My partner and I decided to rewatch all the James Bond movies, starting with the Daniel Craig series and working our way backward.
I know if you’re reading this then you’re probably thinking “why tho…?”
And I can’t really say much besides that we’ve been together for 23 years, and we do stuff like this. I should probably also mention that neither of us are huge James Bond fans. I watched a couple of the Sean Conary ones as a kid, and then the Pierce Brosnan ones with my friends when I was a teenager. I mean…they’re movies, they passed the time and I chilled with friends, can’t really say more than that.
Ok there are the parts with cool gadgets, car chases and action scenes. Oh and misogyny! I don’t want to forget all the misogyny, because it wouldn’t be a Bond flick without sexually objectifying the women.
Anyway, we watched Casino Royal and Quantum of Solace and both had their charm. Cool cinematography, action scenes etc. And I remembered something that always would cross my mind for a split second when I watched these movies the first time.
It was the amount of massive wonton destruction throughout the movie! Vehicles exploding and getting wrecked, city streets full of panic and innocent bystanders getting injured. Buildings and homes destroyed, and just chaos upon chaos just seemed to follow Bond wherever he went. And throughout it all, he would always remain calm and stoic as he walks away from trails of destruction he helped create.
Now this was something I always thought about when I watched these and other action movies: what about all those people and the buildings and streets and everything??” This thought would come to me, stay for a couple of seconds and then leave. But when I watched Skyfall it came to me and nestled in my brain. I mean I’m writing a blog post about it…
The opening scene had an orientalist feel to it (see Edward Said’s Orientalism), it was the Arabs as seen through a Western/European lens. Arabic music, Arabic market, Arabic people. Bond was following someone I think…and then all hell broke loose! Public shootings, car chases, driving through crowded sidewalks and destroying infrastructure and other people’s property. People terrified and terrorized by both Bond and the villain.
There was just so much damage done. Physical, cognitive and let’s not forget emotional damage! And that thought came to me, and now had to go through my socio-political-economic-analytical filters.
What the actual fuck…? It’s no wonder the Israel and the U.S. are getting away with imposing unbelievable misery and destruction on the Palestinian people for the last year, and now doing the same in Lebanon, and of course Yemen and Iraq. And all their NATO friends sit back and keep the funding going.
The Formula
The Military Entertainment Complex (MEC) is nothing new. MEC, specifically with Hollywood, has been around since WWII, pumping out movies that glorify the U.S. primarily and its allies, and demonizing whatever countries and people they want.
What shocks me more and more, no matter how much I know about it, is the extent it is embedded in everyday life: Movies, video games, games, books, tv series etc. The advancements in technology has only made it easier to magnify the scope and the experience of being immersed in the experience of military propaganda; the footage is more realistic, the level of destruction is on such an enormous scale, the sounds are much louder etc.
I truly believe that being exposed to insane levels of death and destruction through media, whether it’s movies, shows, news, social media, does something to people. And these movies try to do a few very important things: 1- Serve to encourage national identity amongst and between people, 2- Presuppose the legitimacy of any and all actions of the protagonist(s), 3- Justify any and all actions of the protagonist, 4- Trivialize any and all death and destruction done by the protagonist.
1- Encourage National Identity: The main protagonist in James Bond movies, and others like it, is and has always been a white Western/European man. Other protagonists are also usually white Western/European, but skyfall had Naomie Harries who is a black English actress. The purpose is to present a character with whom the target audience can either identify with, look up to, or both. When enough people can find ample common grounds with the protagonist, to the point where they can either see themselves in him, or easily get behind him, then they are more likely to follow the narrative and his actions, no matter how destructive and harmful they may be. And this also rallies the audience behind power and supremacy of the protagonist and whatever Western/Eurocentric organization he is part of.
2- Presupposing Legitimacy of Acts: The Bond movies, and action flicks like it, create the conditions and the reasons for the audience to presuppose that the protagonist and their organization are acting in the best interest of the target audience: Westerners/Europeans/British. As such, vilifying and demonizing any antagonist becomes easy, regardless of race, sex, gender, or ethnicity. Since the antagonist is acting against the well-being for the target audience, they are evil by default.
