I can endure no more. Today, I buckled.
James Bond is one of the most iconic characters in pop-culture. There’s plenty reason to love him. He dresses well, he’s nonchalant, yet charismatic, and he exudes effortless cool on the silver screen… or so I am told.
That’s because I’ve never watched a single Bond film in my life. Heresy? To some, I’m sure. The fact of the matter is that I’m more a bookworm than a film nut. I’ll watch Live and Let Die after I finish Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, which I haven’t even found a copy of yet, physical or otherwise. I haven’t watched many iconic films to begin with. Part of that is because I was born into the era of Cars and Toy Story and probably also Saving Private Ryan. I have watched some gems like Pulp Fiction and Scarface, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Outside of those, I can’t list many more excellent or timeless films that I’ve seen.
Anyway, the whole purpose of this column is to give James Bond’s phallus a rest. Yes, he’s cool and everything, but he seems to attract the most annoying sorts of people. It’s okay to like Bond. I like Bond. You probably like Bond, or at least know someone who does. But to routinely perform metaphorical oral sex on a fictional character makes me want to shit in my hands and clap. As John Coffey (played by Michael Clarke Duncan) said in the 1999 film The Green Mile, (which I have not yet watched — oops,) “I’m tired boss.”
I consume a lot of gentlemanly sort of content on YouTube. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it’s the sort of videos where men in suits tell you how to tie different tie knots and fold your pocket square into an origami swan, things I was never taught because my parents believe anything more formal than a golf shirt is worse than a Baphomet tattoo on my forehead. I see great value in wearing something more elegant than tracksuit pants, so I really enjoy these videos. Many of the folks who make these videos use James Bond as an example. Which is great. I love that. It makes visualising a style so much easier when someone is rocking it right in front of you on the screen. Some people, however, take this too far.
Few things on this hellscape of a blue marble irk me more than people who say “If Bond did it, so can you!” Granted, there are many things Bond did that I can do, like wear a suit and nonchalantly say one liners. There are also many things Bond did that I cannot do, like kill people and drink vodka martinis. “Bond wore a dive watch with a suit, therefore I can too!” Darling, just say you want to wear your dive watch with a suit, it’s really not that deep. It’s okay. You don’t need to justify your choices to anyone, even if they do lean to the smooth-brained side. “Bond had a cow-pat and pickled herring martini, therefore me drinking one makes me look like a womanising secret agent.” More power to you. Just keep it far away from me.
This is a very interesting phenomenon to observe. Grown men are literally cosplaying James Bond. Looking up to a character and trying to emulate them is good and fun to an extent. I (somewhat) look up to Dolphus Raymond from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, but I draw the line at riding a horse into town while drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola from a brown paper bag. The same with Patrice Motsepe; I sort of look up to him, but just because he allegedly signed deals to render the electricity board useless doesn’t mean I can too. I like Jeremy Clarkson, but I would annoy the ever loving shit out of everyone if I mimicked his signature misuse of articles for dramatic effect. If I dared say “This is an car” more than once, I trust my friends would bludgeon me to death with a tire iron.
In summary, we all have our heroes. I don’t want to take James Bond away from anyone, except those who moan his name while trying to fall asleep and use him as a justification for their own choices instead of acknowledging that free will sort of kind of exists and you can make your own damn choices without needing a stylish fictional character to fall back on if you’re ever criticised.
Said more concisely (and more crassly): stop riding Bond’s wedding vegetable. Let’s break the circlejerk.
The Escapement Room 
Bond is a fine fictional hero for adolescents to admire in Cold War times. It’s perplexing that adults continue this fascination, but we have men-children lapping up all kinds of juvenile media franchises nowadays (and without shame). I feel great embarrassment for these people. As a Maxwell Smart fan, I talked into my shoe as if it were a telephone for a brief portion of my early years. I grew out of it. George Costanza wore Timberland work boots with a suit to a wedding. I understood his reasoning.
BTW, my father early on explained that James Bond was a lousy secret agent. Were he any good at his job, he’d get in, get the job done, and exit undetected. But he sucked and was always blowing it, causing giant spectacles requiring extravagant lengthy chases and the like. He was a loser, and that is why he is a hero of a certain type.
Anyway, back at the time (before the Moon landing) a dive watch was fairly new technology, like a smart watch today. The triple Rip Van Winkles need to realize how anachronistic this is, as is driving around in a carbureted car with tubed bias-ply tires. Lastly, dive watches look shite with clothing of any formality, and basing any lifestyle choice on a fictional character is pathetic.
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Very good point about the “newness” of dive watches when the character was created.
In case you haven’t noticed, I have based my lifestyle choices on the fictional character Binx Bolling. Hence all of the mid-century watches.
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I had to look the name up but I actually have read the book. I remember exactly two things from it. First, he had the idea to do something that he had not done previously each day. I actually liked this. Then, if I recall correctly, he slept with his borderline-retarded cousin or something, and this was treated as some epiphany or breakthrough. I hated the book.
I’m all for slice-of-life or introspection and all, but it requires a character that is interesting or likable. It was fifteen or twenty years ago that I read “The Moviegoer”, so possibly I’d see it in a different light if reread today. However, several internets people have posted brief passages. Reading them reminded me of the joke about walking out on a movie’s trailer.
So I may be missing the joke. If it’s that anyone would admire the bland, self-pitying protagonist, touche! Holden Caulfield was obviously a spoiled jerk, but he had youth and attitude on his side. Bolling, to the best of my memory, was just a humorless gentile Woody Allen.
The original Bond flicks were before my time but I’d assume that the whole “dive watch with a suit, even a tuxedo (and we’ll gloss over his use of a white dinner jacket outside of tropical climes, which seems to have similarly sprouted devotees over the years)” was a more glaring faux pas at the time than it is now in the age of clunky watches of all types and a blurred formality line with social mores and tradition virtually thrown overboard. Only pimply teenage boys would have latched onto this.
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It is one of my favorite novels. Bolling is intentionally vacuous and empty, sort of like writing about watches.
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