)  |
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Published 2006-11-18 07:25 (KST) |
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He has passed the cool test -- that David Craig. The tuxedo was unruffled after the chase, the gait military without being inelegant and the smile death-cold, even as it exuded pure lust. The world's toughest to please fans are mollified. A sigh of relief has gone around the globe: he had not done a Timothy Dalton: strut around with an "I am too good for this role" tattoo emblazoned on his forehead.
It seems the critics are agreed on one thing. Craig's interpretation of the immortal Ian Fleming character is gritty but authentic. His delivery -- oral, I mean -- is as crisp as it should be. Laconic, condescending lines, like: "he has no nerve for heights," while you watch a villain you have just pushed overboard plummet dozens of feet into a bottomless sea (Sean Connery) are the stock in trade for a Bond do. Even the villains -- always drawn as dark mirror images of the hero -- must master this strain of dialogue. Auric Goldfinger: "I expect you to die, Mr. Bond," in response to the question: "do you expect me to talk?" Craig is fully at home with it all. If he keeps this up he will last long.
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| But the Bond motif is of course no rigid formula. Each Bond brings something of his own flavor to the part. Even the uncool Lazenby has been "re-discovered" by latter-day fans as endowed with something earlier spectators had missed: a good balance of wit and crust that anticipated Brosnan. Quintessential Bonds like Connery and Moore have certainly cast something of a long, pale shadow over the series, so that every actor after them it seems must oscillate between the two extremes of witty humor and sadistic coolness, though in actual fact most rebel, even if "rebeliion" can be deemed just one of a set of allowable responses.
This is the perennial headache that plagues the enterprising Broccolis, longtime producers of the series: how to maintain a sense of consistency without losing edge? An ancient branding paradox. They respond to the challenge partly through maintaining high quality. Every single Bond film comes with impeccable cinematography, the best continuity editing you can find anywhere, and an emphasis on competent acting rather than the flourish of fame and celebrity. Packing the movies with big names is something that has been studiously avoided. Bond is the brand: the character must live through the actors, not the other way round.
Guarding the Bond brand is an all-encompassing motivation. Dubious franchises, such as TV and cartoon series, are viewed with extreme suspicion by the brains behind the concept. These can dilute the brand. And the Brand is the second most lucrative in the movie world after "Star Wars," with nearly every new movie expected to clock in the region of half a billion dollars. You would guard it well, if you owned it, wouldn't you? It is said that contracts signed by new Bonds include clauses prescribing approved hairdressing salons as part of an extensive list of off-screen conduct regulations.
The brand management savvy of EON and the Broccolis is evident in the staying power of Fleming's fantasy creations on the Big Screen. For close to half a century the world has been treated to an adventure of the Killer in a Tuxedo approximately every two years, yet it never seems to tire of it. Even the most talented operators in other genres pay silent tributes to the brand when they consciously or subconsciously model their best known heroes after the Bond character. I can think immediately of Indiana Jones and Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, as well as, of course, all those spoofs from Austin Powers to WWW.
Yet, in every epoch a feeling develops that Bond is balancing on a precipice of relevance. There is talk that the world of the characters are increasingly at odds with the social and cultural imagination of much of the human race. We don't see what the fuss on the screen is all about, outlandish gadgets and fine damsels notwithstanding; we don't recognize the concerns those on the screen are obsessing about. Too much escapism is the charge often made -- though it is probably not the escapism that really irritates us so much, after all "Star Wars" and a dozen other extremely successful motifs are escapist too. It is that the underlying values behind the escapism -- granting that many seek out such values consciously or subconsciously-- are also lost on us.
Bond's sex life, dominion over technology, flawless mastery of vices, his upper-class accent and eclectic intellect all seem to strike a strident, jarring note in a world where such clean-cut individual human attributes are linked only to sufferers of autism. We live after all in an age of ambiguity. But that is a minor source of discord.
Of greater importance are the political values espoused by the life and world of Ian Fleming's masterpiece.
