Tag Archives: Daniel Craig

Why We Lazy Americans Need Cowboys with Capes and British Accents

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skyfall

So my wife and I are streaming Skyfall—which, to our mutual surprise, was her idea not mine–and M is explaining to her jury of clueless politicos why they shouldn’t gut her antiquated, Cold War, killer spy agency. Why, in other words, does the 21st century still needs good ole 007? I’m no Judi Dench (or Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, or John Logan, the screenwriters), but the argument goes something like this:

Shadows are bad.

Shadows are everywhere.

Only a man of the shadows can fight the shadows.

So this is a job for Bond, James Bond.

And I thought: Haven’t I heard this before? Not in defense of the CIA—which, British accented or not, that’s all 007 is. No, it’s an older argument, older than the Cold War. This is gunslinger logic.

Let me call Westerns scholar Richard Slotkin to the microphone. He knows a few things about shadows too:

“Through this transgression of the borders, through combat with the dark elements on the other side, the heroes reveal the meaning of the frontier line (that is, the distinctions of value it symbolizes) even as they break it down. In the process they evoke the elements in themselves (or in their society) that correspond to the ‘dark’; and by destroying the dark elements and colonizing the border, they purge darkness from themselves and the world.”

Yep. James is a cowboy. He packs a Walther PPK instead of a revolver, and rides a Bentley, not a stallion, but even in Daniel Craig’s metrosexually tight suit and tie, he’s the same as any badass sheriff policing his corner of oblivion.

The weird thing though—London’s not exactly a frontier burgh. In terms of imperial domains, it’s the flat dab middle. Not Dodge, but the Metropole. What Superman fans call Metropolis.

So what’s all this shadowy borderland talk? How can James, or any contemporary urban hero, draw superpowers from a mythically wild West?

I recently stumbled onto an answer in Peter Turchin’s Historical Dynamics. (Which I checked out of my library after tracking down a citation in Alex Mesoudi’s Cultural Evolution, the tome one of the economists in my book club has us reading. I wanted Colson Whitehead’s literary zombie novel but got vetoed. Maybe next month.)  Turchin is an historian and ecologist, which doesn’t really explain all of his mathematical formulas and wave charts, but I think I pretty much follow the gist of his “Metaethnic Frontier Theory.”

My ridiculously simplistic version: empires need frontiers. It’s where group solidarity comes from. Why, as Turchin shows, do empires consistently rise from frontier regions, and very rarely from non-frontiers? Because Metropolis is a den of in-fighting, a spreadsheet of special interest groups vying for attention. Border towns don’t have such luxury. They’ve got all those swarthy aliens swarming right outside their fort gates. The shadows keep everyone in line.

“Internally divisive issues,” explains Turchin, “will eventually destroy the asabiya”—that’s academic speak for ‘collective action’—“of the large group, unless it is ‘disciplined’ by an external threat.”

Thus Ms. Dench’s shadows-are-everywhere speech. If you want your group to stay a group, you have to scare them. That’s easy when they’re camped at the edge of the abyss, but for these big city types, you got to drag the shadows right up to their condo doorsteps.

That’s how you keep an agency funded or, for Hollywood, your franchise breathing.  007 is an obsolete Cold Warrior, but product name recognition trumps the collapse of Soviet communism. Superman shouldn’t have made it past Dresden, let alone Hiroshima. He sold comics because he embodied the collectivism of a nation scared shitless by the Axis threat. Like any gunslinger or shadow-fighting shadow man, his powers are alien, a product of a scifi frontier. Remove the threat and he’s just some guy in tights and a cape.

When Ian Fleming published his first Bond novel in 1953, comic book superheroes were all but extinct. When Sean Connery debuted in the first Bond film in 1962, superheroes were back and atomic-powered. Although gunslingers seem extinct at the moment, shadow Men of Steel are still flying and homicide-licensed agents keep sipping their dark martinis.

