Watching the Wheels

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project #12: Moonraker (1979)

The James Bond Project #13: For Your Eyes Only

February 23, 2025February 23, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 14 Comments

February 23, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

For Your Eyes Only (1981, directed by John Glen)

The third decade of Bond! After the silly sci-fi spectacle of Moonraker, producer Cubby Broccoli wanted to get 007 back to basics for the first Bond of the 1980s. While there is no underground lair, there’s plenty of other Bond staples, like assassins on skis, James in his tux at the baccarat table, underwater battles, and sharks. First time director John Glen, who had edited several Bond films before this, was brought in to bring James back to earth with a plot that was back to spy vs. spy and less reliant on tech (much to the chagrin of Q who seems at his limit with 007 snark).

A 54-year-old Roger Moore (who seems a bit out of breath in a few scenes) is paired with this round’s Bond “girl,” 25-year old French actress Carole Bouquet. Her character, Melina Havelock, is the daughter of marine archeologists who are killed because the KGB is trying to retrieve some British spy technology from the bottom of the Mediterranean. This launches her into the role of sidekick as she tells Bond, “I don’t expect you to understand, you’re English, but I’m half Greek, and Greek women like Elektra always avenge their loved ones!”

By 1981, we have established the tradition of the opening action scene being completely over the top. This one starts James at the grave of his wife, Tracy and ends with Bond captured in a remote controlled helicopter controlled by none other than Blofeld! (and his white pussy cat, presumably not the same one from Diamonds Are Forever). The scenes with the helicopter (with 007 hanging on for dear life) careening over London are eighties epic. The comic death of Blofeld was a long time coming and apparently meant as an FU to the producer of Thunderball, who claimed ownership of the Blofeld name.

For Your Eyes Only gives 007 fans the tropes they crave and, unlike Moonraker, has aged well. Moore’s Bond flirts with the problematic nature of his Lothario reputation while still throwing a solid punch. The quips are dialed back and much of the action is movie candy for the widescreen. For the first time the opening credits reveal females in roles like “production manager” and “continuity,” where previously women were relegated to costumes and make-up. Maybe some of these women whispered in filmmakers’ ears not to make Bond such a dick.

Let’s plug FYEO into our analysis.

Driver of Action – This is Moore’s Bond, but early in the film he is rescued by Melina and her crossbow, although in the mad escape car chase he does ask, “Mind if I drive?” Later in the film he is assisted by Milos Columbo, a pistachio-eating smuggler, and his band of thieves. No CIA help here, M (Bernard Lee) died of cancer before his scenes could be filmed, and Q was inserted merely for comic value. This James Bond is completely capable of solving all problems and escaping all sticky situations.

Role of Violence – There is a great relief of seeing 007 finally kill Blofeld, the man who had his wife killed, by dumping him and his electric wheelchair down an industrial smokestack on the Southside of the Thames. (We don’t know who got custody of the cat.) There are a bunch of henchmen killed, connected to various parts of the plot to get the spyware to the KGB. The most spectacular death is a henchmen in a deep diving suit, looking very robotic, who is blown up inside a sunken English trawler. Boom.

Vulnerability – Credit is given for reminding Bond fans that he was (briefly) married and she died in his arms. It was the only real glimpse we ever got into James the man. The epitaph on her tombstone is, “We have all the time in the world,” his last words to her in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Early in the film, Bond is captured by Cuban hitman Hector Gonzales and rescued by Melina. He seems a bit confused that he suddenly is the damsel in distress, but, like Jesus, he ultimately takes the wheel.

Sexual Potency – Here’s where we start to get a bit of a shift. Bond does not seem to be leering or sexually flirtatious with Melina, 29 years his junior. And between Bond and Moneypenny, the old spark is back, perhaps because they actors are now close in age (both were born in 1927!). Moneypenny, knowing Bond is about to arrive at MI-6 HQ, applies her makeup as James’ hat flies to the hatrack. “Moneypenny, a feast for my eyes,” James says, kissing her on the lips. “What about the rest of you?” she asks. “Well, I was going to get around to that.” There’s the old James Bond we love.

Another character is figure skater Bibi Dahl, played real life figure skater Lynn-Holly Johnson. She has a girl-like crush on Bond and climbs, naked, into his bed. In a shocking turn of events, he rejects her. “You get your clothes on and I’ll buy you an ice cream,” he says trying to kick her out of his room as she plants a kiss on him. Bond does sleep with the Countess Von Schlaf (played by Cassandra Harris, wife of future Bond Pierce Brosnan). The scene feels a bit like, “Oh, this is a Bond film, he needs to bed SOMEBODY.” But like a lot of James’ one night stands, she is killed by some bad guys shortly after bed with Bond. (Death by dune buggy.) And, as if a contractual obligation, James sleeps with Milena at the end of the film. (Can’t let the fans down.) But Bond ’81 seems noticeably less horny. Maybe he was worried about Blofeld’s cat.

