I never understood the allure of James Bond films–or rather, I never understood why the hell anyone would admit to being a fan of  such pendulously dull male adolescent fantasies.  I’d get it if these films had been screened like nudie films used to be, in select ares of Times Square, where those burdened with a shameful yen for cartoonish dialogue + farm hand’s ideas of fancy living could go see ol’ Jimmy drive his purty car and spar with follically challenged villains.  But who’d have thought such heavyhanded silliness would become so culturally entrenched?

But as usual, my sense of what will be admired and duplicated is wrong wrong wrong.  And (she points out with a girlishly raised index finger) I was born too late to get all jazzed up by cold war hi-jinks in the cinema.  The early 60s were a fermentative and frightening era, and Jimmy B’s smug suavity calmed WWII victors’ fears of just what the fuck the Communists were percolating behind their Iron Curtain, while here in capitalistic society men were wrapping their minds around the honestly world-changing fact that women could now actually have sex without getting pregnant, and quite frequently chose to do so with people other than their husbands. . .but still.  “Plenty O’Toole?” “Pussy Galore”? 

Yawn.   Continue reading →