One Bond to find them

The James Bond series quite is the elephant in the room about whose identity the blind argue.

It's interesting to listen to all the documentary material on the 007-DVDs. You learn that Bond is the result of committee work with eyes fixed on popular demands and as such it seems far fetched that the series should actually shape them, but it did.

The phenomenon at hand is a transposition, you take a public fascination and place it not in its own fictitious world, but in a foreign one, the reason for this usually being fear of public stigma.

In the case of James Bond this went full circle: by trying to make a shady genre publicly respectable, the publicly respectable became shady.

People watch James Bond because of the sets, the scenery, the stunts, the gadgets, the villain and his invincible helper and, to a lesser extent, some hard insights into the game behind the scenes.

The only Bond worth watching for the female form's appreciation's sake is Moonraker. Other Bond's just offer the Hollywood standard in this regard or are outright obnoxious, like the tart parade that is Octopussy.

Now, concerning the latter, I'm not referring to the lead. And I'm not saying that all the women appearing as tarts therein really are. As I was watching the documentary on the making of Octopussy I was actually puzzled how they could turn that vigorous, radiating woman into an apparent heroin addict with sunken cheeks; you'd think make-up is for something else.

No, nobody watches Bond to see the Bond girl, except future wannabe Bond girls.

And the committee behind the series knows this full well. The popular stuff is all publicly respectable, but the shady stuff defines the human interactions shown. Though nowadays the audience has grown so accustomed to the shady aspects that it misses them, when they're lacking; a sign, however, that the series has outlived its days.

It's sort of funny to hear Bond girls over the course of a full generation say the same lines: being in men's league, playing the real game, fighting themselves. If you listen carefully you can also hear the changing social environment in their words. In 1964 it was about social standing, there's bitterness and refuge in bravado, while personal considerations are of a pecuniary nature. In 1983 on the other hand there's the slight embarrassment of having lived for this, playing that role, being a bit perplexed of having actually gotten it and wondering what more there is to do.

That's the real effect: there are women, who model themselves on those lines, those lines are a defense and guiding stars at the same time, and there are men who likewise slurp from the shady brew, believing its take on human nature, a phantasy, shady for the reason that it doesn't stand the light of reflected experience.

Feminists can be relieved. Women are not reduced to objects in Bond films, on the contrary, they are elevated to the level of men, though in a purely relative sense, since both of them are bereft of all what distinguishes a normal human being from a psychopath; in line, of course, with the amoral world of secret services.

Considering this it is funny too how Alex Jones is an Anti-Bond. Whereas Bond lets the audience identify itself with the world of secret services, Alex Jones works towards the opposite. Perhaps, if likely from a slightly overly mistrustful point of view, James Bond really is the one bond to find them and in the darkness bind them.

And it makes you think about censorship. How far would the producers have gone, had they not been restrained? And how many people in turn would have let their kids see the series? You almost get the idea that the censor's job is to remove the bitterness from the poison.