Is it perhaps the campness and not the queerness that affects here?
I wonder if Silva had dropped that element - just that element - how the scene with Bond on the chair would have played out then…probably even scarier, as if Chigurh had felt up Bond. But I think while that would have added to the thriller element it would also have made Silva a bit less memorable; less relatable too. I think the camp element adds to Silva - and not in a bad way either.
But then again, I regard Silva not as entirely bad or the sole villain.
Not nitpicking, just citing an example, but you’re clearly very ‘passionate’ about this subject and i’d rather not spend my sunday evening in a discussion you seem determined to turn into a slagging match. So i’ll say my goodbyes with one last question:
You say that ‘every gay character is villainous in Bond movies’. I can think of Silva. Wint and Kidd. Who are all the others?
I’m not slagging you, but you’re completely ignoring the point I’m making and picking one instance of something that illustrates your point and saying i’m attacking you
Pussy Galore, arguably Rosa Klebb and Xenia Onatopp are others - but that’s the point i’m making - there’s barely any others and they’re all poor representation. For every Elektra King i can show you a Melina Havelock, a Wai Lin, a Camille, a Pam Bouvier - for every Silva, I can show you… maybe two more villainous LGBT characters and a lesbian who is turned by a real man
I know Pussy helping Bond is widely seen as a turning of her sexuality. I always believed she was bisexual and decided nuking Fort Knox was a bad plan after all, with Bond guaranteeing her freedom.
Apart from that, I acknowledge all the stereotypes in Bond. And I do take them as seriously as the rest of the Bond stories. They are silly escapism, a fantasy world I do not seek any role models from. If some of it is offensive, even to me (those stupid Germans who never speak English correctly and always are the villains), so be it. I even enjoy that they dare to do what they want. That is Bondian to me.
Very intersting discussion here.
But one question:
how is Xennia Onatopp a lesbian? I don’t see that at all. She sleeps with men, seduce men and than kills them. I can’t remember any scene she is close with a woman. Or did I miss something?
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The issue with that is that the writer in question, John Logan, and a gay man himself, doesn’t think it does whilst you, as a gay man and an audience member, think it does. Changing words to appease an audience is still a form of censorship, as is ignoring any audience concerns because you don’t agree, so it comes down to whose view is more important, the writer who interprets it one way or the audience who interpreted it another?
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As I commented before, Logan was in CYA mode so I wonder if hehad second thoughts, but was not in a position to speak of them at the time. Blake Edwards, after many years of denials, finally admitted that he did see how Mickey Rooney’s performance in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S was an example of yellow face. But it took decades.
Also, I do not think understanding how an audience will react is appeasing the audience or self-censorship. When I create an African-American character I do not create a Shuffling Negro type who talks in “dems” and “dees.” You could argue that I am censoring myself by refusing to use stereotypes that will alienate a portion of my audience, but I would argue that I am choosing to write/create in such a way that brings my audience in. It is great and
Important to challenge an audience, but to turn them off by employing racist/sexist/homophobic stereotypes seems counter-productive. When you read or watch interviews with Alfred Hitchcock, he is forever talking about his audience, and Hitchcock was not an artist who I would accuse of self-censorship.
Lastly, artists have intentions and usually believe they have fulfilled them in the finished work. An audience will respond to and interpret the finished work. Often there is misalignment. Many times people have told me what they got out of my work, and I am amazed since I did not intend such a reading or even imagine it. Sometimes I think: “Wow, I am better then I thought.” Other times i think: “Wow is that wrong-headed.” I think it is important to be able to ground an interpretation in the formal elements of the text and in the history/traditions that the artist is working in.
Knowing an artist’s intentions can enrich the interpretive process, but they are not the controlling guideposts nor is ferreting them
out the main goal of aesthetic interpretation.
Bisexual - its only implied - but she moans and licks her lips when its said Natalya tastes like strawberries and tells Natalya to “wait her turn” when Natalya tries to attack her
Then for me the questions becomes: what do we mean by camp? Camp started out as an attitude that was taken toward of work of art–it was not an element found within the art work itself. Now camp can refer to an element within an art work. But Silva as a camp representation rather than a grotesque one? I need to hear more.
Why would it have made Silva less memorable? I am not saying it wouldn’t have; rather I am interested in your argument.
Camp is a pose Silva chooses consciously, thereby making a statement: the bordering-on-effeminate approach (that’s nothing like his true ruthless persona), the hairdresser act turned up to ten-and-a-half and so on. The deformation lies below and Silva has no choice about that, his injured body, his need for revenge and remission.
Silva without the pose? Without his protective shield of the artificial character he designed? That would just leave us with another coldly efficient killer - how many have we already seen ending up as strawberry jam? Would we really be interested in him if it wasn’t for these unique sides of him?
What textual elements do you think support the view of Pussy as bisexual? Hamilton does have Bond say “He’s mad you know” which can be seen as the seed of the belief that the Fort Knox plan is a bad idea, but I am curious about the support for the bisexual understanding of Pussy.
I am not looking for role models from escapist films, but I am also not looking to be served racist/homophobic/sexist stereotypes either. I think there is a middle path.
Why is it Bondian to enjoy the films daring to be offensive?
Bond has his own act, the booze and gambling and cigarettes (of the books) - and above all the women he chases so casually. Bond and Silva is also the remake of Bond and Scaramanga - only in SKYFALL Bond doesn’t argue he’s different, he acts instead.
Silva could have shot M in the hearing, only he hesitates and Bond intervenes. Why does he? Because he’s not finished, because shooting M never was the objective. When Silva finally faces her again he needs to make his speech, needs that final act that unites him with M…again.
If a character who just walked through various security layers of SIS and armed police finally has the drop on his mark and doesn’t shoot, well, then it’s because he can’t shoot. He’s not able to do it, so he even urges M to shoot them both.
