James Bond was a rapist
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 12:28 pm
$1:
James Bond was a rapist
Scott Gilmore: Eventually all our heroes become villains, and so will we
Scott Gilmore
January 26, 2018
AP Photo/United Artists and Danjaq, LLC)
A few weeks ago I was stuck listening to one of those endless loops of bickering as my kids debated what movie we should watch. I put an end to it by announcing, “I have the perfect film. You’ll love it.” I loaded up Goldfinger.
Within ten minutes, things became uncomfortable as we watched Bond break into a hotel room and overpower a woman in order to have sex with her. Then, of course, Pussy Galore arrives. Bond uses a series of judo moves to overpower her. He crawls on top of her, spreading her legs apart. As he tries to kiss her, she twists her face away and struggles desperately to fight him off. But, inevitably, she is beaten. Bond gets what he wants. “Ok, kids, new movie.”
How did I not remember that scene? It is jarring. It was not rakish seduction. It is simply rape. And, when I began to think about some of my other favourite movies, I realized, it was happening a lot. Consider the wholesome musical Grease. A horny Danny takes Sandy to the drive-in, holds her down and gets on top of her while she screams and tries to push him off. Then he yells at her angrily when she runs away.
READ: Weinstein’s downfall creates moment of reckoning in Hollywood
And, when you go down this path, you quickly realize it’s not just movies. This Christmas I gawped in horror as Dean Martin roofies a woman while crooning Baby It’s Cold Outside. And it’s not just rape. Re-watch Breakfast at Tiffanies, Mickey Rooney’s buck-toothed, near-sighted, kimono-wearing turn as a Japanese businessman is so mindlessly racist you literally have to pause the movie to figure out what is going on.
It’s a facile observation, but nonetheless true: times change. Our moral standards are less bedrock and more river. They constantly shift and evolve, sometimes over generations, and sometimes in the span of a few months, as we are perhaps seeing right now with the #MeToo movement. One day Sir John A McDonald is the revered father of the nation, and then the next we are digesting the fact he starved Indigenous people into submission.
Most of the time, we don’t even notice. Our definition of what is acceptable and what isn’t changes so incrementally it is imperceptible. Ten years ago, homosexuals made you ill. Today you’re borrowing a snow shovel from your gay friends next door.
But then we sit down to watch a movie with the kids and we’re suddenly forced to ask ourselves, “Is it ok to watch James Bond rape a woman with a smirk on his face?” I know more than a few of you are rolling your eyes at that question. But, I doubt that includes anyone currently raising daughters.
Eventually, all of our heroes become villains. George Washington owned slaves. Famed suffragette Nellie McClung was a vocal advocate for sterilizing women with disabilities. Eleanor Roosevelt was wildly anti-Semitic. Winston Churchill? Utterly racist. Christopher Columbus? You don’t want to know.
Even the most virtuous among us right now, the pink-hatted protesters and the hemp-wearing vegans, will one day be seen as contemptibly, perhaps even criminally unethical. One ate meat. The other owned a car.
Times change—the goal posts never stop moving. So, can we watch Bond or not? I would argue we can and we should. When we read Shakespeare now, no one is convinced the perfidious French deserve nothing but the sword. Likewise, when we watch Bond rip the bikini top off a woman, wrap it around her neck, and choke her until she begs for life (Diamonds are Forever), we’re not accepting this as normal. In fact, the shock of seeing something you once loved and realizing how brutal it now seems is only good for us. It forces us to consider what we are doing right now, what we are laughing at today, which will one day be abhorred as barbaric. We have no reason to feel smug and self-righteous with our enlightened, modern sensibilities. Tomorrow is guaranteed to bring us all dishonour and shame.
Scott Gilmore: Eventually all our heroes become villains, and so will we
Scott Gilmore
January 26, 2018
AP Photo/United Artists and Danjaq, LLC)
A few weeks ago I was stuck listening to one of those endless loops of bickering as my kids debated what movie we should watch. I put an end to it by announcing, “I have the perfect film. You’ll love it.” I loaded up Goldfinger.
Within ten minutes, things became uncomfortable as we watched Bond break into a hotel room and overpower a woman in order to have sex with her. Then, of course, Pussy Galore arrives. Bond uses a series of judo moves to overpower her. He crawls on top of her, spreading her legs apart. As he tries to kiss her, she twists her face away and struggles desperately to fight him off. But, inevitably, she is beaten. Bond gets what he wants. “Ok, kids, new movie.”
How did I not remember that scene? It is jarring. It was not rakish seduction. It is simply rape. And, when I began to think about some of my other favourite movies, I realized, it was happening a lot. Consider the wholesome musical Grease. A horny Danny takes Sandy to the drive-in, holds her down and gets on top of her while she screams and tries to push him off. Then he yells at her angrily when she runs away.
READ: Weinstein’s downfall creates moment of reckoning in Hollywood
And, when you go down this path, you quickly realize it’s not just movies. This Christmas I gawped in horror as Dean Martin roofies a woman while crooning Baby It’s Cold Outside. And it’s not just rape. Re-watch Breakfast at Tiffanies, Mickey Rooney’s buck-toothed, near-sighted, kimono-wearing turn as a Japanese businessman is so mindlessly racist you literally have to pause the movie to figure out what is going on.
