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 on a bizarre kind of physical version of the Stoic fallacy. I have not read any of the novels and don't intend to, and at any rate the points I intend to make are exclusively to do with the movies. But in the movies, it is an absolute law that everything always works, and works at its highest pitch of efficiency. In real life, anyone who relies on gadgets and guns as Bond does would have been long dead - the first time that his Aston Martin's engine started sputtering, or his Uzi jammed. And the same goes for that other machine that is the human body: Bond may be wounded from time to time, but he is never fatigued, feverish, suffering from indigestion, or just out of sorts. The same goes for his women, and even his enemies. His enemies rely on gadgetry at least as much as he does, and I do not remember a single time when their gadgets failed before he got his hands on them. As for the women, we all know what the James Bond world is like. When he happens to be on a Caribbean beach, it is Ursula Andress who rises from the waves - not the much more likely holiday-maker from Edgbaston or Connecticut. Nobody could possibly imagine him having bad sex, either. And even contraception seems to share the same uncanny magical power of total efficiency: if condoms broke on James Bond as often as they do in real life, he would have enough bastards to staff his own kindergarten branch of MI6.

Along with this goes a peculiarly narrow background. And I do not merely mean that Bond, his friends and his enemies all live in an atmosphere of limitless luxury, but that his luxury, and the apparently limitless free time he has between missions, do not seem to add up to the daily life of a real sophisticate. Bond flaunts his sophistication ("shaken, not stirred"), but real sophisticates know that many of the world's true delights, its best foods and drinks, furniture and accessories, come from places like small French farms or artisan shops in some small by-way of a large town. Bond is never, even by mistake, seen to taste a cottage-made Bavarian cheese or a little-known Sicilian wine. All his goods are branded. And along with this goes a most surprising lack of curiosity. Bond always knows what he likes and what he wants, but he never has to learn at all. Food lovers try new things, or exchange the details of unusual places and products found by chance. They extol their new finds to each other, and sometimes disagree about them. The mere pursuit of pleasure in taste becomes an adventure. We never witness this kind of enthusiasm or of curiosity in Bond. And yet we are meant to take his sophistication quite seriously. Whatever else the films may mock, when it comes to the aristocratic excellence of Bond's tastes, they are in dead earnest. It is, after all, another feature of that way of always functioning at the top of one's ability, that I pointed out as a central feature of the stories.

Shall I tell you where I think all this very peculiar world comes from? I think it is the aesthetics of advertising; and, more specifically, of TV advertising. Advertising had of course long been around, but it was with the onset of TV that it became more than a matter of individual luscious pictures and suggestions. Tv gives it a dimension in time; extends and deepens the sense of space and environment one can already get from well-designed magazine ads; and, above all, makes advertising a daily, ever-present dimension to life. Every three quarters of an hour spent watching the news, a movie, or Strictly come dancing, come with one quarter of an hour of two-minute spots. And it has been so for most if not all of all our lives. It is, after all, no coincidence that the Bond movie phenomenon began in 1962, after a decade in which TV had affirmed itself as the world's one true mass medium, beyond newspapers, magazines, cinema and radio.

The kind of human perfections shown in the Bond heroes, heroines and villains, are the kind of perfections presented in a two-minute ad. It is not only that the product that is advertised always works: it is the whole background that is error-free. The furniture is dustless, the colours bright, the house dog a beautiful Lassie, drink sparkles from cut glass, heat comes from beautiful open fires fed by handsome logs. There is no effort, no strain, but neither is there any curiosity or any of the keen, delighted exchange of experience and suggestions that is the substance of the conversation of people who really like food or drink, dress or cars or overseas travel. A name is mentioned, and that is enough: the guarantee of a finished experience.

Another feature of the James Bond universe is the moral and intellectual timidity of this mass murder fantasy. Bond is often said to be a Cold War fantasy, but if it is, it is a fantasy in which existing conditions suit everybody very well. The only fear it entertains is that the status quo should really be rudely shaken. Bond kills dozens if not hundreds of enemies in every movie, but he has never once dealt with a serious political or ethical problem. He has, as I pointed out, never had a child, bastard or legitimate; he has never fought an enemy who really represented one of the great dangers of the time. Indeed, he often seems on good terms - or at least, on terms of mutual understanding - with Soviet, Chinese or other enemy agents; most ridiculously, in Die Another Day, we see an all but heroic North Korean colonel. In James Bond's world, the existing powers, however much they may dislike each other, will always ultimately agree to collaborate to destroy any upstart, troubing alien growth.

