Since last Monday’s (3/5/12) presentation of Casino Royale I have finished reading the 1953 novel and have finished watching the 2006 Albert R. Broccoli’s movie production, starring Daniel Craig as James Bond and Eva Green as Vesper. I found the group’s presentation and Dr. Wexler’s monitoring and interjecting extremely informative. They started the discussion regarding the technology aspects and positing that technology is not created to necessarily serve mankind, but rather being served for profit, and that weapons of technology are never the cause and answer to the problem.
Dennis started the presentation suggesting that Ian Fleming was quite misogynistic, exemplified for example when the novelist portrays Vesper’s dress pulled over her head exposing her nakedness from the hips down in the simulated kidnapping. The time lapse between the novel and the movie is twenty-five years and a positive twist of having M—Bond’s boss—as a woman indicates improved perceptions and reflections of females. Indeed, Judy Drench plays a formidable task master in the movie, possessing both harsh disciplinary leadership in supervising Bond and empathy and compassion for him when Vesper drowns herself. I thought the novel was superb; however, the film was perhaps the best action/spy thriller that I have ever seen.
The presenters did an excellent job of correlating and defining structuralism, post-structuralism, and post-modernism with the novel and film(s), and Dr. Wexler did an excellent interjecting some salient points. Basically, from what I got out of the presentation is that in the beginning of the novel, Bond is quite the structuralist: he knows he is the good guy, the hero, while Monsieur Le Chiffre and his henchman are the bad guys/villains, not to mention SMERSH and their Soviet Block’s assassins. Part of the structuralism theory that meaning of something is defined by what is not—its opposite. And Bond knows his place in the world rock-solidly. However, his dogmatism shifts and weakens after his torture, particularly at the nursing home convalescence in his conversation with Mathis. Philosophical ambivalence and uncertainty have crept in. This correlates with part of Derrida’s post–structuralism: there is never a moment of presence; meaning is always changing and deferred. The following conversation between Bond and Mathis in Fleming’s novel exemplifies this:
‘Now,’ he looked up again at Mathis, ‘that’s all very fine. The hero kills two
villains, but when the hero Le Chiffre starts to kill the villain Bond and the villain Bond knows he isn’t a villain at all, you see the other side of the medal. The villains and heroes get a mixed up.
`Of course,’ he added, as Mathis started to expostulate, ‘patriotism comes along and makes it seem fairly all right, but this country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I’d been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damned near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts. (Fleming p 135)
Bond then seems to recover his unequivocal identity standing on firmer ground and, hence, structuralist mode later in the conversation:
‘So,’ continued Bond, warming to his argument, ‘Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm and goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.’ (Fleming 137)
The presenting group also exemplified what the post-modernist, Jean Baudrillard, would consider “Simulacra” in both showing black exploitation movies of the 1970s and also the movie Shaft (which I actually saw when it came out and loved the black hero character), which was subsequently incorporated into other movies, including James Bond’s movies. In the novel, the torture of Bond is a metaphor for the emasculation of the British Empire. The 2006 film still has Vesper as a double agent and still committing suicide; however, in the novel, when Bond says to M “the bitch is dead now,” he does it with more finality (182). The film reflects a more human Bond who is crushed by Vesper’s love, duplicity, and suicide, and his “the bitch is dead now” to M is not said with visceral anger but with painful rationalization.
The film modified the “Others” characters, portraying the opening villain as black, and also the hotel assassins as black, and the motive to not only get La Chiffre neutralized and talking, but to keep the gambling money out of the hands of terrorists. Also, the card game in the casino became easier to follow in the film as they changed it from the complicated banco to the better known game of poker. Also, the near ending scene with Bond trying to get the money back with a shootout and Vesper killing herself was tremendously dramatic and exciting. The novel’s account of Vesper’s suicide is more sentimental and thus painful for the reader.
The second part of my reflection deals with our reading for the week of Mcdonald’s Chapter 3-“The Sex Comedy and Chapter 4 “The Radical Romantic Comedy.” In “The Radical Romantic Comedy” McDonald refers to Annie Hall, (1970s) Harold and Maude (1971), and The Graduate (1967) as a departure from the Romantic Comedies of the 1950’s and early 1960’s, the reason being women were now using birth control pills and the sexual mores of the USA had opened up. Actually, the Kinsey report on Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female in 1953 made the USA look at female sexuality quite differently, laying the groundwork for “the development of the sex comedy” (McDonald 40). Most of the Sex comedies and Romantic Comedies and Radical Romantic Comedies that McDonald mentions I saw growing up. I vaguely recall either reading a book on the Kinsey Report or seeing a movie on, and for me it was of prurient interest. And of course during the early fifties Playboy began to be publishes (1953) which was also a radical departure from magazines in highlighting nude pictures of women and articles pertaining to “indoor activities of which sex was only one” (41), Amazingly, it was not until 1953 that the word “virgin” first appeared in movies as a legitimate word.
A characteristic has remained inherent in sex comedies as “the thrust of the narrative is about sex and the idiots it makes of otherwise rational people” 45). Most people, including myself, can relate to that. Up into recently, the main motivation in the movies for men was to have sex before marriage, whereas the women wanted to wait until they were married. However, with the rise of birth control pills and the feminist movement, that is not a relevant issue anymore, and in fact, the recent trend over the last twenty years is to apply the sex comedy to younger people—teenagers, as exemplified in such movies as American Pie. During the 1950’s and early 1960s the “good women” were the ones that held out for sex and opposed to the more eager women. McDonald mentions, and I saw it in 1963, Frank Sinatra’s character (in Come Blow Your Horn) juggling around sexually with three beautiful women. I remember seeing it as a fifteen year old, but quite frankly I don’t remember my exact reaction. I vaguely remember thinking Sinatra was complicating his life unnecessarily and hence making things difficult for himself. (Except for inconsistent intervals in my life, I’ve always felt more comfortable being monogamous with one woman).
In the typical movie during this time, the abstaining, and, hence, “good” woman would invariably wind up with the man. In retrospect, these movies were hypocritical and misogynistic, creating an uneven sexual playing field for females in favor of men. Now of course with HIV AIDS pervasive it changes the whole complexion of sex comedies, giving casual sex and especially promiscuity an unreal apprehensive tone. In fact when I see a drama or comedy portraying unbridles sex I feel it lacks the verisimilitude of the times.
However, McDonald posits that “the particular context in which the mid-century sex comedy flourished ended when the contraceptive pill became an accepted fact within the media” (55) and the “sex being talked about, plotted and lied for, but never actually enacted, lost its impetus” (55). Some filmmakers during the latter sixties “touted ‘free love’ and sexual libertarianism. Both chapters delve into the importance of Annie Hall as the most influential film of the radical romantic comedy genre as a “work most conscious iconoclasm, it breaks with many generic conventions, most notably the happy ending”( 59) Again, ninety percent of the films the author illustrates in his book I had seen growing up and experienced the changing nuances and transitions.
Since Dr. Wexler’s class will probably see parts of Annie Hall tomorrow and it is a discussion topic, I will buy the movie online momentarily. The story line of The Graduate and The Heartbreak Kid were movies that would be too radical for the fifty’s conservatism. That is why they are referred to as radical romantic comedies. In the first, Dustin Hoffman’s character has an affair with the girl’s that he falls in love with mother. And in the latter, the protagonist dumps his newlywed Jewish wife for a Gentile Goddess on their honeymoon. That was the first time I had seen Cybil Sheppard, who plays the Gentile Goddess, and she was very sexy. Finally, the author mentions that there has not been a true conventional movie about gay and lesbian comedies, only movies that touch on the subject and skirt the actual realistic plots.
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