I'm supposed to read an argument from the Norton Field Guide to Writing this week, and I looked at all of them, but they all seemed too depressing, so I went to another chapter (on evaluations) and read a 2008 New York Times movie review by A. O. Scott. The film he's reviewing is Quantum of Solace. By a TOTAL coincidence (really!) today is the 50th anniversary of James Bond on film, too, so I figure this is what I'm supposed to do.
My dad is a HUGE James Bond fan, has all the movies (and the books), which means I've grown up seeing them, so this looked interesting. But the first thing I noticed, probably because I'm working on my draft, was the way Scott wrote his review -- he's basically following the same pattern I was told to use for my paper. He begins by explaining his "critical paradigm," which, it turns out, is a checklist of all the things you expect to see in a Bond film, then he evaluates (I won't be doing that, just analyzing) how well the film does at meeting each item's audience expectations.
Well, according to him, it has hits and misses on things like action and gadgets, but he comes to a halt with the checklist when he reaches the category of "babes." This is because in this film, Bond is just not interested. Scott writes, "what gets in the way is emotion. 007's grief and rage [. . .] are forces more powerful than either duty or libido" (738). I saw the film, and I think he's right, but then he goes on to say, "Mr. Brosnan was the first actor to allow a glimmer of complicated emotion to peek through Bond's cool, rakish facade," and this was where I came to a halt.
No, Mr. Scott. It was Timothy Dalton who did that, in Licence to Kill. This is the film where Bond is out to avenge his friend Felix, remember? Even before that in the film, Felix's new bride makes a comment about how Bond should get married, and the look on Dalton's face is not a typical Bond look (which would be a smile and shake of the head, I guess). Instead, he somehow manages to convey that there is a TRAGIC EVENT in his past -- presumably his own wedding, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service -- that means he will never get married . . . again (don't ask me how he does this; look at it for yourself!). If that ain't a complicated emotion, what is?
Pierce Brosnan? Pah! Don't make me laugh.
BTW, my vote for best Bond is Connery, Dalton second, and Craig third. Roger Moore makes me cringe, and Brosnan (I've liked him in other things) just doesn't grab me as Bond.
Image via WikipediaI thought some more about this last night. One thing that occurred to me is that two of the actors are what you might call iconic-- Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig (although he's a newbie at the screen icon game, compared to Ford). The characters that they are best known for are different kinds of "manly men." Indiana Jones, for example, is an adventurer, a problem-solver, and is sort of goofy when it comes to women. He's like Han Solo with a stronger character. Looking at James Bond, you can see more of an ideal man -- he defines the term "cool," he's another problem-solver (usually with extreme prejudice), and unlike the Ford characters, he has some weird kind of magnetism when he interacts with women. Bond has a lot in common with Jake Lonergan (sp?), while Ford's role in Cowboys & Aliens is not much like Indiana Jones or Han Solo, and when you think of it from that point of view, the differences are interesting. There is a lot of stuff about the father-son relationship here, all centering around him. I may go after that.
Image via WikipediaI mentioned last time that I have learned a lot about men's studies, but I didn't get into the actual sources. I'm almost finished with my annotated bibliography, and here are a few of the more interesting sources.
Brod, Harry, ed. The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies. Boston: Allyn and Unwin, 1987. Like many of the books I found, this one is not terribly recent, but it was very helpful in understanding the way men's studies developed and its connections to other gender-based theories. (It's a collection of articles, so I got several entries for my bib. Yay!)
Cohan, Steven and Ina Rae Hark. Screening the Male : Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema. New York : Routledge, 1993. This is interesting, especially with the ongoing changes in how American culture shifts with regard to how it defines masculinity and concepts related to masculinity.
Lehman, Peter. Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture. New York:
Routledge, 2001. It's amazing to me how many scholarly books there are about men and film. This one has some different ideas than the two above, and it really helped me get at how to write about film using this critical approach.
Powrie, Phil and Ann Davies. The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. Not finished looking at this one yet, but I have great hopes--the Bond films are not actually Hollywood films, so I need material on that.
Image via WikipediaI'm having some trouble narrowing down my research question for the proposal (luckily, Dr. Toffee changed the due date to Wednesday). I had a draft ready last Wednesday, but I'm not happy with it. Also, I've been reading some of the material I've found on men's studies, and that's given me a lot to think about, too. The question I put in the title of this post is actually pretty close to what I'm looking for: I want to know what men -- and boys, for that matter -- get out of James Bond films. I mean, there are plenty of movies with similar characters and plots, but the Bond films seem to touch something in men that the others don't. I'll keep working on this today; I've got to come up with something soon.
Image via WikipediaLast time, I mentioned that my brothers don't try to emulate (how's that for vocabulary?!) James Bond, and a girl in my class asked me how they could do that, anyway. Well, hell, I didn't mean that they should try to be like him in terms of his job! What I meant was more about him as a man than it was about him as a spy. I was thinking of things like his personal style -- in clothing, social behavior, and so on -- plus his confidence. It's as if the guys think that you either have these things or you don't: you can't develop them for yourself. And of course, I don't think that's true.
I even think that about his irresistibility to women-- after all, how many actors have played this role? And some of them aren't even good looking, imo (I can't stand Roger Moore, and while I like Daniel Craig's performances, I don't think he's all that in the looks department). But . . . they all manage to convey -- believably -- the quality (for lack of a better word) that makes the women they meet lose all their inhibitions. I'm going to stop here because I just had what might be a brilliant idea for my paper. I'll let you know if it pans out.
Image via WikipediaAt first I was against having to choose a film for my research project, but after trying to pick one, I have totally changed my thinking. I've had some real trouble making up my mind about a film; I can only imagine how much worse it would be for me if I were taking this course in a full-length semester where I would have to come up with a topic without any limitations on the choice! I finally settled on Casino Royale, and I'm going to take a masculinist approach. Yeah, I know I'm not a man, but apparently you don't have to be male to do this. My brothers are really into James Bond, and what made me decide on this is that I always wonder why, if they think he is so cool, they don't try to be like him. Does that make sense? My next task is to come up with a research question.