This is only psychologically understandable, within that world of incurious, stable, branded elegance I described. The real escapism in James Bond is an escapism from troubling questions, difficult situations, change. The world suits us just fine as it is.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. There's not much to James Bond.

About the sad version of sophistication that it presents, I think it's a matter of talking down to an audience that the movie makers (or Ian Fleming himself?) thinks couldn't appreciate the more individualized and truly discerning pleasures you describe. They cynically think--or perhaps they themselves also think--that everyone knows how marvelous [expensive name-brand good] is, whereas who will appreciate the artisan bread or the clear air from the small bed-and-breakfast in such-and-such a location.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but the public has been talked down to for as long as there has been a publishing industry. My question was, how did this particular phenomenon arise here and now, and does it have anything more to tell us about society at large? I am a culture historian, and that is how I think. And I'm afraid that what it has to say could even be scary - as for instance in that the mental arteries of many people may be more clogged than we thought, given what I said about the fact that all that Bond seems to be about is preserving the world as it is, with no ifs and no buts.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Do you think the desire to preserve the world as it is represents an innate human conservatism? (I don't mean political conservatism; I mean the sort of conservatism children demonstrate when they prefer to stick to the same flavor of ice cream or they want a familiar story over and over in preference to something new, or a walk they know they like by the river as opposed to a new walk, elsewhere.) I'm wondering if some parts of society are so afraid that change means something worse than what they have that they're willing to preserve it at all costs rather than try to improve it.

Is it because change is painful, and it's hard to trust that the eventual improvement will be worth the pain? (And, in some cases, it's not, though in others it definitely is.)

When are you calling "Now," Kimosabe?

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

Heretic! You malign my Super-hero! It's an hour Time Out in the comfy chair for you!

Bond is a fantasy for all the reasons you describe - everything works just the way we want it to. There's no reason to grow because the teen fantasy world exists to have fun in - no one is ever sad or uncertain or weak or wrong. Not know what to do with a cork the first time you order wine? What would Bond do? Not know what to do with a lesbian the first time you date her? Bond and Pussy had a roll in the hay and she came out straight, pro-American Gold Standard, and still blonde. Heck, Tracy Draco was a suicidal party girl (just like Brittany, and Anna Nicole) and all he needed to do to cure her was let her pay off a gamling debt with sex (with him, of course).

He's not human - he's a super-hero. We know he didn't listen to the Beatles or watch tv. I tell you, even super heros with ice-palaces have tvs. Not Bond.)

There are no kids because kids are a grownup responsability and have no place in a child's fantasy land. (And as far as the kids go, you forgot the original Casino Royale, where David Niven had a child with Matta Hari. You'd like that. It's an awful movie, but it is funny.)

This isn't a new cultural phenomenon - it's just the current trappings on Beowulf, King Arthur, and the Lone Ranger. The hero's children are not the focus of the story because a child is the hero. M is the parent. Q is the parent. The big bad outside world needs to be caged - and Bond does it and then comes home to be fed room-service and be tucked into bed with his BondGirl, to sleep and dream sweetly until it's time to wake and save the world.

The heroic adult who gets up and goes to work at a non-glamerous paying job isn't the Bond Fantasy with all the consequence-free mayhem. The guy who respects and talks to a woman, gets to know and love her before he even suggests physical intimacy isn't the Rape Fantasy with all it's consequence guilt-free pleasure. You can't draw scholastic paralels between two skewed planes. It's just for fun - there is no depth to Bond. We'd drown. Drowning isn't much fun.

Re: When are you calling "Now," Kimosabe?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a supwerhero writer/artist/creator, I do not agree with your definition of superheroes. Superheroes eff up. Superheroes go bad. Superheroes die. And (one thing which alone would separate Bond from any superhero) superheroes don't kill people. I think, in fact, that the relationship is pretty much the opposite. Superhero fiction meditates on real issues through fantastic situations. James Bond type fiction creates an unreal world with realistic components.

