Shaken and stirred
And now we are age five, possibly six.As a young child, I fell into the revolving arms of James Bond, and stayed there.
When 007 movie marathons play, I move inexorably towards the television, like one of the zombies in Live and Let Die. The theme music acts as a Homeric siren song to my senses, pulling me in to the Bond Zone where this competant, resourceful, amusing person always finds a way to win, a way to do the right thing for King and country.
We're not talking eros, here.
We're talking superhero love.
Some kids went for Batman or Barbi.
Aging into the mysteries and arrogance of adolescence, they went for Peter Frampton or one of Charlie's angels.
Not this kid. This kid fell hook, line and cocktail for 007, and never recovered.
Because the child in me loved James Bond, I was able to let Sean Connery go and embrace Roger Moore. Timothy Dalton? Pierce Brosnan? The tuxedo passed from man to man, and it was all good, because it was Bond I loved.
James Bond, with his indominatable tenacity and immortal wit, gave this little girl a picture of mental toughness and moral courage that overcame a world of betrayal, deceit, corruption and pain.
And now we are grown, and we see the culture of violence and sex. We get the double entendres and we wince at characters named Pussy Galore.
But despite the guns and girls, the casual death and sex, I still find moral courage in James Bond.
For me, he's always the incorruptible Commander Bond, the loyal sailor who took an oath to defend the country that once embraced the ideal of "might for right." 007 didn't fight Goldfinger for personal enrichment or to climb a career ladder, he was defending the realm against a bad guy.
James is never deflected from the mission, and he rarely injects his own agenda in a way that changes what he is supposed to be doing. Look at people around us who have power -- small scale or large scale -- and notice how often they replace and/or modify the original mission with their own personal agenda.
It takes moral courage to stay on mission, even if those missions look like James Bond's.
Bond is also a minimalist, something I admire while struggling to imitate. Minimalism surely was born in the Royal Navy where sailors don't have much room for bric-a-brac, and became honed in MI6 where you travel fast and light or not at all. Bond is such a minimalist that Sean Connery sped through several films -- Thunderball comes strongly to mind -- wearing little more than swim shorts. (I only noticed this last week, by the way, after having been entrapped by the theme music when my husband was channel-surfing. Poor Ricky, I think he was hoping for Seinfeld. Instead, he got a Bond marathon.)
Yes, there were the silly space operas, and Roger Moore should probably have bowed out before A View To A Kill, and yada yada yada I still love James Bond.
I hope this new guy, Daniel Craig, gets Bond right.
Shaken, not stirred.
Amused, not serious.
A gentleman, not a lecher.
Loyal, courageous, resourceful, and competent to the end.
A five-year-old girl is depending on you.
posted by Woman In Love @ 10:29 PM
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