I would never accuse the U.S. entertainment industry of anything but dividend-driven capitalism, but they’re still producing a form of red, white and blue propaganda. They want our money, and the best way to get it is to keep reinventing not our heroes but the threats that keep our heroes kicking. Hollywood’s main products are bite-sized shadows imported from our psychological borderlands. Our heroes have to scare us before they can soothe us.

But there’s a another byproduct too. Turchin’s group cohesion. Stream Skyfall or skim this month’s Action Comics, and you’re going to feel just a tiny bit more, well, American. Empires collapse when their centers splinter. That’s bad for business. In a nation of special interests, buying movie tickets is one of our few collective actions. For good and bad, James and Clark keep the metrosexual masses not just entertained but disciplined.

Eric Berlatsky on Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

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I only occasionally get my brother to write for HU. I did manage to annoy him sufficiently to get him to post two lengthy comments, though, so I thought I’d reproduce them here (with a few edits for coherenece.)

Eric started out with a response to my comment that the film Girl with the Dragon Tattoo “strongly suggests that [Lisbeth would] be healthier/happier/normalized if Mikael followed through and did save her.” To which Eric says:

Sure…and if my aunt had balls—

Just the opposite, I think, it suggests that Mikael can’t follow through and save her, because such salvation isn’t possible in those terms. Sure, “if” he saved her, she’d be saved…but he can’t, so she won’t be…

In general, I’m not sure where you get this notion that the film “strongly suggests” that she’ll be normalized if he sticks it out. Where? Are there other examples of damaged women being saved by older sensitive men? Lisbeth being saved by her previous ward? Hardly…eventually, circumstances intervene and she has to fend for herself…which is to say, there is no such thing as permanent salvation. In the serial killings? No sensitive man saves the daughter/rape victim. Rather, her SISTER saves her (and her sensitive uncle ignores her in her hour of need–suggesting perhaps that men, even sensitive men, can’t really be trusted)…and then she forges an independent life by herself. And who clears the way for her to return to “life” as herself?—Not a man, but Lisbeth, who kills the serial killer, etc.

Actually, insofar as any saving is done in the film, it’s by Lisbeth….both of herself and of Craig. She extricates herself from the abuse with the counsellor/parole guy and from whatever abuse was going on with her dad. She saves Craig from de rigeur serial killer and from Craig’s economic/journalistic enemy. She even has “normalized” herself to a great degree (got herself a job, leading an independent life, etc.). It’s only if you’re willing to read bisexuality, tattoos, etc. as abnormal that you can say that she isn’t a normal functioning member of society (I’m not willing to do that, for the record). In fact, she is the most competent, effective, efficient figure you’re going to find. If anything, she’s a “Mary Sue”–men (and women) want her, and women (and men) want to be like her (nobody wants to undergo what she does…but everyone would like to be able to react to such trauma with such resources, force, efficiency, resiliency, etc). She (at times, anyway) may feel like she needs to be saved….but the film doesn’t really give that indication. She’ll save herself (and does), thanks very much.

Maybe your claim is that’s it’s also a fantasy for older men to be saved by (and still sleep with) such figures? But more often isn’t being saved by a woman somewhat emasculating? Even in 2012?

Or maybe the only male fantasy being fulfilled in the film is the one revolving around younger attractive women being willing to have sex with (or throwing themselves at) older, less attractive men (though Craig is a sex symbol in his own right, right?).

I agree that the sex fantasy is a real and sexist one…but the notion that the movie suggests that Lisbeth needs saving by a man (or that such salvation is likely/possible) is much more tenuous—in fact, largely nonexistent.

And a second post here.

I think the movie’s fairly confused, basically. The book (as I understand it) is more complex on these issues and the movie tries to follow the book’s plot for the most part, without having the wherewithal to get us inside the possible complexity of Lisbeth’s (or Mikael’s) mind. Even basic things are unclear. Like when she set dad on fire…Was this an act of “madness” (as she at one point implies), or was it an act of self-defense and perfectly justified (as I think much of the movie implies).

