Men's Memes: A Royale Rebirth of the Action/Spy Movie

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

A Royale Rebirth of the Action/Spy Movie

"The job is done, and the bitch is dead." One of the most famous lines from Ian Flemming's James Bond novels, and it does make it into the new new film of that novel: Casino Royale.

I saw the film on its first showing at my local multiplex last Thursday. You may remember that I strongly disliked the last 007 film at the time I saw it, and wrote an article about it on this site (or the precursor of this site). My main problem with it was that the women were all totally unfeminine and unbelievably athletic. Well, I'm happy to say that Casino Royale totally ditches the fantasy world in which women are stronger than men and can perform all manner of athletic action moves without ever breaking a sweat (a trend in action movies over the last decade - but a happily disapearing one since several female-led action movies bombed over the last few years, including Tomb Raider 2, and Catwoman).

Casino Royale also ditches the recent trend for computer generated action, and fancy computer annimations - such as the ones we've seen at the start of the more recent 007 films, this one does have some computer-assisted annimation in the title sequence, but its also very retro-looking as it uses an animation form called roto-scoping, which is basically where they film real people moving, then use that film to make an animation trace. The combination of these makes it look totally new, yet very classical, like nothing you've really seen before. Anyway, the main action sequences in the film are really well done, and have returned to what made the action of the bond films so special and exciting in the first place: everything is done for real.

As well as the lack of unrealistic female action heroines, we also even have a female who is genuinely feminine in behaviour (at least some of the time, she displays some sarcasm too), and a leading man who has been variously described as jug-eared and putridly ugly. This has to be good for men in general. After all, don't we all want men to be judged according to their skills and actions rather than their looks? The fact that the lead in this film series is now NOT a pretty-boy actor is a good sign, I believe.

What I'm getting too is that all of this feels to me like we've turned a corner in action films now, and, with some reservations, things are improving.

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Turn of the tide: feminists begin to regret

Cosmopolitan (The women's magazine that urges women to use men for sex) Editor Lorraine Candy has a change of mind and now urges women not to have "Soul-less sex":

"We didn't feel ashamed about one-night stands...this, we thought, is what feminism is about."

70s feminist Fay Weldon now says:

"It is the fault of me and my like, who... got it wrong.

So were we wrong, we feminists, setting women free? The results have been devastating – greater than we ever imagined.

We steamed ahead, changing the world with too little caution, and I hope the future will forgive us.

The pendulum has swung too far over. But it may yet swing back again. Societies, thank God, tend to be self-righting."

"Once a man could look forward to starting a family and the dignity that came from being the provider. Forget it. At best as a man you're decorative, look after the kids and earn a bit sometimes; at worst you're a write-off. Women are elbowing the men out. The boys get anxious, the girls swagger. The male suicide rate goes up, female down. Twenty-eight per cent of us now live in single person households - a lonely and unnatural state - and most of the 28 per cent consist of young men. It is strange that it is left to a woman to suggest, in the normal nurturing way, that men start some kind of movement to promote their gender's status and self-esteem - call it masculinism, brotherism, machoism, what you want - and some mark of the success of the feminist movement, that it needs to be done."

60's feminist Doris Lessing now says:

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

An excerpt from an interview with Joan Rivers:

"She's not with the feminists when it comes to matters of the heart. For her, they're to blame for the current parlous state of our relationships, as depicted in these television Shows (Such as Sex in the city) and films. "I saw this coming. You cannot be equal to a man, you cannot make a man feel 'I don't need you' or 'I'll take my sex when I want it'. All these shows are so sad."

Camille Paglia :

"Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials.

But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper.

Male conspiracy cannot explain ALL female failures.

I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant.

. . . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."