Re: When are you calling "Now," Kimosabe?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, your definition of the heroic adult is exactly parallel to Jack Kirby's description of Captain America. Kirby is the greatest American artist probably of all time, certainly of the twentieth century, and Captain America is his own creation, so he ought to know what he is about. Capt.America is, in his ordinary life, an "ordinary Joe" - that is Kirby's own words - who makes a mess of his relationships, watches TV, and sometimes goes out with a few friends in the evening. Not Bond material.

But what I said to asakiyume counts here, too. I am a culture historian, and what interested me is not so much why this shallow and unpleasant character is what he he is, as why he appeared practically full-fledged in 1962 and remained the same ever since. The thing that interested me most was his connection with the aesthetic of TV advertising.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Conservatism is human, and within some proper bounds, healthy. However, what I find unpleasant in the Bond kind of conservatism is the way he is always making deals and reaching working understandings with the agents of Soviet Russia, Red China, North Korea - countries which are not only hostile but which are well known to be criminal towards both their own people and the rest of the world. It is not that he is fighting for the world as it is; it is that he is fighting for the corrupt world as it is. Tyrannies and mass murder are part of the order he defends.

Arghh - I would argue superheros with and expert

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

Would you believe I was going to use "comic-book," instead of "superhero" but said to myself, "Oh no, FPB loves comics. He knows all about them. Choose another word."

I'm no expert. I didn't know any superheroes went bad or made mistakes. Except for Captain America, who I honestly still don't know, I didn't know any died. It's counter-intuitive for me. What's the "Super" designation for if they're not bullet-proof?

But you see the issue - Bond isn't a character who grows or changes. The latest Bond series is being set up to do that - Casino Royale's "new 007" character actually looked mortal. There was a shadow of doubt he'd survive. Bond gets tortured, and bleeds, and Vesper hurt him - a far cry from my Goldfinger hero. This Bond wasn't always having fun. The bad guys didn't die neatly in industrial laser accidents or shark-tanks. It was more interesting. More real. But not necessarily more fun.

I'll assert again that a good story isn't always deep, and Bond is a comic book hero. Uber-Evil is always around to fight - Specter and terrorists and drug dealers never go away. They just assume a new identity, same as the Batman's foes.

And Bond isn't a mundane murderer. He is as special as someone with a radioactive spider-bite. Bond is "007" and that "00" is a "License to Kill". He's not a murderer - he's Commander Bond, a soldier. He doesn't kill his enemies, he kills for Britain. He is a special soldier who fights off the declared battlefield in wars that are not about gaining territory and don't follow the Geneva Convention Rules.

It's not unusual to have heroes kill people and not suffer over it. Did Luke angst about all the soldiers he killed on the Death Star? Did Princess Leia have nightmares about the torture she went through there? Guilt and shame are not part of a child's fantasy world. Their question is, "who gets the bad guy?" Bond's answer is, "Me." Bond has the inevitable comic rematch with the baddies. Bond's enemies may look more human, but they're just as comical when they're Specter or Russia or terrorists or drug dealers. No one is unaware they're the bad guy - they're bad and loving it. Every single one of them, from Q who builds the exploding pen to Fatima Blush who dies from it, is as shallow as Bond.

Austin Powers is the definitive dissertation of the Bond-hero. He puts all the silliness - from "modern" culture to family life, motivations, and dead extras - out for examination. That's the fun of it - no judgments. I can still enjoy Bond and Austin and Napoleon Solo and Mr Steed (and David Niven).

I wish you didn't take this so seriously - it's like getting bent out of shape over Mary Sue. She brings a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. She has a purpose and deserves to live. (Not in every story, but enough to be courteous to her when we pass.)

[theswordmaiden.livejournal.com]

You use the word "fantasy" a lot and I think it's spot on. I've heard the Bond movies described as just a male fantasy, a wet dream, and that too many people take it seriously. It's also good you just mean the movies, because I think in the books he takes a lot more beatings and fatigue, etc., and has at least one illegitimate child.

