Are you, like me, disgusted with the increasing blandness of fortune cookie fortunes? Remember the good old days when you used to see fortunes like this?
1. I saw what you did. Pervert.
2. WARNING: Toxic lubricant leak detected in fortune cookie machine. Recalibrate according to section 6 of the Manual.
3. You don't know me, but we were meant to be together. Meet me behind the moo goo gai pan.
There never has been, and never will be, a Bond film without women. Women are an essential ingredient of the formula--although the best of the Bond movies don't stick too closely to the formula. I came across a rather depressing interview with Roald Dahl in which he describes the formula the producers gave him when he was writing the screenplay for You Only Live Twice. There had to be three women--no more, no less. The first woman had to do this, and the second had to do that, and the third had to do the other thing... it's little wonder that Dahl's story seems perfunctory.
The worst of the Bond women are pretty faces with no personality and nothing interesting to do. I'm thinking of you, Lupe Lamora, and you too, Manuela. Sorry you had to hear it from me. Another common device is to introduce an educated female character with some specialized knowledge that Bond needs. Holly Goodhead knows space travel; Natalya Simonova knows space-based weapons; Christmas Jones knows nuclear weapons. But these characters end up just tagging along with Bond, offering technical advice and falling into bed at the appropriate time--ultimately, not very interesting.
The best of the Bond women has these characterics:
1. She is her own boss;
2. She takes a hand in shaping events;
3. She is clever;
4. She is fun to be around.
Before I reveal her identity, I'll discuss some of those who don't qualify (trying to avoid detailed spoilers).
Pussy Galore from Goldfinger: She is clearly thinks of herself as a strong, independent woman. But in fact she merely goes from taking orders from one man at the start of the story to taking orders from a different man at the end of the story. She does nothing on her own initiative. (And moreover, she seems rather crabby and generally unpleasant to be around.)
Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale: Clearly intelligent--her sharp tongue is part of her appeal--but not clever. She never does anything that makes you think Huh! Look what she did.
Ruby Barlett from On Her Majesty's Secret Service: Perhaps the most fun of all the Bond women, and clever as well. But really no more than pawn in the big game.
Tracy Di Vicenzo, also from On Her Majesty's Secret Service: I'm sure I'll get flack from this, because Tracy is supposed to be the one. But I could never take a woman seriously who calls her father Papa, with the accent on the second syllable. And consider how she attempts to flirt with Blofeld:
Tracy: I want to see the dawn.
Blofeld: So poetic a pleasure!
Does anyone talk this way? Gag.
Okay, so the winner revealed is... Tiffany Case from Diamonds Are Forever. Technically she's working for the bad guy, but she is much more concerned with her own plans. Even at the end, on the boat with Bond (and that's not a spoiler--practically every Bond movie ends with Bond on a boat with a lady) she is still pursuing her own agenda. And clever? At one point she outwits twenty government agents and disappears with an important item, which she wants for her own purposes. None of this stops her from being fun to be around.
(P.S. Barbara Broccoli, if you're reading this, you seriously need to employ Goldfrapp to write the next Bond theme song.)
"Mind control" as in advertising, that is. This and similar TV commercials have me bewildered:
Ostensibly the idea is that a man is supposed to go out and buy some expensive jewelry for the woman in his life (and hey, I'm all in favor of that). So why then is this ad designed to be so uninteresting to men? Trust me, ladies, on this one. Learning sign language would be interesting but in every other respect this insipid, charisma-deficient man-child is the opposite of what every man aspires to be. It's easy to predict the eventual fate of this couple: to be accosted by a gang of motorcycle toughs while walking a city street one night. The man winds up flat on his back from a punch in the nose while the woman rides off on the back of a motorcycle—still wearing her new jeweled wristwatch.
And it's not just this one. In other jewelry commercials the excited girlfriend shows off her new diamond to her envious friends. Apparently this is more rewarding than actually spending time with her pathetic loser boyfriend (nowhere to be seen), whose sole important contribution to the relationship now sits on the girlfriend's finger.
So what's the story here? Is it mass incompetence in the advertising industry or rather some subtle psychological master-stroke way too clever for me to recognize? Has the jewelry industry decided appealing directly to men is a waste of time and chosen instead to encourage women to nag their men into buying something? Or maybe buy things for themselves and then pretend to have received them from an admirer?
Not being a woman, I hesitate to judge the appeal of messages such as this to women. On the other hand I see perfume commercials, which I assume are targeted to women, and those (unlike jewelry commercials) are usually charged with some real sexual energy.
If you want to sell men on doing something nice for women, here's the right way to do it:
I don't drink vodka, but I like the message here. Gallantry is cool.
My train of thought while showering this morning...
...was provoked by Gershwin's "Concerto in F", to which I was listening at the time. Gershwin reminded me of "Porgy and Bess." I listen to this occasionally, but I haven't seen it since watching the film version on TV as a young impressionable child. My visual impressions of the story are therefore hazy, selective, and imperfect. These conflict with my listening knowledge of the opera, which carries a pretty grim plotline. My distant childhood impression, on the other hand, is of something altogether more playful and frivolous. Hmmm... whence the discrepancy?
Then again, some years back, I was on a hike with the Boy Scouts, along a trail which went through the wilderness in stretches, and along a highway in others. Crossing a bridge, we saw riverfront homes. One such was particularly interesting to see, having fallen victim to the encroaching river, radically slumped over, roof caving in, one wall missing. On seeing this, my main emotional reaction was not I'd hate for that to be my house, but more: Gee, that looks like a fun place. Seems an odd reaction, right?
And then I had it--one small piece in the puzzle of the human mind. Maybe it's not such an odd reaction. The characters in Porgy and Bess live in a rather seedy world (as I recall) of houses with sagging roofs and leaning walls. What previous experience would a child have had in such an environment? The closest would have been the world of Lil' Abner (this is an old-timey comic strip about hillbillies, for you young punks out there), or maybe Pogo (another classic old comic strip)--which were fun places. Only slightly farther removed would be the world of Popeye. And a bit further down the road is the world of Dr. Seuss.
In comics, cartoons, and children's books, houses show curves and bulges. Dr. Seuss's architecture never makes use of a straight line. In the real world, on the other hand, houses are rigid, straight, and angular. Except on the rare occasions when you come across a deliciously ramshackle old ruin--and then you never know--Popeye or Daisy Mae might come strolling out.
I ought to watch Porgy and Bess again. Although I rather hate to lose the child's wacky fun version....
Photo by tim ellis.
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