Connection – Even though the the plot is pleasingly complex (for a Bond film), 007 is just here to get the job done. There is zero emotional connection. Even Q seems to get on his wick. Milena is strikingly beautiful but she seems to be just a pawn in his plan to stop the KGB from getting this thing (that looks like cheap lighting board). That’s why it’s a bit of a shock that the film ends with them in bed together (ON A BOAT!). Her neglige slides off and she tells James, “For your eyes only.” Roll credits.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 2

FYEO has some boffo Bond moments. James and Milena in a mini-sub battling another mini-sub under the Mediterranean is pretty damn cool. The scene where 54-year-old Bond is scaling an Alpine cliff in Northern Italy while a henchmen is trying to dislodge the pitons holding his rope is pretty edge of the seat. And there’s a wild ski chase sequence in a bobsled track (that led to the actual death of a stuntman). There’s also some light comedy regarding Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. “She’ll have our guts for garters,” the Minister of Defense says. The film ends with Thatcher (perfectly played by Scottish comedian Janet Brown) trying to congratulate Bond over the phone but actually talking to Milena’s parrot, who repeatedly says, “Give us a kiss.”

The misogyny in this 007 chapter seems to be dialed back a little. Bibi, the pigtailed ice skater, gets slapped by two men, but not by our hero. Gonzales’ Spanish villa is basically a swimming pool surrounded by bikini-clad women and KGB boss, General Gogal, has a secretary who appears to also be his young mistress. Posters for the movie featured Bond framed by woman’s bare legs, meant to attract male eyeballs. But for 1981, the year Porky’s came out, that all seems rather tame. It offers promise that 80s Bond can deliver the action that fans love with out the adjacent sexism.

For Your Eyes Only Premiered June 24, 1981 putting in direct competition with the Bill Murray film, Stripes. Aided by the popular theme song, sung by Sheena Easton, the film was second highest grossing Bond film (after Moonraker). Long, at 127 minutes, the film attempted to bring the grit back to 007 and find a place for the British spy in the new decade after 20 years of carving out the formula. Can Moore’s Bond age gracefully?

Next: Octopussy (1983)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The Myth of Merit

February 15, 2025February 15, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

February 15, 2025

We love our myths. They bind our cultures together. Whether they are creation myths or heroic myths of the eternal return, they resonate with our collective senses of self, what Carl Jung called the archetypes of the collective unconsciousness. This is certainly true of the “exceptional” myths of America.

We’ve been hearing a lot about “merit” lately. Trump/Musk has tried to make the case that anybody in a job who is not a straight white man is a “DEI hire,” who got the position because of some imagined quota instead of their inherent qualifications for the job. After the DC air collision last month Trump railed on former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (who is gay), saying, “We can’t have regular people doing this job. They won’t be able to do it, but we’ll restore faith in American air travel.” Then he went on about how dwarves are being hired to be air traffic controllers.

The message was clear. Only straight white able-bodied cis-gendered men are qualified for the job. Everybody else is a diversity hire. White men have “merit.”

When I explain the value of meritocracy to my sociology students I describe it basically as the combination of talent and effort. Meritocracy is the belief that anyone in America can make it up the economic ladder and what you lack in talent can be made up for with extra effort. If you want to be an NBA star or a Shark Tank entrepreneur, just put the work in and you’ll get there. And if you’ve got lots of talent AND drive, the sky is the limit. I use the example of Taylor Swift as someone who has loads of talent and an insane work ethic.

But Taylor also has had the advantage of being an attractive white woman. Just look at how Beyoncé has had to work twice is hard for fewer accolades. It might not be the best example but race is a major factor in the merit calculation and it translates to the fact that white men have a much lower bar to be seen as having merit.

Just look at the range of completely unqualified nominations that Trump has put forward, like Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, and Robert Kennedy, Jr., just to name a few of many. Their complete lack of merit makes Marco Rubio look like a supreme statesman in comparison. (Maybe that was the intent.) Perhaps Pam Bondi has the resume to be the U.S. Attorney General, but we know how attractive blondes are promoted by beauty pageant CEO Trump. The Trump administration has an Affirmative Action program for bootlickers. Merit matters less than loyalty. (Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s recent comments on Ukraine demonstrate how supremely unqualified he is for this job.)

The kleptocracy of the Trump regime is an illustration of the myth of merit in America, where women, people of color, and other marginalized populations have to work twice as hard for half as much and then see their accomplishments chided as the result of of some set-aside DEI program. It’s not surprising that many white men see valuing diversity, equity, and inclusion as a threat to their path of privilege, because it is. These men have always had an advantage and they are not about to relinquish it so easily.

But as Jim Morrison sang in 1968, “They got the guns but we got the numbers.” These men are a shrinking demographic and a unified effort will pry the keys out of their creaking fingers.

