On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 10:22 AM Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 1, 2022 at 9:23 PM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > >> 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. >> > > I'm not going to tell people what they should and should not enjoy. I have > been developing these thoughts about the Bond franchise but I haven't > shared them and I see my argument needs work so I'll be less of a scold. > > The thing I have become aware of, mostly watching European movies in the > time of lockdown, is that there were films being made that went against > Bond's world. Maybe they never made it beyond art theaters and college > towns. If I'm sensitive to anything in this, it's not the existence of Bond > movies, it's the idea that the movies are good clean fun and shouldn't be > evaluated. > > Le Carré seems to me for adults in a way Bond is for teenage boys. > This year I showed my middle school students The Maltese Falcon, because it is a favorite of mine and because it exposes them to something completely outside what they know and enjoy. And in a classroom setting, a halfway decent teacher has to prepare students to watch something, and let them know that what was acceptable at one point in time is not necessarily acceptable now. Like James Bond, Sam Spade is a flawed hero, mistreats and uses every woman he meets, smokes too much, drinks too much, and yet he IS the hero, in spite of his flaws. Getting my students to accept that is difficult but not impossible. And I suspect if I were to show an early Bond movie to them, I’d first have to do quite a bit of preparation as well. In larger terms, history forces us to deconstruct every person and every major event. The founding fathers were slave owners. The puritans who set up the first colonies were right wing fundamentalists who make the MAGA cult seem liberal by comparison. And Christopher Columbus…! The less said about his personality the better. But being able to understand their flaws yet appreciate individual achievements done by otherwise contemptible people is at the core of how we critically examine the past, whether in terms of history or media. I fully understand those who reject the Bond character, because he is of a different time with very different sensibilities. As I said, rewatching some of the earlier films is problematic to me, but not enough to reject the entire franchise, and not enough that I want the character totally rewritten into something he isn’t. > -- > 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/CAJE-FiHgxB8gisr6_t7175zM1r3dkazS04c7SGOxth2oTLH4ZA%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiHgxB8gisr6_t7175zM1r3dkazS04c7SGOxth2oTLH4ZA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- 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]. 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