On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 at 9:57 AM Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote: > The more I think of Bond, both in the novels and the movies, the less I > like him. I'll grant there's a limit to how much we can judge characters > from another era by today's standards but Bond is drawn to appeal to > adolescent boys. He embodies the worst of white attitudes at the end of the > colonial era and he is an out-and-out misogynist. > I now I am supposed to agree with you about this, but I don’t. The western world was racist, misogynist and imperialistic in the 1960s. That sucked. I was a kid in that decade, and even I knew that’s how it was, and how much it sucked - I didn’t need Twitter in the second decade of the 21st century to enlightenment me. But I don’t expect the cultural products from the mid century to be censored or bowdlerized, not just because that would mar the product, but because it would also cover up the fact of the transgressive customs. See recent thread on the Julia Child mini series.
I am a huge fan of Le Carre’, who is positioned as the anti Bond, but I find I can enjoy both. I am not a fan of the Roger Moore era, but the Bonds that followed were increasingly less chauvinistic, and even somewhat less ethnocentric. The idea of a small group of intelligence service officers who are allowed to make crucial life and death decisions affecting international relations with potentially catastrophic consequences is I think an inherently interesting set-up, and while Bond may not be as cynical and world weary as George Smiley, he often knows enough to be almost as distrustful of his own side, and of careerist conformity and ass kissing, as he is of the other side. That’s not bad. -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkY%2BNBXrD%3DcF1ua8YPFB2fAuxGrth%3D1VMxpzkqEtVx0z%2BCA%40mail.gmail.com.
