JAMES BOND IS NOT A PSYCHO OR A BROKEN MAN; HE’S AN ANTI-HERO

Hello all! I know, I know, I’m getting multi-part blogs set up and haven’t finished them yet. Don’t worry. It’s part of my charm. I pick up and put down half-finished thoughts all the time and eventually, I pile together all the similar thoughts into one picture. It keeps me honest yet flexible with my thinking. A broad net that gives me a good picture, though I wind up falling down cliffs like mountain goats.

Remember when I said that the James Bond film, Goldeneye (1995), had a death laser? I have to print a retraction, and don’t. Visually, it’s a death laser, but mechanically it’s supposed to be an unseen Electro-magnetic Pulse (EMP)—that’s caused by a nuclear reaction. Yes, even small reactions, like what are supposed to be on the satellite via a nuclear warhead, can cause EMPs—which is frankly even more stupid, you already have the warhead in space, just shoot the damn nuke from orbit! Or do what Regan tried to do, and have the satellites be armed with X-ray lasers (those are real!) to shoot down missiles.

Goldeneye broke the Bond franchise, in subtle ways. It was the first James Bond movie that wasn’t based on Ian Fleming’s novels, had Judi Dench as M for 20 years, and it was the first Bond that called him out on his crap. It was in a meek yet playful manner, delivered by Dench’s M, then by Natalya, the Bond-girl of the film. It became more intense in later films. Goldeneye questioned who the man was. Most Bond fans don’t know who the man is, because they never read the novels or the interviews of Ian Fleming. The criticism of Bond is a reflection in the change of the culture. In today’s climate, people are quick to either brush off Bond as a larger-than-life action hero, or to treat him as a kind of headcase, more danger to friends than foes. (The same thing happened with Batman.) Or, to call him a chauvinistic pig who ought to be taken down a peg.

So who was Bond? Ian Fleming, the author of Bond, is on record saying that he based James Bond on a collection of British commandos he knew in WWII, and to some degree on Fleming himself. Namely, his love of smoking, drinking, and fine suits. His name comes from an ornithologist of the time, James Bond, because Fleming, British spy and naval officer, loved bird watching! Fleming even thought the name was so boring for a spy, it was perfect! No one would suspect a simple name like that! Bond’s appearance was based on Hoagy Carmichael, a musician of the time. For reference, take the forehead and beautiful eyes of Sean Connery’s Bond, the jawline, cheeks and chin of Roger Moore’s Bond, then give him a large (but not too large) nose and round, large (but not too large) ears. Fleming also added ‘cold handsomeness’ and a ‘cruel mouth’ to the image.

But for the personality of Bond himself? That can be best described by the George Lazenby Bond, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)—dapper, in a cute kind of way, with a playful-tongue-in-cheek attitude (note: tongue-in-cheek is not the same as a one liner!). In other words, a tall, handsome dork. How did a hostile, ruthless killer charm so many people in his line of work? By appearing harmless. He never needed a real disguise, like with the Mission Impossible crew, because (book)Bond’s pleasant demeanor was his disguise. This runs counter to the raw, obviously virile image from so many Bonds—and you can thank us Americans for that, because we were the target audience of the Bond films. Us Americans are too stupid to understand the British-isms!

Bond himself, from the beginning, was an ambiguous character, and Fleming understood it from the start. Scrub away the action scenes in your mind. Fleming, who wrote his novels in the 50s and 60s, wrote Bond as a man of his time—a dangerous man in an ambiguous world stage. Britian, you must remember, did not de-colonize her empire for decades after the World War, and was trying to hold onto her last scraps of glory. (book)Bond was in a time when Britain was rapidly becoming second fiddle to AMURICA. It showed in the books—book-Bond hated Americans! But you can’t have your suave cash-cow diss the movie audience, could you?

Britian in decline, and forced to be a lesser partner in the USA vs. USSR clash. The danger of book-Bond was heightened, because, in the World War, he could use any method to accomplish the commands of queen and country. In the Cold War? Bond had to use restraint. If film-Bond performed any of the stunts from the films, in the books, he would have caused WWIII. (book)Bond was a caged tiger, let out only with a muzzle. It made the times he did go off-mission for personal vendettas all the more dangerous, but MI6 could not afford to lose him or for him to truly go rogue—if they abandoned Bond, he would be a dangerous man with no purpose, and eager to go to someone who’d give him a mission.

Was he a broken man? A psycho? Well, Fleming himself wrote (book)Bond to not that be likeable, and even described Bond as a “healthy, violent, noncerebral man in his middle-thirties, and a creature of his era. I wouldn’t say he’s particularly typical of our times, but he’s certainly of the times.” Noncerebral, in that (book)Bond didn’t think beyond the scope of the mission; violent? Not out of that ordinary, as much as people want to ignore that fact. Non-typical? Not quite. But of the times? Yes—a man born and bred at the glorious height of the nation, and is, like an endangered animal, slowly creeping towards death. (book)Bond is, in literary terms, a transitional character.

James (book)Bond is a character who is caught up in the change, the irreversible change of a time period. Periods of change are always unhappy times, because there are many losers and few winners. Later, the winners lose anyway, and the many losers vie for supremacy once again. Transitional characters either cause the change, like demi-gods of myth, or are caught up in it, and have to be as dangerous as the environment demands. Do you want a war-like man in times of peace? No, but you do want him when all hell breaks loose. It is a peculiar quirk of the masculine psyche, the need to be as dangerous as the times demand, and then be as gentle, as restrained, as peace demands. Unlike our sex drive, it is not an on-off switch. Some men don’t have the psyche to be fighters and other men don’t have the restraint to live in peace; those men have to be…shepherded. Controlled? Trust me, you can’t control those kind of men—they’ll get mad and break stuff. But give them a direction? A purpose? A way to be useful? Absolutely!