The James Bond Project #12: Moonraker (1979)

February 7, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 14 Comments

February 7, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

Moonraker (1979, directed by Lewis Gilbert)

Bond in space! For Your Eyes Only was supposed to be the last 007 of the ‘70s, but due to the popularity of Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the sci fi genre, Eon Productions decided to launch James into orbit. For the last time, Lewis Gilbert directed an expansive epic action adventure that starts with Bond falling through the sky without a parachute and ends with him floating in space with this episode’s Bond “girl.” The story is that Steven Spielberg offered to direct Moonraker after he wrapped up Close Encounters, but producer Cubby Broccoli wanted to stick with Gilbert. One can only imagine what THAT film would have looked like. Instead we get a camp romp that pleased Bond fans but looks pretty silly now.

Moonraker sees Roger Moore closing in on 50 but bringing some svelte bona fides to an older Bond. Hair and makeup prop him up nicely. Bond is up against another evil industrialist, this time its rocket designer Hugo Drax (played by Michael Lonsdale, who looks way too much like Peter Dinklage in this movie). Drax, like the megalomaniac in the last movie, wants to kill all the people on earth and then repopulate the planet with his master race of humans who are hanging out in his space ark. Bernard Lee makes his final appearance as M, the role he played since the first Bond film in 1962. Bond is aided by CIA agent/astronaut Dr. Holly Goodhead (Woot! There it is!). Goodhead is played by Lois Chiles, who delivers every line like she’s loaded on valium. Even when everyone on Earth is about to die, her voice remains in the “Gee, what should I wear to work?” range. Maybe Chiles was trying to play against the sexist “hysterical female” archetype, but women are allowed to have emotions. Oh, and Jaws (Richard Kiel) is back and he’s in love.

As we’ve come to expect, Bond does some globetrotting before he leaves the globe. Moonraker takes him to California, Venice, Italy, and Brazil. There’s a boat chase in the canals of Venice, that’s played for comedy (and is really dumb) and there’s a boat chase on the Amazon (that’s pretty cool). In the film, Drax has built a fleet of space shuttles to launch from his underground lair (Yes!) in the Amazon. The real space shuttle wouldn’t be launched by NASA for another two years, on April 12, 1981. That gave movie goers in 1979 a glimpse into what the 80s might look like.

Moonraker premiered in London on June 26, 1979, a week after President Jimmy Carter and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT II agreement in Vienna, bringing cold war tensions down a few notches. The film was United Artists widest opening picture and highest grossing of the Bond franchise to that point. There was no hit theme song this time. Shirley Bassey was brought back in after Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, and Kate Bush (!) passed. At the end of the seventies, Bond’s philandering was becoming tired, leaving audiences wondering if the franchise would survive into the 1980s.

Let’s drop Moonraker into our analysis matrix.

Driver of Action – As we’ve established, the Moore Bond films firmly place James in the driver seat, typically with the female spy sidekick who he can also sleep with. Dr. Goodhead doesn’t drive much of the story in Moonraker, and, like, the last film, needs to be rescued from the bad guy. Even though she’s a CIA agent AND an astronaut, James is still running the operation. We do get the team of M, Q, Moneypenny, and (now) the Defense Minister wedged in to help the ludicrous plot move along.

Role of Violence – 007 has a pretty low bodycount in this film. He shoots a would-be assassin out of a tree while pheasant hunting and, other than killing Drax at the end, that’s about it. There is a crazy climactic space battle with lasers when, somehow, a battalion of U.S. soldiers are crammed into the cargo bay of a space shuttle and then attack Drax’s space station. (I’m guessing this is where Trump got his idea for a U.S. Space Force.) Not sure where all the laser guns were in 1979, but Bond doesn’t really engage in any of the violence (like in the last film when he was mowing suckers down). Maybe older Bond has lost his taste for blood.

Vulnerability – Moore’s Bond is a robot. When he discovers Goodhead alive in Drax’s underground lair (beneath a shuttle that’s about to lift off), he says “Thank God you’re safe.” That’s it.

Sexual Potency – I could write a dissertation on this one. The FDA wouldn’t introduce Viagra until 1998 and one wonders if the mad scientists at Pfizer dreamed of a drug that would give men Bond boners. 007 is MI-6’s heat seeking missile. He’s rapacious. There isn’t a skirt he won’t chase, except for Miss Moneypenny, who is now matronly and completely off Bond’s radar. (How I miss their banter.) Speaking of Moneypenny, at the start of the film M asks her if 007 is back from his mission. “He’s on his last leg, sir,” she replies. The next shot is Bond’s hand on a flight attendants bare leg. “Any higher Mr. Bond and my ears will pop,” she says. (Of course she’s a double agent and Bond is sent flying out of the plane without a parachute, leading to one of the greatest action stunts in movie history.)