Re: Arghh - I would argue superheros with and expert

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, I did "get bent out of shape over Mary Sue". You might like to check the following two fanfics, they have got good reviews:
http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/fabio_p_barbieri/MSAH01a.html
http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/fabio_p_barbieri/TSOTB01a.html

But seriously: I do not take James Bond "seriously" to the extent that I would fight about its merits. The "seriousness" you perceive is somewhat different. I know that it is, in effect, cheap entertainment. What interests me is, one, what is it that leads people to pay money to see the movies, and, two, why this particular kind of entertainment has appeared at this time in the history of our culture. Take, by way of comparison, an ordinary bout of flu. To you, it would be a petty nuisance to be got through in a few days. But to a research physician specializing in influenza, it might well be of very great interest; not on account of its actual impact in ordinary lives, which might be small enough, but because it might have great impact in his/her research. That is my position with respect to the James Bond movies. They are an interesting phenomenon, not so much by themselves, as for how they fit into a bigger picture.

In particular, I am interested in the cumulative effect of the sort of media communication that we do not notice - the steady flow of (say) newspaper articles and editorials, advertising, soap operas, quiz shows, etc. etc. That is why I found the connection between TV advertising and James Bond movies of particular interest: it was, to me, symptomatic of the way that a certain kind of communication, that may seem irrelevant in itself and to wash over the reader/listener/spectator without leaving traces, may, in the long run, have a vast effect on the culture.

Mention of superheroes complicates matters. To compare them to James Bond movies alone is unfair; it would be more to the point to compare them to the whole field of spy movies - including undoubted masterpieces such as many Hitchcock movies and The Third Man. Of course, most of them are negligible. But the best of them - work by the likes of Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, Steve Gerber - even Frank Miller before he went insane - are works of genius, works of art comparable to the best in any other field. And what is more, I have worked in that field myself, so I am defensive about them. Let me put it this way: I take Jack Kirby seriously - the Bond movies not remotely as much.

I would, however, beg you not to get scared merely because I get intense about something. It does not actually mean that I am going to jump all over you. And there might even be some interesting discussion to be done somewhere in there.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And, I once read, he gets married and shows signs of getting older - both in the same novel. Except that Fleming copped out and had his wife killed. If I had one penny for every fictional hero who lost a wife or a bride-to-be early in their relationship, I could buy my own flat in central London.

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

A very minor quibble: I think in one or two Bond films, the bad guy is definitively the Soviets or the Red Chinese (FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE springs to mind). But your point is well taken; there are a number of films where Bond cooperates with the Soviets (SPY WHO LOVED ME) or they are depicted merely as competitors in a game (FOR YOUR EYES ONLY).

Do you see any parallel between the Bond fantasy and the old 'stiff-upper-lip' adventurer of the British Empire? The soldier of the Empire who goes to exotic places and does exotic things for Queen and Country?

I was wondering how much of the appeal of Bond movies was a nostalgia for a certain type of boy's adventure tails of the previous generation, but with a spy rather than a soldier or big game hunter as the main character.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

To be sure about the descent of the Bond character from previous ultra-manly and violent Empire-boosters, I would have to read the novels, which I at present I do not plan to do. (Of course, if I find them cheap in a charity shop, I'll get them.) The movie incarnation does seem to have something to do with the worse kind of imperial fiction: the tendency to mass-kill enemies thanks to the wonders of technology - the airplane and the Gatling gun were staples of imperial boys' fiction - and a fairly ridiculous brand of invulnerability. You may remember how Dorothy L.Sayers characterized Sexton Blake, the poor man's Sherlock Holmes, in one of her detective novels:

"It beats me," said Wimsey, "the way these policemen give
way over a trifling accident. In the Sexton Blake book that my
friend Ginger Joe has just lent me, the great detective, after
being stunned with a piece of lead-piping and trussed up for
six hours in ropes which cut his flesh nearly to the bone, is
taken by boat on a stormy night to a remote house on the coast
and flung down a flight of stone steps into a stone cellar. Here
he contrives to release himself from his bonds when the villain
gets wise to his activities and floods the cellar with gas. He is
most fortunately rescued at the fifty-ninth minute of the elev-
enth hour and, pausing only to swallow a few ham sandwiches
and a cup of strong coffee, instantly joins in a prolonged
pursuit of the murderers by aeroplane, during which he has to
walk out along the wing and grapple with a fellow who has just
landed on it from a rope and is proposing to chuck a hand-
grenade into the cockpit. And here is my own brother-in-law—
a man I have known for nearly twenty years—giving way to
bad temper and bandages because some three-by-four crook
has slugged him one on his own comfortable staircase."
(Murder Must Advertise, chapter 7)

One does not have to have made a study of sensational literature to see the kinship between this sort of stuff and James Bond's kind of physicality.