In addition, (book)Bond is an anti-hero, pure and simple. He’s an anti-hero in that he has little qualms except his personal honor, and his few virtues (patriotism and courage, says Fleming). He’s an anti-hero, not because he’s dangerous, but because he’s unpredictable. He’s clever enough to dominate the present moment, always, but has no forward-thinking to speak of—‘What will I do with my life?’ He lives in the moment to accomplish a nearby goal, and has little concern for the past or future. He’ll survive, and keep you alive if he likes you. And he’s slightly dorky gent with disarming charms, too?

So, who hates James Bond? Who tears him down? Why? Sensitive people. Not women, mind you, but sensitive people. People who score high on the trait ‘Neuroticism’ and think too much. (Nerds! The answer is low-testosterone nerds!). I’m sad to say this includes one of my favorite authors and mentor to fantasy, Sir Terry Pratchett, who betrays what he thinks of Bond in his novel Night Watch (2002)*. The main-characters are Sam Vimes, a self-conscious policeman of impeccable standards, and Carcer, a serial killer so unassumingly insane that he thinks he’s innocent of all murder. In the book, Vimes refuses to crack a joke at Carcer’s expense, because, says Vimes/Pratchett, only sociopaths crack one-liners at painful deaths—and this is after Vimes beats Carcer unconscious near the end of the book. I.e., Pratchett was comparing James Bond to sociopaths like Carcer.

[*The book is a mish-mash of crime drama, time travel, and the cyclic nature of poorly planned revolutions.]

Why tear down Bond? For what purpose? I think, for no real purpose, except that Bond offends sensibilities. He’s a reminder that an orderly, safe world is maintained by danger. (Ain’t that a paradox?) Perhaps because Bond reveals inadequacies? Or, perhaps, it is because Bond is morally offensive—that Bond is far from ideal in being the perfect man. (But, whose morals?) Perhaps, because Bond seems like an invulnerable monster? Far from it—his heart breaks when his bride is assassinated, and anyone in any violent profession knows that one moment of bad luck is what kills you, especially if you stay in the game too long. His body will grow old, too.

How to tear down Bond? …Oi vey. The movies did it first. Compared to the outline I’ve provided, (film)Bond is a Saturday-morning cartoon superhero. His antics, translated onto film, caught all the spectacle, but not really the depth of his world. [What? Movies are for stupid people? More like they’re for stupid entertainment.] So, the next step was to make a parody—Austin Powers! Can I say how silly it is that Austin Powers is like James Bond, in respect to the books? Powers is, in fact, charming and disarming—but he’s also ugly, not handsome. He’s a man out of touch with the times, even moreso than Bond, because without his supervillain, Dr. Evil, Powers has nothing to fight or spy against in the modern day! It would be Bond’s worst nightmare. In spite of his silliness, Powers is a dangerously competent secret agent; when he’s stupid, it never jeopardizes the plot! The Austin Powers films captures what it means to be Bond, and Blofeld! Everyone’s too busy laughing at the jokes to notice the intelligent design.

The Daniel Craig era, though, is the one that goes ‘Bond is a broken man,’ full tilt. I have nothing against Craig per se; it’s that his Bond looks like a sad caveman in a tux. There was an attempt to neuter Bond in the Craig era. People, in the first movie of the batch, Casino Royale (2006), it does something rather odd—it keeps the testicle-beating scene from the 1953 book of the same name. This scene was written out of the previous 1967 movie, which is…something so ridiculous that I’m surprised it was a Bond movie*. Anyway, in the 2006 movie, Craig-Bond is captured, stripped naked, tied to a chair, and the bad guy strikes Bond’s testicles with a weighted rope. That…is a very specific image, so specific that the writers had to know what they were doing. Over the rest of the Craig-era films, Bond becomes sadder and sadder; his skills lessen, though, it is not to heighten dramatic tension, as to make him symbolically match with his failures as a person. The more he fails, the more he loses his skills, the more he fails people. Even his home and past are erased in Skyfall (2012), which is arguably the best overall movie of the era.

(*There were 3 people who went by Bond, all as a code name, and the true Bond starts a chastity program to teach his fellow spies how to resist seduction by enemy agents.)

Why did Fleming have the testicle-beating in the 1953 book in the first place? Well, he knew that was Bond’s weakness. You remember the film Goldfinger (1964)? Where Bond is strapped to a table and threatened to be cut in half by a Death Laser? Starting with his, uh, crotch and working up? In the Goldfinger novel, Bond was in the same situation, but was threatened, in a similar manner, by a circular saw. Know you, to cut off Bond’s family tree?

Why this weakness? Because James Bond, like many other anti-heroes, is raw masculine energy without direction. These kind of men do shake up the scene, break stuff, alter the landscape, and thwart the plans of clever schemers, without ever realizing it. They are not lost—being lost implies they want to go somewhere and aren’t there yet. Men like James Bond aren’t lost in the slightest. They are men without self-discipline or fore-thought. Self-control and wisdom, if you like. They will always be useful, but not necessarily constructive. Again, they are not stupid—they are driven, and intelligent, and yet come up short of making anything permanent. James Bond serves the king, but he will never be the king.

Very much like and unlike Conan the Barbarian, him and James Bond, but that is for later.

More to follow!