Bond may have failed at getting her knickers down, but you can’t keep a good Double O down. He makes passes at every woman under 40 that passes his field of vision. He would have made the moves on Drax’s hench-women, but he had to wrestle a giant anaconda. Shit happens. He does end up in bed with Corinne Dufour, Drax’s personal pilot, played by The Story of O’s Corinne Cléry. (She is killed by dogs for her transgression.) He also beds his MI-6 contact in Rio, Manuela. In his hotel room, she bares her leg and James asks, “How do you kill 5 hours in Rio if you don’t Samba?” Then he unties her frock. James meets Dr. Goodhead in California at Drax’s compound, but then again in Venice where he realizes she is CIA. He seduces her into bed and makes the case that she should team up, but she slips away in the morning. The film ends with Bond and Goodhead having sex in zero gravity onboard a Space Shuttle. As is the gag now, the MI-6 brass is watching and M asks what Bond is doing. Q replies, “I believe he is attempting re-entry, sir.” Thank you and goodnight.

There also a side story worth commenting on. The monstrous Jaws is “redeemed” by falling in love in Rio. He’s a giant and she’s tiny with braided pigtails and glasses, dressed like a farm girl with heaving cleavage. Next to him, she looks like a child and I think that’s the point. She doesn’t speak, only stares lovingly her 7 foot 2 man. When Jaws realizes there’s no room for him and “Dolly” in Drax’s fascist utopia, he helps Bond to thwart the evil plot. The odd pair then open a bottle of champaign as the space lair is destroyed. The whole thing is icky.

Connection – Again, Moore’s Bond is a man untethered to anyone. There’s a scene where he’s riding a horse in Brazil looking like a gaucho. It’s an obvious nod to Clint Eastwood, the penultimate seventies model of masculinity, the high plains drifter. His connection to Goodhead is wafer thin. In the obligatory coitus end scene, James and Holly are having space sex and she says, “Take me ’round the world one more time.” He drolly replies, “Why not?” Boring sex is boring.

Summary Moonraker is so broad and silly it’s just a romp at this point. The countless henchmen scientists in their yellow jumpsuits, the martial arts attack by Drax’s Asian manservant in a glass museum that destroys dozens of priceless artifacts, escaping the bad guy in a Carnival celebration (Thunderball redux), pretending to be weightless by moving slowly, it’s all in good fun. But the fact that Moore and Chiles seem so completely bored by the script drags down the campiness of Bond ’79. And Jaws and his child bride may have delighted young fans in the Carter era, but it just seems kind of sad now.

These seventies 007 movies have consistently missed an easy opportunity to be a part of the decade where feminism went mainstream. Most of them attempted to pair James up with a female spy that could have been his equal or even taught him a few things. Instead they played the role to attract the male gaze and be yet another notch on James’ bedpost. Yawn. Will things be different in the third decade of our hero?

Next: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

February 6, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 16 Comments

February 5, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977, directed by Lewis Gilbert)

This was the first Bond film I saw in the theater. My dad took my little brother and I to see the PG-rated Spy Who Loved Me the summer of ’77. I was 13 and what I remember most was the brief glimpse of Barbara Bach’s (or her body double’s) right breast in the submarine shower scene. I was 13, OK? But The Spy Who Loved Me was a return to form after the limp Man with the Golden Gun in 1974. It had all your musts, including oodles of cool gadgets from Q, Bond in his tux and bad girls in bikinis, scores of henchmen willing to die for a megalomaniac, and sharks. My absolute favorite part of the film when I was a kid (besides the boob) was the Lotus Esprit that turned into a submarine, complete with missiles. I thought that was the coolest thing on earth and dreamed of a submarine car of my own. Ironically, in 2013 actual megalomaniac supervillain Elon Musk bought the film’s Lotus for £616,000 in hopes of turning it into a workable submarine. (Like most of his crazy ideas, he failed.)

Roger Moore definitely is getting his mojo back in his third installment in the Bond franchise. While his lines still fall a bit flat, he’s got Bond “girls” dripping from his arms. On top of the TSWLM list is Barbara Bach as KGB agent Anya Amasova, AKA Agent XXX (get it?). Bach was a model and Spaghetti Western actor who would next star in Caveman (1980) with her future husband, Beatle Ringo Starr. (Rumors were that Moore wanted Brigitte Bardot for the role.) As a sort of seventies Blofeld, this installment’s villain is wealthy industrialist Karl Stromberg, who wants to destroy the world so he can build a new world under the ocean. Stromberg is played by Curt Jürgens, who starred with Bardot in And God Created Woman in 1956. Added to the cast is Richard Kiel, who stars as the indestructible steel toothed giant, Jaws. The return of You Only Live Twice director Lewis Gilbert helped to bring some of the Connery-era swagger back to 007’s mission.