Pussy‘s bisexuality: just the fact that she apparently enjoys sex with both genders.
As for the hateful stereotypes: Bond films pander to the mainstream. Views on gender roles and sexuality change through the years and get adapted eventually. But Bond films don’t come fast enough to react faster. Could they be more courageous? Maybe. But they cannot afford to alienate the masses whose money ensures their future. Look at the ongoing controversy about casting Idris Elba as a potential Bond. Ridiculous, yes. But a sign of these divided times. A reality that is financially driven, whether we like it or not.
About the offensive parts I enjoy: Obviously I do not like nor condone offensiveness per se. But I do not find anything that grossly offensive in the Bond films. Some elements might make me cringe because with passing times views and values have changed. But I do not detect anything willfully and maliciously offensive.
Bond skirting cruelty and even sadism, however, is indeed something I enjoy - because he always directs it at the bad guys. That kind of enjoyment derives from a childish urge to punish the villains of this world, nonchalantly and amusingly.
I hasten to add that I enjoy this because in the real world I would not condone this. But in the fantasy world of Bond I can vicariously.
Got it. The one leap for me is that what Bond does has never been presented as an act–it would make the entire franchise performative–which may be a valid approach with the changing Bonds and Ms and other characters. I certainly see perfomativity as a theme in DAF, but in the Anguish Bonds of Dalton and Resurrection Bonds of Craig, I find it harder to see–these are films that seek (often with desperation) to be taken seriously (like Nolan’s reboot of the Batman series).
Got it. But why does the need to unite with M cause him be performatively queer? There is where I do not see the link. We could posit a chameleon quality to Silva, but then the question reverts to why the filmmakers chose as one of his performances the role of stereotypical gay villain.
I think Alec Trevelyan first broke the subject in a speech on how Bond drowns out the voices of all the dead he left behind in his martinis. And Craig’s version once admitted losing his armour to Vesper. And it’s Vesper who addresses Bond’s act in their first meeting, seeing through it from the go. It’s not a theme often pursued in the films but it’s definitely there, whether they are serious or playful.
I think it’s a cover he cultivated to operate in his new freelance career. After all, it should have occurred to SIS that somebody they retired early to a Chinese spook resort is actually very alive and kicking their teeth out. Apparently not so, they had no idea - and M may have guessed but kept her suspicions for herself.
Why the filmmakers chose this particular theme? I have no idea - but to me it created one of the finest and most enjoyable characters in a Bond film in a long time. It definitely was a daring move to present the audience with a figure that reminds of Frankenstein’s creature and challenges the roles of M, of the SIS and Bond.
Apparently–I think it can go either way with Bond. Pussy wants to be rescued in the the final—is it from Bond?
I do find some things grossly offensive, e.g., LALD’s representations of black characters.
For me, willfulness (or it absence) is not a major consideration–unconscious racism/homophobia/sexism causes the same harm as the conscious variety.
As a queer youth being the recipient of cruel behavior, witnessing its deployment–even against villains–is not particularly pleasurable. Maybe why I like the Hamilton mix so much.
Totally understand and much appreciate your open and sincere responses. Fred Camper–an influential film critic–wrote that while he was anti-racist, he could watch THE BIRTH OF A NATION and the formal excellence of the film would so absorb him that he could ignore the offensiveness of the content (which kicked in once the movie was over). In your case, it could be that your immersion in the fantasy world of Bond allows you for the duration of the film to ignore what in the real world you would never condone.
For me there are (broadly speaking) two buckets (at least) of viewers: those who get immersed in the mise en scene or the fantasy or the formal elements, and the offensive elements get put on hold for the running time. In the other bucket is viewers who cannot accomplish this feat (I often wonder if this division tracks on people who can compartmentalize and those who cannot).
Neither approach is superior to the other, and the area of commonality is agreement that the material is offensive in real life, and that some viewers navigate it better than others in reel life.
I think Alec Trevelyan first broke the subject in a speech on how Bond drowns out the voices of all the dead he left behind in his martinis.
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For me, Bond does not always have such insight into himself. What I appreciate in the novels is how Fleming chronicles the deterioration of a particular type of masculinity and at the same time captures the decline of Empire and the feelings associated with it.
In the films, to keep Bond front and center as protagonist, a resurrection/redemption theme was needed (and Bond is not the only franchise or film to take this path–cinemas are filthy with movies about men being vulnerable, with this newly admitted vulnerability taking center stage the way their heroics and strength used to. The phenomenon is as old as the troubled Westerns of the 1950’s replacing the more straight-forward ones of the 1930’s and 1940’s
Here we have to part a little. I think you have presented a great backstory for SIlva and grounded it in formal elements, but it just does not resonate for me.
It’s surely just a reading of Silva, not the reading. And many - most? - casual viewers either wouldn’t care or not agree with it. But I feel there are some pointers that become hard to ignore once you’ve picked up on them - and from there SKYFALL opens up for a number of interpretations, most of them no doubt arbitrary.
But that is how good criticism works–it picks up on the pointers (what I call formal elements) and use them as the basis of an interpretation–the more pointers–the stronger the interpretation. It is only arbitrary if the interpretation is mostly a riff grounded in the spectator’s personality–the pointers should always outnumber the elements that come from the spectator herself.
I’ve only read part of this thread, but from what I’ve read, it looks like a very interesting discussion.
My initial reaction to Silva making an advance on Bond was a grumpy “Oh great, another portrayal of a gay man as creepy/broken”, but I must admit it was quickly redeemed by Craig’s laid back response.
Taken as a whole, I think the scene was a net positive in reflecting a progressive attitude to us LGBT folk. And taking identity politics out of it, I liked the extra dimension of jeopardy/tension it created.