As far as geopolitics go, the Bond novels proved very prescient in some of its storytelling. Long before the notion that non-state actors could challenge the sovereignty of states and oversee global operations designed to force their views on the world's populations, Fleming gave us SPECTRE - the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. An eerie forerunner of today's Al Qaeda.
Concerns that non-state political groups and megalomaniacal individuals acting independently of sovereign states, could develop capabilities in such strategic areas as nuclear and bio-terror devices' use and proliferation were undoubtedly few and far between in the mid-Cold War years of the 60s. Today, they are workaday.
Alongside this world view was another even more contentious one. A Manichean ethics operate in Bond's Universe. There is good and evil, and one has to choose. But the right choice is almost always bound up with patriotic sentiment. Given the relative lack of focus on state-sponsored evil, Bond leaves open the possibility that all patriotism is good. He is an unflinching patriot, who will go to any height, or sink to any depth, to serve his country. To frame this moral picture, his antagonists are portrayed as possessed of the most prodigious unsavoriness. Either their irredeemable traits show up in their physical appearance in the form of an oddity or two, or they are expressed by dark psychological effusions through speech or quirks of routine behavior.
But before one settles too comfortably into the notion of an equal merit of all patriotisms, there is a slightly discomfiting suspicion which the Bond motif encourages through the occasional casting of state-backed villains, Colonel Koskov of the KGB from The Living Daylights for instance, lurking in the background, that such a rosy description of geopolitics may not be actually accurate.
Almost all the villains are "bloody foreigners," from the perspective of Bond's native English-speaking compatriots, such as the American CIA Operative Leiter. Though the nineties saw a slight loosening of this rigor with viewers being presented with the rare specimen of a British agent turned bad guy, Alex Trevelyan in Goldeneye, a hint of this remains to this day.
The subtle vision of a world in which the native English speakers are the keenest perceivers of the threats that face all mankind, though buried under layers of multiple messages in Bond is a sharp one that leaps out if the viewer is familiar with a certain political tradition. The political tradition exemplified by the British Historian: Andrew Roberts, and less so by another Briton, also a Historian, Niall Ferguson.
In economics, it is often called the Anglo-Saxon model, and its many famous critics include the renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs. In this form it emphasizes individualism and limited government, and consequently a deep distrust of the Welfare State and all forms of statist megalomania (ergo: states are not all-powerful).
But in geopolitics it risks parading its own form of hubris. Andrew Roberts and his kindred spirits like to argue that the popular conception of a "West" composed of like-minded democracies, committed to the ideals of the free market, individual liberty and a meritocratic ethic is an oversimplification. They reckon that since the modern era, the English-speaking peoples have been the champions, upholders and defenders of all those traditions that are often uncritically draped over the West as a whole. And that they have done this sometimes in the face of opposition from much of the Western world, not to talk of the non-Western world.
From the First World War through the Cold War to the latest global disruptions in the Balkans, the Middle East and elsewhere, the English-speaking people have stuck to those principles usually referred to as Western, while continental Europe, especially, has vacillated and backtracked and even selfishly colluded with anti-Western interests. Whether it was against fascism or communism or, more recently, against Islamism, the Anglophiles contend, only the English-speaking peoples have demonstrated an unflinching devotion of staying the course of the struggle.
Bond of course does not present itself as a flag-waving, in your face, political tract, but in a world of cynicism about geopolitical morality (sometimes referred to as neo-conservatism), even mild references to such stark patriotism can unsettle less sturdy stomachs. Consequently, accusations of male chauvinism, misogyny, hedonistic elitism and plain snobbery have remained a mainstay of the popular reception to the movies since the 80s, and are unlikely to go away unless the brand is revised wholesale, perhaps beyond recognition. Exactly the sort of thing that wont happen under the prudent Broccolis.
Its fans, as global a community as can possibly exist, love it for what it is, over the top patriotism or not. For three hours of the finest scripted refined violence, they will excuse anything, including even an understated testament to Anglophone moral supremacy and geopolitical prowess. And, given the soapy moral ambivalence on offer elsewhere, who can blame them, if they don't care too much about brazen subtexts?
Maybe in the next installment Bond will even sort out Iraq.
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©2006 OhmyNews
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