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James Bond and the Guardian Feature Writer


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Those of you that read my post a few weeks back about the 'rock chick' sent by the Guardian newspaper to discredit the practice of opera going, will know that I'm no fan of the Guardian's feature writers. I'm clearly not alone as another Ballet Talker wrote a very amusing send up in typical Guardian style.

Over the weekend this gem appeared written by a gentleman called Theo Hodson, a writer whose main interests appear to be sex (though probably only in abstract form) and religion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...gender-thriller

I'll admit to not being a particular lover of the Bond movies as I lost interest when Sean Connery relinquished the role, I loved the books though and had read most of them by the time I was thirteen. Surely no one takes Bond seriously? Isn't it all about escapism and that warm glow you get when the bad guy gets his just desserts?

Lighten up, Mr Hodson, it's all just fiction.

By the way this piece is now on Comment is Free, the online section where readers every bit as peculiar as the Guardian's writers have the chance to react to selected articles. Scroll down to the comment by waltz - very funny.

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Thanks for your posts, Mashinka. Nowadays, I suppose, ALL phenomena are fair game for extremely s-e-r-i-o-u-s pontification, drawing huge social and political lessons from what you to be considered cultural ephemera.

He does have a point, though, doesn't he? At least in the following:

This is the key contradiction that fuels Ian Fleming's creation: Bond combines the sexual revolution with old-world order, English self-discipline. He promises that the brave new world of sexual pleasure-seeking can be combined with duty, responsibility, order.

Isn't that the lesson preached by British papers like The Sun, the sort sometimes called "right-wing populist"?

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Hi, Mashinka. No, Connery has never been replaced, but on the other hand he was pretty much phoning it in after Thunderball, so it was time for the parting of the ways. The series had begun running out of ideas and source material that gave it its initial impetus, and that process would have continued even if Connery had stuck around.

Chivalry is a tradition that encourages us to admire the sublimation of male desire rather than its indulgence.

I don't know about that. Two stories of adultery are central to chivalric legend, and a few exceptions like Galahad aside, the knights of the Round Table saw a lot of action in the bedroom.

That said, Bond's bimbo legion is pretty much indefensible, although even as I type that it occurs to me that Ursula Andress was no such thing. And Bond is changing with the times - Eva Green in Casino Royale is a new kind of Bond girl.

Mr. Hodson seems to be upset chiefly because Ian Fleming makes him think impure thoughts.......

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I'll admit to not being a particular lover of the Bond movies as I lost interest when Sean Connery relinquished the role, I loved the books though and had read most of them by the time I was thirteen. Surely no one takes Bond seriously? Isn't it all about escapism and that warm glow you get when the bad guy gets his just desserts?

Lighten up, Mr Hodson, it's all just fiction.

Thanks for your posts, Mashinka. Nowadays, I suppose, ALL phenomena are fair game for extremely s-e-r-i-o-u-s pontification, drawing huge social and political lessons from what you to be considered cultural ephemera.

He does have a point, though, doesn't he? At least in the following:

This is the key contradiction that fuels Ian Fleming's creation: Bond combines the sexual revolution with old-world order, English self-discipline. He promises that the brave new world of sexual pleasure-seeking can be combined with duty, responsibility, order.

Isn't that the lesson preached by British papers like The Sun, the sort sometimes called "right-wing populist"?

I've never cared that much about either the Bond movies or the books, except for Connery--but I like him in anything; he's just as suave in 'Marnie' as he is as Bond. I do agree with everything bart says except I don't think it's 'cultural ephimera' in any broad sense, because too influential on mores and modes; and think the quote he makes from the article is very good and says it well. I'd only want to know if Fleming was definitely the first to make it so explicit. It does seem to have been made very specifically so, as part of what we think of as the huge difference from the 50s that the 60s are/were. And it is that very brand of 'escapism' that does make it of social and ideological importance. Noel Coward's plays are usually about the sexual romping of the idle rich (as in 'Design for Living'), Fleming may be a more macho, somewhat more crass and Playboy Magazine progression from that and other kinds of work which flaunt permissiveness.

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Noel Coward's plays are usually about the sexual romping of the idle rich (as in 'Design for Living'),

The leading characters of Design for Living are not rich. As I recall offhand, one is an artist, another a playwright, the third a decorator, and at the beginning of the play they have not yet hit the big time, although they are successful later. But they all have occupations. (I suppose you could call The Vortex a play about the idle rich but it hardly ‘flaunts permissiveness.’)

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I couldn't agree more with what bart says.

Nowadays, I suppose, ALL phenomena are fair game for extremely s-e-r-i-o-u-s pontification, drawing huge social and political lessons from what you to be considered cultural ephemera.

It must be open season for Bond right now, here's a similar attack from the BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7694801.stm

The following has always puzzled me as well:

The dots are never really joined. If these baddies have already got enough money to build massive subterranean bases and purchase matching jumpsuits for their armies of henchmen, why do they carry on plotting?

On the other hand it's a bit unfair to hate Bond because he likes a drop of Dom Perignon, most of us do and as for the supposed xenophobia, he doesn't have to deal with British baddies because that's what the police do, he's a spy so consequently he sorts out the foreign villains. All this is persuading me that perhaps I ought to go to the new Bond film, I'm told Daniel Craig is very good. He certainly looks nice in swimming trunks (inverted sexist remark).

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Articles like this come out every time there's a new Bond release, or at least that's my impression.

I think that Bond was always a little bit camp even in the early days, though, wasn't he ? and reflective of attitudes that wouldn't pass muster now.

Regarding plot lines - I wonder if it's really fair to take a really bad Bond flick (and there are quite a few of them) such as Die Another Day or Moonraker (although I find the latter perversely watchable) and write about them as if they were all like that.

As for product placement - like bad or nonexistent plots, it didn't start with Bond. I think the earliest really blatant examples of it began appearing in the Sixties, although I could be wrong about that, and it gets worse and worse.

I haven't seen the new one, but Casino Royale was pretty good, Mashinka. And in spite of all this talk about Bond and his women, it had some oddly homoerotic undertones.

(I suppose you could call The Vortex a play about the idle rich but it hardly ‘flaunts permissiveness.’)

(It belatedly occurs to me that Elyot and Amanda in 'Private Lives' do qualify as idle rich - although in a funny way that play is as much about fidelity and enduring affection as well as playing around, now that I think about it.)

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