In the shadow of Moonraker

Fillhand of the sixth moon since the sun's lowest point

Strangely enough, I never considered Moonraker much of a 70s movie. While the year, 79, could be an explanation, as it is for Alien, it isn't in Moonraker's case, which swims in a sea of 70sness.

No, the reason is that I never could see Moonraker through the eyes of its original audience, and there is again a reason for that, which I will be coming to later.

Now, there are few films I can relate to as well as to The End with Myrna Loy and Death on the Nile with Bette Davis. These spell 70s to me like few others. And mainly, because I didn't want to go to bed with Lois Chiles murdered, I decided to watch Moonraker as well.

Yes, it's all the same, even if Roger Moore is getting older. It's still ironic, still filled with societal jabs. The next three Bonds and the last three with Roger Moore are focussed on the Cold War, but Moonraker isn't.

Yet, it is as if Moonraker was pregnant with something. There's something rising up like mist from meadows. A hope, an aim. Although The Spy Who Loved Me had a very similar plot, Cord Jürgens' crew of merry sailors never quite instills the same feeling. Moonraker is more professionally styled, and particularly on the science end.

You can feel that having fun is no longer enough, the outward signs of the 70s are there, but inwardly something new is taking on shape. Science towers over Moonraker, a bridge to a better world, and also the bridge to world domination. You watch Moonraker and you're being programmed to become a nerd, whether you know it or not.

It is boring to see a thing for the first time, because nothing is ever seen for the first time. But it is interesting to see a thing before its time. Having grown up for the most part in the 80s, Moonraker doesn't naturally have this quality for me, for it is, in my experience, surrounded by the things that it foreshadowed.

We were not quite there at the end of the 70s. More efficient means of regulation were necessary, which were soon being developed and are being developed still. As long as digital applications will become slicker, we will still be in the shadow of Moonraker, we will still be following the same programme.

And if thus hypnotised, how about the other parts of the programme, world community and elitism with the implicit promise that the 70s would thus last forever?

Oddly enough, John Boorman took a shot at that already five years prior, two days after I was born. But is the idea dead? It has certainly taken on strange forms after 9/11, first under Bush, then under Obama, but is it dead?

Trump doesn't profess it, but does that mean that it doesn't lie in hiding?

I wouldn't say so. However, with God the dew is followed by the sun and not preserved in precious bottles. Into the long wait of the sleepwalkers breaks the light of an unexpected day. With enough abstraction, Zardoz really fits quite well.