As is expected, the exotic locales splash across the screen. Bond riding a camel across the Egyptian desert and then chasing the bad guys through the Giza ruins was not filmed on an English set. It was there on sight, as were the scenes filmed on the Italian island of Sardinia. We return to some classic Bond tropes, like assassins on skis (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and underwater battles (Thunderball). There’s sexy one-liners (Her: But James, I need you! Him: So does England.) And sexist one-liners (James commenting on a woman in a bikini in a boat, in front of Anya, posing as his wife – “What a handsome craft. Such lovely lines.”) And while we don’t get an underground lair, we get an under WATER lair that serves its purpose.

The Spy Who Loved Me premiered in the United States on August 3, 1977, the same day that the Tandy Corporation debuted the first mass produced microcomputer, the TRS-80, forever changing popular culture and gadgets in James Bond movies. The film received mixed reviews but fared better than its predecessor. Boosted by a great theme song, sung by Carly Simon (and constantly on the radio the summer of 1977), the film was United Artists biggest grossing movie to date, but competed in theaters with the box office sensation that was Star Wars, putting it at #8 for the year (between The Deep and Oh, God!)

Let’s put The Spy Who Loved Me in our feminist evaluation machine.

Driver of Action – I’m getting the feeling that the formula for Moore’s Bond films are it’s just him. Even though he’s paired up with a Soviet spy, Anya Amosova, this isn’t a buddy film. She’s primarily sexy arm candy whom 007 has to rescue. (Although there is one scene in Egypt where she throws up her arms in a Charlies Angels karate pose that I thought was going to give us some Russian aggression, but no such luck.) James does not even have a support team. We get brief cameos by Q and Moneypenny, but this is just James.

Role of Violence – 007 kills some people in TSWLM. At the start of the film he shoots a Soviet agent (who is Anya’s boyfriend) with a rocket ski poll while skiing backwards. He drops one of Stromberg’s henchmen off a roof in Cairo, and then kills a half dozen more in a crazy car chase in Sardinia, including killing a bikini-clad helicopter pilot with a missile from his submerged Lotus. When the action moves to Stromberg’s tanker, which is being used to capture nuclear submarines, 007 with a machine gun goes on a rampage. There are literally bloodless corpses everywhere. Where’s the blood? And James shoots Stromberg multiple times in his underwater HQ.

Vulnerability – There is actually a mention of Bond being married in the film. Anya brings up that he was married and his wife was killed and he stops her from going any further. It was almost a moment of James the person. The break from James performing “007” was jarring but it only lasted for a split second and then it was back to Robot Bond.

Sexual Potency – This version of Bond wants to be as horizontal as possible. Miss Moneypenny might be too old for him in the late 70s, but every other women on the screen is fair game for his jacked up libido. To be fair, the film starts with a twist on the familiar theme. A man that looks like James is in bed with a beautiful woman when the phone rings. We learn that the woman is actually a Soviet agent, Anya Amosava, and the man is just a lover. Never fear, the very next scene is James in bed with a Russian woman in Austria. It’s a clever trick perhaps meant to say that women can play this game. James in Egypt meets a very white sheik who has a harem of beautiful women. When Bond is offered one of the women for the night he says it would be rude to refuse the offer. In Cairo, he meets another woman who is linked to a connection. He tries to seduce her but ends up using her body to block an assassin’s bullet. Oh well.

The rest of the film is about James and Anya, cold war enemies who have teamed up for some “Anglo Soviet cooperation” to stop this dude who is stealing submarines and wants to blow up the world. Bond can’t keep his hands off her and she may just be playing him by letting his hands and lips wander. But there is a scene on a train (You know, the scene on the train!) where Jaws attacks James and Anya and Bond tosses him out of the train window (We’ve seen this movie before) and Anya says, “You saved my life.” The sexy sax version of theme song swells up as James takes her in his arms. Later, the film ends with 007 and XXX getting busy in a preview of Glasnost ten years down the road.

Connection – This is a weird one. (Surprise.) The film is called The Spy Who Loved Me and theme song is sung by a female so it’s reasonable it’s about Anya being loved by James. In the film Stromberg says Bond is “in love with a Russian agent.” But it doesn’t seem like either are in love with anyone. Anya seems to forgive him after finding out he killed her boyfriend, but it doesn’t seem the least bit romantic. This is the aloof Bond of the seventies. Even Q and Moneypenny are kept at arm’s length. Regardless, the film ends with James and Anya bobbing in the ocean in a luxury escape pod, complete with a bed and a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon ’52. The pod floats into a cruising British destroyer where M and the British Ministers of Defense peer in through the window to see the two spies in flagrante delicto. “Bond! What do you think you’re doing?” asks the defense minister. “Keeping the British end up, sir.” And scene.

Toxic Masculinity Score: 6

Summary Watching this movie took me right back to the summer of ’77. The underwater submarine car battling frog men with their own subs was bliss for a 13-year-old boy. Catching a glimpse of Bach’s boob while sitting next to my dad was both terrifying and titillating. (See what I did there?) No part of me questioned the silly logic of the plot. Now I look at through the lens of 48 years of media. Stromberg has hundreds of henchmen all in red suits, like they were the henchmen of Squid Games. I wondered, who made these suits? Did Stromberg buy in bulk? Are they one size fits all? And do these henchmen get benefits? They all seem to be willing to die for him (and they all do). There should at least be life insurance in their benefits package. And dental.

