Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Name is Bond. Comrade Bond.
I spent part of the weekend watching classic 007 films. As weekends go, it’s not the worst way to spend your time. Granted, neither is it the best, particularly if you’re trying to lose weight.
But as I dulled my brain and prepared to accept the absence of the laws of physics, the absurdity of a spy everyone seems to know who always uses his real name, the blatant sexism, the terrible female co-stars and the downright nasty nihilistic violence of the characters in the Bond universe, I had an epiphany. Perhaps that’s too strong. Well, a deep insight.
For you see, midway through the The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, or maybe Moonraker (it was a long weekend) I noticed a common theme. It’s a recurring characteristic of the Bond films set during the Cold War era. A red theme.
James Bond, supposedly a tool of a decadent, capitalistic, free-market, pro-business West, is in reality anything but. Particularly when played by Roger Moore, he’s something else. He’s the opposite.
In the vast majority of Bond films, he’s not taking on and defeating the plots and agents of the USSR or communist China. He’s taking on and defeating the plots and agents of right-wing billionaires whose only crimes (as I see it, anyway) are wanting to liberate themselves from the powers of a bureaucratic state.
These people pay taxes. They employ thousands of people (who admittedly wear the same uniform), some of whom are disabled. They lead the field in their enterprises of choice and are by all accounts at the top of their game. Then suddenly, just when they’re at the peak of their careers and their business is about to help the West take a huge leap forward in space, maritime, or other activity, they’re murdered by James Bond. Their once-thriving businesses are shut down, or worse, nationalized.
I know what you’re thinking. Paddy, you’re reading too much into this. But this has happened more than once. From Goldfinger to Goldeneye, across the decades? This is more than a one-off occurrence. Bond systematically targets entrepreneurs and destroys their companies. Worse, sometimes he even steals the entrepreneurs’ mistresses. The bast—.
These are not the characteristics of an agent of the freedom loving West, but a dirty sneaky degenerate commie. Or a Frenchman. I digress.
What really settled it for me was the number of times he was able to sneak into the USSR or the Eastern Bloc and it just so happened he never got caught. Does this make sense? Everyone behind the Iron Curtain knew about him. He just so happened to walk in and walk out, no questions asked. And how the hell did he manage to get out of a Soviet airbase in the middle of Afghanistan? Or Siberia. Or Berlin.
He’s a communist agent, that’s why.
Finally, it turns out that later in life, he was awarded the Order of Lenin by the head of KGB General Godol. The Order of Lenin. You know who else got that. The Cambridge Five.
James Bond is a communist agent. Deep down you know it’s true. Either that or I have too much time on my hands.
Nah. I’m right. Just look:
Published in General
Hey, Paddy: you build a secret lair under a volcano, or have a trap-door-so-opponents-can-be-eaten-by-sharks, there could be consequences. ‘S all I’m saying…
He didn’t say they were nice capitalists.
Bond knows wine and clothes. Commies know nothing about wine and clothes. Case closed.
You must understand that Western Europeans are and were worthless scum. We saw the United Kingdom as it decayed in the 1960s, really only contributing a little music to the world but not anything of substance.
In any world, real or imagined or imagined real or imagined imagined, where the bad guys were the Ruskies, then the good guys must have been the Americans, the betters of the worthless Western European scum.
Thus, if the Ruskies were the bad guys in the Bond films, you would have two dynamics. First hard lefties would not believe it. Second, something would seem wrong if Americans were not there leading the fight. The conspicuous absence of Americans would only emphasize the moral and material inferiority of the Western Europeans.
The solution was to create a world of moral equivalence between the two moderate evils of the US and USSR. The Brits could then lead the fight against a great concocted evil like SPECTRE and act to moderate between the lesser evils of US and USSR. Thus, the fantasy is indulged of the Western Europeans having moral standing and material worth.
I just purchased the James Bond Collection:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_ifs_2?fst=fs%3Ajames+bond&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ajames+bond+collection&keywords=james+bond+collection&ie=UTF8&qid=1457307601
So I’ll get back to you on that…
Commie aparachiks and intelligensia knew about clothes and wine.
The Bond of the movies had little to do with the Bond of Ian Fleming.
Is this like that unknown unknowns thing?
I read them all when I was in college, and have them all as audiobooks now.
Kim Philby and other years-gone-by products of the British public school system, perhaps. But I doubt other Commies would be able to spot a Chateau Margaux ’62 or Dom Perignon by vintage, or know how a cummerbund should fit. At root, they’re frauds, and they’d wilt under interrogation; Bond wouldn’t.
Didn’t he team up with hot KGB babes on more than one occasion?
“From Russia With Love” is my admittedly subjective choice for best Bond movie. He outwitted Lotte Lenya in that one by seducing her KGB plant. No commie could do that.
Hey, CT, quit beating around the bush. Tell us how you really feel.
Hey, Hoya, I don’t know that either. Are you calling me a twinkle-toed, pinko, mustard-seed-sized-kool-aid-pumping heart commie, you bulldog SOB, you?
Amy—Wine, maybe. But most of the lefty intelligentsia I know really don’t know much about clothes. As far as the apparatchiks, I’m not sure. The Soviets had awful clothing, but there were others.
Sorry, if the shoe fits. What’s your address?
No, the point is not that all of those who don’t know it are commies, but that Bond isn’t a commie because he knows it.
I will, however, offer cummerbund lessons for a small fee if you PM me, in case you’d like to remove any doubt.
James Bond was a composite character, comprised of pieces of the ass-kickers Fleming had known over the course of his life of adventure. COL David Smiley, one of my personal heroes, was a significant component of what became James Bond. Badassery, thy name is Smiley.
By Jove, Paddy, I think you’re on to something here.
When I was young and first saw The Spy Who Loved Me, I wondered what Ringo Starr saw in Barbara Bach. I grew to appreciate her.
You might enjoy this. Fleming is on the periphery, but I found it fascinating.
So my non-volcano-based secret lair is in the clear then?
Depends. Do you have henchmen running around in identical jumpsuits?
Nah, I used up all my money on the secret lair.
Minions. They’re minions.
Hey, I think I knew that Smiley guy! Or am I thinking about a different Smiley…
http://dai.ly/x2f3gek
Did you ever see the nomenklatura on the May Day reviewing stand? They looked like they had just knocked over the truck delivering J. C. Penney remainders to the Goodwill.
Thank you. That book just queued into the stack.
Made me laugh, and reminded me of a line:
I was going to argue this, but you’re right. Henchmen get their own outfits and generally even names. Minions are the ones who are largely interchangeable.
No, you’re not. You’re reading just the right amount into it.
So that explains all the James Bond references in modern Russian movies. They pronounce the name a little differently than we do, but it’s close enough.