The presence of the protagonist is glorified and deified. They get cool music during action scenes, they do awesome stunts and escape death regularly by the skin of their teeth, they gain the trust and awe of important people, they’re just made to be so cool. They play by the rules but also constantly push the envelope. They are also part of an important and very strong organization, with infinite amount of money, access to highly advanced technology and military weaponry. They say all sorts of important buzzwords like NATO, freedom, fighting terrorism, preventing criminal catastrophes etc. This creates a powerful image of the protagonist as a person with strong values and ethics, but also isn’t shy about “doing the hard thing” and suspending those values and ethics for the greater good…the good of the nation. As such, the picture of a person who does what they do because it must be done is painted, and fed to the audience.
3- Justifying Any and All Acts of the Protagonist: This seems to be the next logical step once the buy-in for national identity and presupposing the legitimacy of acts have been established. The first two points serve to justify any and all acts of the protagonists, because anything and everything he does is for the good of the nation. James Bond can run, drive, and fly around doing whatever he wants to whomever he wants, be they innocent or not (though most are just innocent bystanders), and it’s ok because the nation and the organization that “protects” it must be safeguarded at all cost.
As such, destroying whole city blocks and endangering the lives of hundreds of people is ok when hunting down one person in particular, or a small group of villains. There is no need for logical reasoning of immoral actions or beliefs against a population , beyond protecting the nation/organization and achieving the objective.
This makes for the fallacy of circular logic, or begging the question: Presupposing the legitimacy of the conclusion. 1-The nation/organization must be protected at all cost, 2-catch/kill the villain at all cost. Why must the villain be caught/killed? Because they want to harm the nation/organization. Why does the nation/organization have to be protected at all cost? Because the villain is trying to harm them. And why does the villain want to harm them? Because they are the villain and that’s what villains do…its just circular logic all the way through.
4-Trivialize All Death and Destruction: The amount and scope of the destruction makes it very unlikely that the movie will follow up with any of the victims. And that’s part of the point. Victims in these movies are just objects upon which death and destruction is exacted. They have no story, they have no voice (aside from screaming in terror), there is no follow up with any of them, no reparations, and certainly no consequences for the protagonist.
The victims are just numbers who are lumped into a couple of sentences in a scene, where Bond is mildly scolded by his director about “the higher-ups are breathing down my neck and I have to explain why a whole city block was destroyed!”. All of this paints a picture of the extent which main character and the movie’s narrative are glorified, and the extent which the lives and properties of the victims are trivialized.
Again, the trivializing and dehumanization of the victims are part and parcel of the circular logic of this kind of propaganda; it was all necessary because Bond was trying to protect the nation/organization. The audience is left to assume that it’s ok to make victims into trivial numbers, their misery and suffering is justified because Bond wants to prevent a much bigger cataclysmic event.
Normalizing War Through Propaganda
That is the formula, as I see it, which aims to desensitize the audience and manufactures consent and complacency. Furthermore, this formula is obviously not limited to James Bond, and dates back to WWII. As I already mentioned there are many other movies and movie franchises including Mission Impossible, The Avengers, Transformers and so on.
What is different now is the SCOPE that today’s movies are able to cover, it’s just massive. With the help of AI technology, people are able to watch destruction on a level that wasn’t possible before. This type of stuff desensitizes people, and I don’t care if anyone says otherwise. I am watching it unfold as people talk about the genocide in Gaza, the annihilation of people and every kind of infrastructure in Palestine and Lebanon by the maniacal U.S. and Israeli states. Trauma porn is rampant on social media, and there is no shortage of comments dismissing the misery, suffering, death and destruction imposed on Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Sudanese and Congolese people.
Back in 2005, Andrew Bacevich wrote a great article in Mother Jones called The Normalization of War discussing some of the history of how the U.S. empire built and pushed its war narrative, and how that has transformed at the turn of the 21st century. Bacevich says,
“armed conflict regained an aesthetic respectability, even palatability, that the literary and artistic interpreters of twentieth-century military cataclysms were thought to have demolished once and for all. In the right circumstances, for the right cause, it now turned out, war could actually offer an attractive option–cost-effective, humane, even thrilling”
And that is the point of many action movies: to sell and normalize war, death and destruction as a ‘thrill’, an exciting experience to watch and be disconnected from. The heroes and the villains are picked and sold to the audience, to prep them for whatever atrocities that the nation has committed, or is about to commit.
Resources and References:
FCJ-004 The Military-Entertainment Complex: A New Facet of Information Warfare
https://oncanadaproject.ca/blog/trauma-porn
http://movieline.com/2013/02/06/military-entertainment-complex-hollywood-pentagon-relationship-battleship-zero-dark-thirty/