The Spy Who Love Me, through that modern lens, has a pretty dim view of women. Bach, a few years after the film, said as much, telling People Magazine in 1983 that in the film Bond, “is a chauvinist pig who uses girls to shield him against bullets.” Moore himself said much the same in the 1970s. “Bond, like myself, is a male chauvinist pig. All my life I’ve been trying to get women out of brassieres and pants.” At least Bond doesn’t smack any women in this film on his way to thwart the accelerationist doomsday plot of this episode’s mad genius. While the mushroom clouds over the Atlantic might dampen the joie de vivre of the cold warriors warming things up the film’s climax, were left wondering will the aging Commander Bond will run out of notches on his belt before producers run of out of Ian Fleming novels to film.

Next: Moonraker (1979)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

Trump’s Shock & Awe Plan to Collapse the American Economy

February 4, 2025February 4, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ Leave a comment

February 4, 2025

These first two weeks have been dizzying. Trump and his billionaire bros have attacked multiple aspects of our democracy. They have ripped the guardrails off while Democrats have stood there, dazed and confused. The flurry of bias-motivated executive actions, appointments of merit-less droogs hell-bent on dismantling the imagined “deep state,” inflation driving tariffs, saber-rattling at our allies, and the pardoning of violent criminals who, in 2021, tried stop democracy in its tracks. It’s all too much.

The chaos of Trump, ripped from the pages of Project 2025, is the intent. In a normal world, each action would occupy a few weeks in the news cycle, but there’s a dozen actions a day. The chaos is the point. The opposition is playing Wack-a-Mole to each insane impulse from the orange madmen who is declaring war on our allies with one hand and canceling Black History Month celebrations with other. He’s throwing countless federal employees into economic crisis (as well as those, like me, who are employed by federal grants), while blaming the airline crashes on Obama and dwarves. It’s like being punched in the face over and over again with no chance to land a counterpunch.

Trump didn’t invent this strategy. Bush used it to destroy Iraq in 2003. Twenty-two years ago, they called it “Shock and Awe.” Use the military might of the United States to overwhelm Iraq and out of the chaos, create a machine that would profit post-war contractors. Just Google: Halliburton, Iraq, and Profit. This “shock doctrine” (as Naomi Klein called in her 2007 book) has a history of effectiveness. The disaster capitalism employed in nations like Chile was utilized to generate billions in profits for war contractors in Iraq. This week, as witnessed by the plunging of markets after Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, Trump has brought disaster capitalism to the homeland and he and his billionaire bros stand to take home all the money.

The shock doctrine relies on chaos to shake up markets and political organization. Not only is the opposition stuck on the back foot trying to respond to each affront, economic destabilization paralyzes the working class who is more worried about inflation and holding on to their jobs than developing a strategy to fight back. Meanwhile, oligarchs are positioned to swoop in and calmly reassemble the pieces in a way that permanently protects their power and profit. This happened in Russia in the 1990s and it’s happening here now. It’s like that scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when there’s a run on the banks and George Bailey tries to calm the panic, saying, “Don’t you see what’s happening? Potter isn’t selling. Potter’s buying! And why? Because we’re panicky and he’s not.”

Trump, unregistered foreign agent Elon Musk, and their army of gangster capitalists are crashing the economy on purpose. Shipping migrant labor across the border, ludicrous tariffs, rampant deregulation, and appointing insanely unqualified loyalists are all meant to tank financial stability. Trump no longer needs his MAGA troops who were told he would lower the price of groceries on “Day 1.” They served their purpose of installing him back in the White House. They will suffer at the checkout line along with the rest of us. But at least they got to “own the libs.” Musk, now with the keys to the U.S. Treasury, can let the air out of America’s tires and jack up his global banking portfolio and Trump’s voters will have no idea what happened.

Like Mr. Potter, Trump’s billionaire bros will come in to “manage” the economic crisis. The German National Socialist Party did this when the Great Depression hit Germany. They consolidated power with the promise of affordable eggs. And now, when we look for the storied institutions of democracy to prevent an authoritarian takeover in the United States, including a free press, an independent judiciary, and a non-partisan Department of Justice, we will find they have been hollowed out during MAGA’s war of the “deep state.” Trump’s vow to purge the FBI of agents and analysts who investigated January 6th should be all the warning Americans need.

It’s easy to draw on the rise of Hitler as a historical parallel. And even though Melania has claimed that Trump kept Mein Kampf on his nightstand, Donald probably isn’t going back 90 years for a playbook. The rise of Putin and the rule of Russian oligarchs provide the formula. Just read Garry Kasparov’s 2015 book, Winter is Coming. Putin used economic calamity and the fear of Chechen terrorists to dismantle Russian democracy, making him President for Life. Dissidents get poisoned or sent to a Siberian gulag. Trump using the federal government to go after his political enemies is a page out of his comrade’s manifesto.

