Blogging Is Dark, Terrible Work

The Ian Fleming society, speculating on the sort of James Bond we're likely to get when the next actor walks in the gun barrel, tells us that we should look for a younger, sadder 007:

"As part of this emphasis upon character development, Campbell also touched on Bond’s possible relationship with Vesper Lynd, the agent assigned to assist 007 in his struggle to defeat Le Chiffre, the main villain. Bond falls in love with Lynd, but (in the novel) she is a double-agent. When Bond discovers this, his emotions change dramatically and he quickly develops his famous cold steely exterior, referring to her as a ‘bitch’.

“'The door is open for Bond, emotionally', said Campbell. 'He’s in love with Vesper and he sees there’s another side to all of this, that life might be far more pleasurable, more gratifying, than being a secret agent. And ultimately that door is slammed in his face, which makes him the tempered steel kind of guy that we know.'"

Over the last twenty years or so, we've gone through a number of "tempered steel" disappointed heroes in movies and TV shows. Some might start with the "Lethal Weapon" series, where Mel Gibson plays a tortured cop who mourns his dead wife; but James Bond had a hand in it as well. The casting of Timothy Dalton as Roger Moore's replacement brought us a moodier, grimmer Bond, who did everything, from sipping martinis to kissing the girl, with a hint of regret. What really got the momentum going for this kind of hero, however, was 1989s "Batman".

"Batman" not only influenced set and costume design for big budget pictures, but also the leads of movie romances. It centered itself around the ultimate in tortured heroes--Bruce Wayne, who lost his parents to gunmen and dedicated his life to avenging himself on the costumed freaks of Gotham. He was a bigger hit than 007 and Martin Riggs combined. (The Bond franchise was flailing by this point. "Licence to Kill" received decent notices, but drew mediocre crowds to summer movie screens.) People paid big money to watch a hero sit in his dimly lit home, looking as haunted as the Bergman knight who plays chess with Death, until crime in Gotham inspires him to put on his costume and rev up his awesome, yet shadowy, car.

Romances function as wish fulfillment. We want to see the knight fight both the dragon and the giant, win through, and kiss the fair maiden. Indiana Jones has to get the lost Ark and the girl. Agent 007 has to kill Red Grant and get the lovely Russian defector to fall madly in love with him. We want to be these guys. They're powerful, witty, imaginative--everything that we're not. (Or, at least, that you're not.) If the knights of Arthurian legends behaved as real knights behaved--burning villages and slaughtering the peasants in ways that would make Kissinger blush--would we really want to spend time reading about them? If Indiana Jones had to spend all day sifting through dirt and cataloging pottery shards, would you want to be him? If Bond occupied his time going to blind drops where his Joes (disgruntled minor bureaucrats mostly) deposit abstruse governemnt secrets and filing reports, who'd bother?

In the past, for the most part, our heroes have carried with them a certain love of life and adventure. Odysseus certainly had his down moments. (Though for him, a down moment means being trapped on an island with a gorgeous nymph who wants his body.) But for much of his adventure he seems to enjoy being Odysseus, often to the detriment of his crew. The whole foray into the realm of the Sirens, for example, seemed to be adventure for the sake of adventure--terribly risky under their circumstances. Not to meantion that the whole lot of them would have been better off if Odysseus could have kept his damned name to himself during the Cyclopes encounter. Things ended badly for the Arhurian knights, but they had some fun along the way, wiping out giants and canoodling with maidens. And for more contemporary heroes this was once true. M's first ultimatum to James Bond was that he give up his favorite gun (the Baretta .25) or lose his "00" number and return to "ordinary intelligence duty". It took this for Bond to accept his PPK. After Superman reveals himself to the world by performing his first mighty deeds in "Superman: The Movie", his father's image in the Temple of Solitude says to him, "You enjoyed it." Even Dirty Harry seemed to like himself, even though he despised nearly everyone else. He could accept a come-on from the sexy woman upstairs without bombarding her with details about his miserable, downtrodden cop life. Stakes got high in these stories, and the heroes sometimes had their bad moments; but overall, they knew it was good to be them.

Now, it appears, our Romances fulfill a different wish. It's hard to say what exactly. Maybe the disappointments of real life don't seem disappointing enough; or maybe in order to identify with the hero we need him to be more like us: sad, lost, and frequently alcoholic. We want to believe that a person can change the course of mighty rivers while still feeling like shit. It was this attitude that Pierce Brosnan's Andy Osnard mocked in "The Tailor of Panama".

"Just between us, I'm MI6's man in Panama. It's dark, lonely work...like oral sex, but someone's got to do it, Harry."

Apparently some of us want to see ourselves, or have wanted at any rate, as dark, lonely men, battling an uncaring world, trying desperately to find in it power, fulfillment and love. I don't have any grand social theories about why this is--a greater sense of anomie in a world dominated by television and lying governments seems awfully generalized--but it's probably something along those lines. What else could explain the switch from a Bond who'd do anything to continue "00" work to a Bond who blames an old flame for his need to stay in it?

I'm not really in sympathy with that. I've had my fill of tortured, lonely heroes. Anakin Skywalker lowered the whole notion of it to camp in "Star Wars: Episode II". Give me heroes like the ones in "The Incredibles" or "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" who actually enjoy what they do, who have a sense of humor about themselves and their adversaries, and who can kiss someone without making me wonder which dead relative their partner reminds them of.