I’m not trying to make this movie some kind of ideal treatment of women’s rights, consciousness, and liberation—I’m just pointing out that the claim that was made (that it’s a fantasy of man saving woman and curing her of homosexuality) doesn’t make sense in terms of what actually happens in the film.

I would also say that pointing out that something is a trope, “successful career woman unhappy in love” doesn’t tell you much…since those tropes can be played in a variety of ways.

Such a trope can mean, “Being successful at work will make you unhappy in love, ergo you should forego your career, and allow men to control the public sphere”–

Or

the same trope can be played to blame a sexist/patriarchal society for putting too much of a burden on women… That is, it’s society that makes happiness both at work and at home a near impossibility for women…so society should change.

Admittedly, you see the latter far less in popular culture, but the same basic narrative can tell very different ideological stories.

I would say in “GWTDT”–there are lots of tropes, but what exactly they “mean” isn’t particularly consistent…as the movie itself isn’t consistent. Sometimes it’s empowering to women, sometimes exploitive.

Lisbeth’s “unhappiness in love” is clearly not because she’s a successful career woman, but because she’s been abused by men (including her own father) her whole life and is emotionally damaged. So…it’s not her public sphere efficiency that fucks up her private life….it’s men who fuck up her private life, from beginning (dad) to end (Mikael). It’s not Broadcast News (a much better movie, btw). The narratives of the two movies are far from identical up to the final shift…so the comparison doesn’t really work in any significant way. We might say that GWTDT gives the illusion that men have ultimate power over women…but we could also say that the film shows a very powerful woman capable of overcoming all of that patriarchal social hegemony. That is, it’s somewhat contradictory.[…]

Again, I don’t want to be the “defending GWTDT guy”— I actually don’t think it’s all that great, or liberating, or whatever…. It’s just not quite so clearly about the “guy saving girl” narrative that you (were) claim(ing). Now it seems that the claim is different?

My understanding is that in the books, the relationship between the two continues to be vexed, and that Lisbeth has a number of sexual encounters with both men and women, retaining her bisexuality. I don’t know enough about these to suggest whether or not the reader is meant to see her return to women as a symptom of her “failure” with Mikael, or whether she simply continues to be bisexual, as she always was, but it’s an interesting question. Of course, it tells us basically nothing about the meaning of the film.

Finally (I hope):

“It’s a reiteration that romance with a man is something she needs (as a woman) to be normal/happy/fulfilled, but can’t have.”

You’re free to read it that way, I guess, but since so much of the film revolves around the wrongs done to women by men–and especially the wrongs done to Lisbeth by men—and even the sins of omission made by otherwise nice guys—I think the notion that the story says: “All will be cured by the presence of a penis,” is far too simplistic. There may be currents of this in the film, but there are also strong countercurrents, which makes the film more interesting in this regard than you suggest (though not so interesting, really, as a murder mystery/serial killer story). The villains are all men here, and the male “protagonists/heroes” are basically impotent and accomplish nothing of value (Craig and Christopher Plummer). Only Lisbeth is an effective agent. Craig’s only real effective move is asking her for help. Plummer’s only effective move is asking Craig for his…and only because it leads to Lisbeth.

Perhaps all of the “feminist” elements come from the book’s plot and all of the “sexist” elements come from Hollywood, but I doubt it. My guess is that the book is similarly vexed and contradictory.[…]

Gluey Tart: Valhalla, I Am Coming

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I saw the new version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” movie on Christmas Day (you don’t force your seasonal observances on me and I won’t force mine on you), and of course I had mixed feelings even before the opening wails of Trent Reznor and company running “The Immigrant Song” through the random industrialization machine signaled the puzzling (and oily) James Bond intro. (Not all that inexplicable, really; it was, you know, edgy. Man.) (And apparently I shouldn’t be so offended, since Wikipedia tells me that marching bands commonly play “The Immigrant Song” at high school and college football games. We will never speak of this again, all right?)