So what do we do?

We’ve have three weeks of the worst assault on American democracy in our lifetime. We’re all in shock that it’s really this bad. And it’s going to get worse. We can’t depend on Chuck Schumer and the corporate toadies of the Democratic Party save us. Many of them are in line to profit from the consolidation of power by the billionaire class. The Democrats who stand against them need to make themselves known now (or hang separately, as Ben Franklin said). But this is about us first. Us who are battered and defeated by the task at hand. Do we retreat into Netflix binges, or is there a path forward?

This is great opportunity to remember the practices of mindfulness. We’re all in reaction mode right now. Personally, I’ve had to resist the desire to punch someone, especially fellow working class people who think DEI is their enemy while their egg prices skyrocket. This is time to stop. Take a pause and breathe. Then we can start planning. There’s a great device popular in AA circles called “HALT.” Does this situation make me “Hungry Angry Lonely or Tired”? If so, just stop and take stock. So slowing the freakout roll is key.

Swiss sociologist Jennifer Walter offers a simple strategy to re-enage with solutions. First, focus on a few key issues you care about instead of being overwhelmed by the tsunami of fires that need to be put out (to mix metaphors). Second, find trusted sources of information who can do the work of providing needed facts and analysis. Third, if their goal is to overwhelm you, take mental health breaks. Meditation is a favorite “self gift” of mine. Next, Walter suggests taking 48 hours to respond to a news story to let your emotions subside and sort out what’s important. And lastly, build community to share the load. My faculty union president sent out an email last week, entitled, “What to Do in a Burning House,” asking faculty not disengage but step forward. I immediately joined a union committee.

Progressives, real patriots, and those who just care about the price of heat this winter, have been knocked to their knees by the Trump/Musk war on the buttresses of American democracy. But it’s time to stand back up. A lot of the heavy lifting is going to be done by lawyers who still have access to the courts to stop Trump’s actions, many of which are illegal and/or unconstitutional. The rest of us who are not the uber rich have a role, whether it’s monkey-wrenching the shock doctrine or building a viable alternative to Trump’s fear-fueled vision of America. Take a breath. We will do this.

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

February 2, 2025February 2, 2025 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 17 Comments

February 1, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974, directed by Guy Hamilton)

This is the first “meh” of the Bond series. Guy Hamilton is back in the director seat, for the last time, and he seems to have run out steam. If Live and Let Die was meant to crib from blaxploitiation films, 1974’s entry is meant to riff on Kung Fu flicks popular at the time. (Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon grossed over $400 million in 1973 dollars.) Richard Maibaum turned in a flaccid script then bailed. The Man with the Golden Gun was the last Bond film to be joint produced by Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman for Eon Productions and their falling out would end the “Bond film a year” schedule. That’s probably a good thing.

The good news is TMWTGG gets away from the Bond in America motif of the last two films. We’re back in the “exotic” far east. There’s no army of henchmen, no sharks, not even any Q designed gadgets, but there is (thank God) an underground lair. In the middle of the 70s Energy crisis, there’s a convoluted plot about how a former circus performer with three nipples named Francisco Scaramanga plots to control the solar energy market, as if that is not just called “capitalism.”. Scaramanga is played wonderfully by Dracula icon Christopher Lee, who had just appeared on the cover of Band on the Run, the new album by Live and Let Die theme-singers Paul McCartney and Wings. The scenery in Hong Kong and Thailand is spectacular (even if the scene in Beirut was shot on a soundstage in London).

Roger Moore was back in his second 007 installment, already a bit weary. His quips fall flat (except for one at the end) and his mojo is dragging. TMWTGG was meant to be Moore’s entry into the Bond canon after You Only Live Twice. One wonders how 1967 Moore would have treated the role compared to 1974 Moore. As has become cliche, Scaramanga has a reluctant “lover,” played limply by Maud Adams (another Melania Trump clone). And, like the last film, there’s a bumbling but beautiful female MI-6 operative. This time it’s Mary Goodnight (Lord, these names) played by Swedish model/actress Britt Elkland, who was so great in 1971’s gangster classic, Get Carter. The great addition to the cast (and highlight of the film) is Hervé Villechaize as Scaramanga’s pint-sized right hand man, Nick Nack. Villechaize would go on to play Tattoo on TV’s Fantasy Island, cementing the words, “De plane!” into the English lexicon.

The Man with the Golden Gun was not well received upon its release in December 1974, the same week Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as vice president, after Gerald Ford became president to replace “Tricky” Dick Nixon, who had resigned. A dozen years in, TMWTGG was seen as boilerplate Bond, dropped in for 1974’s chapter for fans of the franchise. There’s a super-70s car chase that ends with one car jumping over a river (with an Evel Knievel reference!) and a car literally flying away and a Swedish sex symbol in a bikini, but not much else to write home about.

