The James Bond aesthetic

[fpb]

The Stoic fallacy is said to be the belief that we can always and everywhere achieve the level of morality, intelligence , or insight, that we manage at our best. It occurred to me, watching a James Bond movie (I detest them, but tend to watch the most recent ones for the pleasure of watching Judy Dench), that the whole James Bond genre is based

Comments

[eliskimo]

It's an interesting point you have about the advertising culture of the late 50's and early 60's (although you did not pin it so definatively) and its manifestation in the Bond mythos. However, I think two other words you used are more important: "fantasy" and "aristocratic". Bond is not an aristocrat. However, as part of the character's "cover" of blending in with the "jet set" he becomes a fantasy of an aristocrat. His definative tastes are less plastic because they are the dream of advertisers than they are plastic because they are fake. Bond is a construct. He's been *groomed* to this role. He is no less a creation than any of Q's gadgets. The sauve is part of the mask. Showing curiousity would both draw attention to himself (as people actually engaged with him as a person) and distract him from the task at hand. But imperiously announcing "shaken not stirred" allows his mouth to be engaged and the people around him distracted while his brain is, in fact, elsewhere.

Interestingly, I've heard it said from a friend of mine who a Bond afficionado that Timothy Dalton's protrayal of Bond comes closest to Ian Fleming's creation. I've not seen the two Dalton films, but she cites especially the scene in The Living Daylights where Bond leaps over a hedge to confront an assassin and instead finds a child. He's entire demeanor changes. The child does not belong in that world, and Dalton's Bond knows (and shows) it. But then you see the anger Bond has for someone who would put a child in that position. I would say that at least *hints* at Bond wrestling with an ethical problem - which, of course, belies your use of the word "never."

(BTW, I've heard other people describe Dalton's Bond as "Byronic" - a take on the character other the Bonds have evidentally shied away from even though it's there on the page. The "dark" in Brosnan is all in his hair, and Connery spent entirely too much time cracking one-liners)

[fpb]

These are very interesting comments. It has been a long time since I saw even a bit of the Dalton Bond movies, so I cannot respond to your comments on this subject, but I would point out that there is no mutual exclusion between my seeing the Bond movie world as a result of the imaginary world of advertising, and seeing Bond as a facade placed on a man whose work is killing people. My account is of how that particular imaginative world becomes possible; yours is of the best construction to be placed on the character, granting the character we have. I would point out that mine accounts better for the fantastic (in every sense of the word) efficiency of Bond, his comrades, his enemies, his women, and above all his gadgets.

Incidentally, have you read Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise novels and comics? I regard O'Donnell as a very fine writer indeed.

[eliskimo]

In that case, a counterpoint would be the (non-Bond) movie, Equilibrium (Christian Bale, Angus Macfadyen), where the "fantastic efficiency" of the elite police is not merely taken for granted, but called attention to, underscored, and revealed (throught the "Gun Kata" scenes) as part of the result of attempting to turn a man into a machine (figuratively, of course, not literally - it's not RoboCop).

I wonder though, if the reader/viewer is not meant on some level to see through the "perfection" of Bond's world. That it is not meant to highlight futility the same way the computer scenarios of MAD in War Games do? In that case, the ones who do not seen through it are fools. So the creators of "Inspector Gadget" (more the cartoon, than the awful movie) and the Bourne series get it, but the creators of all the Schwartzenager (or worse, Segal or VanDamme) action movies (where the hero also does not suffer fatigue, jamming machinery or less-than-fabulous women) do not.

Thanks for the tip about O'Donnell; I'll have to check him out.

Modesty Blaise

[lametiger]

I used to read the Modesty Blaise comic strip years ago, I think only in the newspaper in Hong Kong. I don't specifically recall ever encountering it here in the US. I also later on read a couple of the books (again in HK), but my general impression is that Ms Blaise is virtually unknown here in the US. Certainly my local library here does not have any books by O'Donnell. My impression was that (in sexual mores for certain) she was kind of a femaie mirror image of James Bond. I realize this is an oversimplification, and it has been long enough since I read the books that I don't feel really qualified to analyze the similarities and differences. That could be a fascinating followup analysis if our host would be interested in writing it.

Re: Modesty Blaise

[fpb]

Maybe. I am a fan and I have read everything - all 96 comics stories and 13 books (11 of novels, 2 of short stories). So I might write a well-informed article, at least. The thing is that I don't know if I can find anything very original to say. As for being unknown in the USA, except for comics fans, I think you may be right. It's kind of weird how some enormously internationally successful comics seem to somehow stop at the American border; Asterix is probably the most remarkable instance - all the world and his brother adore it, except for the American public.

Re: Modesty Blaise

[dr_dgo]

I recall seeing the comic in the local newspaper here in the us. It has been so long that I do not even remember in what city, but it was decades ago.
As for James Bond, the movies in general only have the title in common with the novels.