Don’t tell my editor this … but I have a soft spot for James Bond.
It’s partly my grandmother’s fault. Grandma, a woman who was our family’s embodiment of prim, old-fashioned perfection, had a weakness for only two things: the Phoenix Suns basketball team and Britain’s favorite superspy. And when I was a teen and she’d moan about all the sex and violence that kept her away from modern (i.e. 1980s) movies, I’d kid her and say, “Well, except for the sex and violence in James Bond, you mean.” And she’d smile knowingly at me and say, “Well, of course.”
My parents were reasonably careful about what I could watch as a kid. Bewitched reruns were off limits. Charlie’s Angels and Three’s Company were strictly forbidden. But if a Bond movie came on television? Somehow, those were A-OK. Whenever one would air, my dad and I would watch it together. These were special times for me—moments of (ahem) family bonding. When I was away at my first church camp and Dad wrote a letter saying he missed spending time with me during the latest televised Bond movie I missed … well, I’ve never felt so homesick.
I know, I know. It doesn’t make sense. Here I am, a guy who warns y’all constantly to be careful of movies with sex and violence and bad behavior. And yet I embraced a hero with some pretty serious discernment issues of his own. When most people think of Bond, they think of the theme song or the cars or the tuxedos or the bloody gun barrel 007 shoots at. Me, I think of family togetherness.
But that’s the case with most of us, is it not? Sure, not everyone forgives James Bond for his bad behavior, but I think many of us excuse a thing or two in our entertainment worlds. As diligent as we try to be with our entertainment choices, we make exceptions.
Sometimes, like me and Bond, those exceptions are woven into a complicated tapestry of nostalgia and personal experience. Sometimes, we might consciously excuse or subconsciously minimize content because we appreciate its artistry or message. And then there are times when we embrace our problematic media with our eyes wide open. We see it for what it is, quite clearly, and we still refuse to part with it. It becomes the prototypical “guilty pleasure,” something we partake in simply because it’s just too much fun.
I was thinking about this while reviewing Skyfall—a Bond movie at its most Bondian. And I realized that, even as I might give Bond a pass when he might not “deserve” it, so do the fictional characters around him.
I mean, think about the typical Bond girl—the one who lands in bed with the guy after a night at the casino or day fleeing bad guys. These women probably know he’s no good for them. At best, he’s a two-hour diversion. At worst, he might prove to be downright dangerous. (As you probably know, just half of the folks who sleep with the spy make it to the credits alive.) And yet, they can’t resist.
And then there’s M, Bond’s boss. She sees another side of James, a side particularly obvious in Skyfall. When Bond shows up for duty—coming back from the dead, as it were—he’s a shell of his former self. He can’t shoot straight. He’s plagued with bad health and, perhaps, even a glimmer of insecurity. Government lackeys warn M that his years of substance abuse have led to addiction. They tell M that he’s not fit for service—Not entirely unlike how we at Plugged In may caution you about a movie.
And what does M do? She ignores the advice and sends him out into the field one more time. Why? Because she knows him. And she feels the risk is worth it.
In Skyfall, of course, M’s decision pays off. But then again, it would. It’s a movie. And movies often have improbably happy endings, don’t they?
Now, I’m not saying that we should never take chances on problematic, challenging movies. One, that’s not my role, and two, I take chances myself. Movies like Schindler’s List and The Passion of the Christ are problematic, deeply challenging and, for me, worth the watch.
But there’s a difference, I think, between a wide-eyed, clear-headed assessment of a movie (or TV show or whatever) and excusing a movie just because we can’t bear to part with it.
We all have blind spots. We all have our entertainment weaknesses. But the first part of discernment is to first determine what those blind spots and weaknesses are—to be honest with ourselves about not just what we like, but why we like it … and whether there’s stuff embedded in there that we shouldn’t like quite as much as we do.
Once that’s done, then comes the tricky work: deciding what to do with it.
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