Let’s plug it into our analysis.

Driver of Action – Again, this is all Bond all the time. We don’t even get Felix. There is a minor sidekick in Lieutenant Hip, the Hong Kong cop played by Soon-Taik Oh (who was a staple on 70s TV shows like MASH and Charlie’s Angels). In one scene, he and his teen nieces rescue James with some serious (and seriously dumb) Kill Bill Kung Fu action. But yeah, it’s the Live and Let Die formula with much less payoff. Maybe it’s Bond’s polyester suits.

Role of Violence – Surprise, surprise, Bond smacks Maud Adams’ character, Andrea Anders, hard in the face and threatens to do it again. Was Bond striking women in the face required in all 007 scripts? Didn’t someone say something? I mean, Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman” was #1 on radio while they made this. Someone could have said SOMETHING. Bond pulls out his little pistol a lot in this movie but only shoots Scaramanga in the climatic end scene, posing as a wax figure of himself (don’t ask). Bond also takes out a kung fu master, manly man that he is. His violence is balanced by Miss Goodnight, who throws Kra, Scaramanga’s only henchman, into a vat of liquid oxygen.

Vulnerability – Yeah, no. James loses his gun at one point. He seems a little annoyed that Goodnight wants to reconnect. This is Stepford Bond on autopilot.

Sexual Potency – We get glimpses of the Bond of old when James tries to suck a golden bullet out of a belly dancer’s navel and when he encounters a nude woman swimming in a Chinese crime lord’s pool. She introduces herself as Chew Mee, to which Bond replies, “Really?” The main sexual conquest is Bond’s bedding of Scaramanga’s lover, Andrea. In an über creepy scene he sneaks into her hotel room and watches her shower and then man handles her only to learn that (shock) she is a damsel in distress. Later, he’s decided that, why not, he’s going to have sex with Agent Goodnight, but Andrea shows up so he throws Goodnight in the closet and has sex with Andrea Anders instead. It’s pretty messed up. Bond can’t keep his work life and his sex life separate. He does end up back in bed with Goodnight at the end of the film, but it feels more obligatory than romantic.

Connection – 007 is even more isolated in this film. Even Moneypenny gets the brush off. Q and James seem annoyed by each other. James knocks a kid who fixes his boat into the river. When Andrea Anders is shot, he’s not phased. There are zero fucks given by this Bond. The film ends, are you ready for it, with Bond and Bond girl Britt Ekland in a boat! (This time it’s a Chinese junk.) James and Agent Goodnight are finally back in bed on a slow boat from China. But, as is now tradition, it’s a false ending. Tick Tack is waiting (for some reason) to kill 007. In an unnecessarily funny scene, there is a Bond vs. little person battle to expedite before James can get Mary back in the sack. When he does, in another moment of coitus interruptus, Q calls and asks to speak to Agent Goodnight. “She’s just coming, sir,” says James. Ah, there’s our man Bond. Then he sets the phone down so Q can listen them making the MI-6 agent with two backs. Really creepy.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 6

Summary The Man with the Golden Gun does a little bit better on the race issue than Live and Let Die. We do get some cool street-level views of Thai culture, including some great moments of Thai boxing. The contrast of free Hong Kong (with casinos) and Red China is flirted with. But the martial arts bit is weak. There’s no way 007 bests a Kung Fu master so easily, let alone an army of them. We get the comedic return of the racist Sheriff J. W. Pepper (from Live and Let Die), here on vacation in Thailand. (That’s a hard sell.) And a scene where Kra, Scaramanga’s black henchman, gets a little rapey with Goodnight. The hope is that mainstream audiences might have used TMWTGG as a gateway drug into the explosion of brilliant martial arts films that were coming out of Asia in the 1970s.

There are some great moments in this film. Bond flying a seaplane through island outcrops in the China Sea must have looked brilliant on the big screen. The ahead-of-its-time concept about the power of controlling renewable energy sources is noteworthy. Hervé Villechaize is an absolutely brilliant foil and steals every scene. And (recognizing that this might not be the most feminist bit of analysis) Britt Ekland is completely loved by the camera, which, of course, in Bond-land represents the male gaze. But there’s just a lot of silliness here. How did Scaramanga build an underground lair in an outcropping? And why did he include a funhouse, like some Disneyland attraction gone horribly wrong? James is going save his kept woman, but not really. James fancies Agent Goodnight, but not really. There is a car spinning 360 through the air and another flying off into the sunset. It’s like the writers just threw every leftover idea at the wall without the energy to see them through.

Roger Moore’s Bond smokes a ton of cigars in this film (calling Dr. Freud), drives a 1974 AMC Hornet through the streets of Bangkok like a madman, and kills guy who might have prevented global warming. It’s a mess and partly so because Bond is stuck in a tired model of manhood that had already become a caricature.

Next: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)