I mean, I know Daniel Craig is Bond, but this is a different huge, high-profile franchise. And the damned thing was way too long, anyway. It made me cranky even before I found out it was a serial killer movie. To which I say – really? A serial killer movie? (Yes, yes, it was a serial killer book before it was a serial killer movie; I don’t care.) I love murder and evil as much as the next person, but serial killer plots are where writers turn when their ideas have abandoned them and all they have left is to sit at the kitchen table, alone, hating their mothers. (I know, some people like serial killer movies. Whatever.)

Anyway. I didn’t go to see this movie for the plot (although a serial killer seems egregious even in a movie you fully expect to suck). I went, obviously, because I have a huge crush on Rooney Mara. I am perfectly happy to watch Daniel Craig for hours at a time, as well. I felt OK about this, at the time, because Rooney wants me to stare at her, enthralled, for the duration of the film. And I’d read her bloviating about how vulnerable the character is, and what a triumph this is, so I thought I knew what to expect. I mean, a vulnerable female character – what next? A brilliant, insightful, shockingly attractive, effortlessly sexy male journalist?

I began to feel uncomfortable in the role of voyeur, though. Mara’s character, Lisbeth Salander, couldn’t be more vulnerable. Steig Larsson took pains to fuck with her in every way he could come up with, and the actress sold it and then some. She was bad ass – so bad ass, in fact, that she made Daniel Craig pretty much superfluous. Which is saying something. (He has it all – acting, looks, ill-humored comments in interviews.) The extravagantly unpleasant abuse Larsson heaps on Lisbeth is unnecessary, at least in this version, because Rooney Mara nailed it. Her portrayal is so good she could have just showed up and solved the mystery, and we’d still get it.

But then we wouldn’t have gotten to see the rape scenes, and that would be a shame, wouldn’t it?

I’m also accustomed to women suddenly taking a sharp left turn without signaling to inexplicably fall in love with some asshole, largely in service of the ego of the writer/director/male movie-going public, but when Lisbeth Salander does it, that’s just wrong. I was actually offended. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see a beautiful woman in her early twenties going for a man who’s over 40, rumpled, and kind of ordinary (except for his keen intellect, indefatigable sense of justice, and blinding yet low-key charm), even one who isn’t played by Daniel Craig. My issue is that this woman set her father on fire, people. We just saw her get brutally raped. No penis is magical enough to magically fix her issues with men.  I do not buy it to a degree that destroys all the disbelief I’d managed to suspend. It is more unlikely than the serial killer. It is more unlikely than everything. It is wrong and stupid.

I have two related problems. The movie makes it clear to us that Lisbeth sleeps with women because she’s damaged. To which I say, fuck you, movie. Bisexuals are fucking sick to death of being tormented and confused. Please accept that some people like both men and women and move on, all right? How often do I have to explain this to you? Also, the woman Lisbeth picks up is much better than the stupid journalist, anyway. When he shows up at Lisbeth’s apartment and seems vaguely threatening, the girl asks Lisbeth if she wants her to stay. That is sweet. On the other hand, we have the 40+ year-old man macking on a woman almost as young as his daughter, and he knows she’s fucked up, on top of it. And the movie doesn’t seem to think this is horrible and creepy. I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to find it romantic. Fuck you again, movie.

I actually enjoyed the movie, mostly, even though it pissed me off (if I only liked things that didn’t piss me off, I wouldn’t like much) and made me wonder about myself for wanting to stare at Rooney Mara/Lisbeth Salander under these circumstances. It is not the first time I’ve had these concerns. And regardless of how wrong or not wrong this might be, I’m proud to say Lisbeth really did save the day. She totally rode in on her motorcycle and saved Daniel Craig’s ass, and then, as an encore, she took care of the slippery businessman who had tried to ruin Craig’s career at the beginning of the movie. Lisbeth is as cool as Clint Eastwood (in a spaghetti western sort of way, not Every Which Way but Loose or Pink Cadillac or some shit like that), and women don’t get to be Dirty Harry very often.