Not Just a Movie: Cool. Way Cool.
PART 4 IN AN 8-PART SERIES
"Shaken. Not stirred."
—James Bond
I don’t know exactly when my fascination with James Bond began, but it was long before I actually saw a James Bond movie.
By the time I was 7, I knew Bond was the world’s foremost superspy—a man with grappling hooks in his cufflinks, an ejector seat in his car and danger on his breakfast menu. Never mind that being a "famous spy" is akin to being an "illiterate writer." It wasn’t long before I started emulating MI6’s master of intrigue. I checked out books on spying from the library, took to wearing fake mustaches (made from cotton balls) and begged my mom (ineffectually) to buy me a trench coat. Around the house, I’d dress in my Sunday suit, cock my thumb and forefinger, and lurk around corners, scurrying out of sight whenever someone looked my way. I was as suave and dangerous as a 7-year-old can be.
So when I finally saw my first Bond flick at around age 12 (a version edited for TV, in case you’re curious), I was disappointed that he never wore a disguise or, apparently, even owned a trench coat. He spent nearly as much time gambling, smooching and drinking as he did thwarting the bad guys. And, in the film I saw, he never even used his car’s ejector seat. What’s the point of having one if you’re not going to eject it?
But did that stop my emulation of the guy? No. Why? Because James Bond was, very simply, cool. And cool, for a 12-year-old, is a deeply tempting condition.
Heroes Are Forever
Alfred Hitchcock once said that drama is "life with the dull bits cut out." The same can be said about most movie heroes or heroines: If they were real, they’d have to eat and pay bills and excuse themselves to use the restroom just like the rest of us. But all those dull bits have been excised for the sake of the film’s running time. And everything else has been augmented for the sake of ticket sales. They are archetypes of humanity—larger-than-life manifestations of who we are, or who we want to be.
This is nothing new, of course. Mankind has told stories about its heroes from the very beginning, from Sumeria’s Epic of Gilgamesh to Greece’s Iliad and Odyssey. Back in the day, the ancient Egyptians used to paint their kings and heroes as, literally, larger than life—towering over depictions of the rank-and-file workers who built their tombs. These days, our own heroes tower over us on huge multiplex screens. And if it’s a really big movie with a really big hero, it’s on IMAX.
Yes, we love our heroes, and that’s OK. Really. Because many of our heroes … are kinda heroic.
"When you feel the world is against you or you give up hope, you look at your heroes and say, ’They were able to do it. They had hard times and a lot of opposition, but they got through it,’" John Leguizamo told Parade magazine. "Then you feel, ’I can do it too.’"
Most resonant stories give us someone to root for, someone to emulate. The Bible has plenty of flawed but heroic figures. Early Christian believers documented the exploits of their own historic heroes and dubbed them "saints," intending from the very beginning that they be role models for the faithful. History is overwhelmed with heroes who, during the passage of time, have had their dull bits (or worse) buffed away.
Movies, at their best, aren’t much different. From Oskar Schindler to Sam Gamgee to Spider-Man, films are filled with folks who we’d do well to emulate, at least in some respects.
But we can overdo it.
License to Chill
From a Christian perspective, James Bond isn’t much of a hero. Not only does he make saving the world look a little too easy, he does so by filling up all the content categories that make us here at Plugged In gnash our teeth. Sex? Check. Violence? Check. Judgment-impairing substances? Checkity-check-check-check.
When I was a boy, though, plugged in was something I did with the toaster, and Bond—particularly old-school, Sean Connery Bond—was still one cool dude. At least his legions of adoring women thought so.
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I began to study Bond in action—the way he walked, talked, stood and smiled. I noted how he’d adjust his cuffs when he walked into the train’s dining car, how he always had a clever pun ready, how he walked ever so casually with his hands in his pockets.
I made note of it all, and even practiced doing some of it, hoping that Bond’s suavity would rub off on me—that if I walked just so, talked just right and somehow figured out how to rig my parents’ car with an ejector seat, those cute girls in school would see past my glasses and braces and acne, and see the "real" fake James Bond me.
It didn’t work. Thank goodness.
The Movie Is Not Enough
We have a mountain of stats that suggest films—even such obvious cinematic diversions as the James Bond flicks—influence us.
During a recent study on tobacco use, researchers found that teens were nearly three times as likely to start lighting up if they saw lots of movies with "high levels of smoking." A compilation of 41 studies on violence found that people who consume a lot of violent media (including film) will "behave more violently."
"The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer," said researcher L. Rowell Huesmann.
For most of its history, vodka was barely known in the United States. It was a novelty beverage—something you mixed in to make drinks like "The Moscow Mule." All that changed in 1962, the year Bond ordered his first vodka martini onscreen. Sales of the beverage increased dramatically thereafter, and by 1975, it had supplanted bourbon as the country’s most popular hard liquor. In 13 years, an ancient afterthought became the toast of the town. And it unquestionably owes much to one very famous spy.
Despite the tales of my boyhood exploits, I’ve never been wired for extreme hero worship. Even as a kid I knew my heroes were prone to make mistakes, and my emulation of Bond went only so far. I never took to mixing martinis. And even though my Bond-thing was connected to attracting the opposite sex, had it worked I never would’ve considered using hapless few and then discarding them as Bond did. I wanted to impress the girls, not seduce them. My parents provided me with a fairly firm moral backbone, and they helped me distinguish between fantasy and reality. Sure, I thought James Bond was cool. But there were places he went that, morally, I’d never go.
These days, I see Bond even clearer than that, hopefully. Neither his life nor his lifestyle look at all appealing to me anymore. His movies leave me shaken, not stirred.
But his effects on my childhood, even now, linger: I have a strange habit of foisting puns on people at inopportune times, and whenever I throw on a suit coat and trench, the strains of the James Bond theme come, unbidden, to my brain. And part of me—a tiny, tiny part, mind you—sometimes thinks my life would be that much better if I owned just one booby-trapped briefcase, or my watch obscured a tiny grappling hook.
Would it really make my life better? Of course not. I have very little need for a grappling hook. My cubicle walls aren’t high enough, for one thing.
But I’d sure be cool. …
In Part 5 of "Not Just a Movie," violence vandalizes the theater wall.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8