It’s a facile observation, but nonetheless true: times change. Our moral standards are less bedrock and more river. They constantly shift and evolve, sometimes over generations, and sometimes in the span of a few months, as we are perhaps seeing right now with the #MeToo movement. One day Sir John A McDonald is the revered father of the nation, and then the next we are digesting the fact he starved Indigenous people into submission.
Most of the time, we don’t even notice. Our definition of what is acceptable and what isn’t changes so incrementally it is imperceptible. Ten years ago, homosexuals made you ill. Today you’re borrowing a snow shovel from your gay friends next door.
But then we sit down to watch a movie with the kids and we’re suddenly forced to ask ourselves, “Is it ok to watch James Bond rape a woman with a smirk on his face?” I know more than a few of you are rolling your eyes at that question. But, I doubt that includes anyone currently raising daughters.
Eventually, all of our heroes become villains. George Washington owned slaves. Famed suffragette Nellie McClung was a vocal advocate for sterilizing women with disabilities. Eleanor Roosevelt was wildly anti-Semitic. Winston Churchill? Utterly racist. Christopher Columbus? You don’t want to know.
Even the most virtuous among us right now, the pink-hatted protesters and the hemp-wearing vegans, will one day be seen as contemptibly, perhaps even criminally unethical. One ate meat. The other owned a car.
Times change—the goal posts never stop moving. So, can we watch Bond or not? I would argue we can and we should. When we read Shakespeare now, no one is convinced the perfidious French deserve nothing but the sword. Likewise, when we watch Bond rip the bikini top off a woman, wrap it around her neck, and choke her until she begs for life (Diamonds are Forever), we’re not accepting this as normal. In fact, the shock of seeing something you once loved and realizing how brutal it now seems is only good for us. It forces us to consider what we are doing right now, what we are laughing at today, which will one day be abhorred as barbaric. We have no reason to feel smug and self-righteous with our enlightened, modern sensibilities. Tomorrow is guaranteed to bring us all dishonour and shame.
http://www.macleans.ca/society/james-bo ... picks=true
martin14 @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 12:35 pm
So the snowflakes are now triggered by real man Bond ?
Good.
Going to load up Goldfinger, and watch it with an even bigger smile on my face.
Then I'll get one of those stupid millenial snowflakes
to make me a fucking sandwich.
Heavy on the red meat, just to make them ill. 
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 12:58 pm
Stupid enough for the entire point of the article to go over your head by a mile. Shitty enough to endorse rape simply for the purpose of pissing off people you don’t like. You really are the worlds most useless human being.
ShepherdsDog @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 1:39 pm
Ummmm....The fact that Bond is a fictional character seems to have been lost to some.
Thanos @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 1:49 pm
The Bond that was in the books was way worse than in the movies. Ian Fleming basically wrote Bond as most assassins are in real life, and that's as cold-blooded psychopaths doing the sort of necessary wetworks that no Western government can admit to without shattering their bogus good guys vs. bad guys narrative. The movies turned Bond into not just a protagonist but a hero, because that's the way film was done back then with an incessant black/white worldview as audiences had been so dumbed-down by endless numbers of insipid westerns and WW2 movies to the point where they just wouldn't (or couldn't) accept a bloody-handed non-charming villain wiping out other villains. They basically did the same thing with Hannibal Lecter too. The books by Thomas Harris didn't stray at all from how dangerous and genuinely evil Lecter was, but the films (at least after TSOTL) jumped on an incredibly good initial performance by Anthony Hopkins to make into some kind of a cool rascal who only killed those who "deserved" it.
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 1:52 pm
It’s not lost on him, in fact it kind of underscores the point that we deliberately decided the hero character would be a rapist.
This article is about how values and morals constantly change and evolve over time, it’s not a critique exclusively about James Bond.
Thanos @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 2:02 pm
Meh. Probably get a like from the Roosh-V and Mike Cernovich twitter accounts for every "take that, you slutty fucking bitches" pro-rape post they make. Just another merry characteristic common to all those "alphas" out there.
herbie @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 2:12 pm
But they haven't changed enough to define that as rape. A half-hearted resistance seemed to be ingrained into women back then, they weren't supposed to enjoy sex and only a few years earlier some were treated psychologically if they did and the rest frowned on.
But idiots like martin are convincing themselves that what every married man's heard: "Oh all right, get it over with then..." is coercion in the eyes of feminazi Judges and therefore rape.
Bond is fiction from a previous era. Real Man. Haw, haw.
The Marlborough Man died of cancer.
The AquaVelva man lives in a cardboard box and drinks it now.
The Real Man got fragged around 1972...
Thanos @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 3:33 pm
Today's Tough Guy mulls over nuking Tehran or Pyongyang because it would probably play well to the mob of sadists come election time.
BRAH @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 4:25 pm
Who's next Captain James T Kirk? 
raydan @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 4:38 pm
Kirk never even got pushy with the women, he didn't need to... as soon as they saw the good captain, they knew that sex was inevitable and immediately started to undress. 
BRAH @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 4:56 pm
Women lowered their shields!
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:09 pm
Funny or Die’s honest portrayal of Baby it’s cold outside using the actual lyrics
BRAH @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:50 pm
She was Cosbied!
Hyack @ Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:58 pm
ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
Ummmm....The fact that Bond is a fictional character seems to have been lost to some.
+5 for pointing out the reality of things....