SLSL Intro "John Kennedy's Role Model"

[Dave Monroe]

"John Kennedy's role model James Bond was about to
make his name by kicking third-world people around,
another extension of the boy's adventure tales a lot
of us grew up reading." (SL, "Intro," p. 11)

This quite literally just handed to me.  From Anthony
Lane, "Mondo Bondo: Forty Years of 007," The New
Yorker (November 4th, 2002) , pp. 78-82 ...

   "It's no surprise that Bond should have encouraged
Britain to indulge in a prolonged fantasy of punching
above its weight; we should expect it oif a nation
declining in power, as we do of a depleted man.  What
is surprising is that for four decades the rest of the
world has been good enough, or gullible enough, to buy
into that ridiculous dream.  few, even in England,
regret the wholesale loss of empire, but on what
possible ground do audiences everywhere, not least in
former colonies, choose to revel in teh notion that a
tall dark Englishman might best be called upon to
clean up the globe and make it a nicer place to play
in?" (p. 80)

   "The racism of the Bond films is another matter,
and a meaner one.  Bond himself is unbothered ... but
the films around him fail shamefully to match that
tolerant demeanor.  The prejudice spreads beyond
color: all Russians are corrupt, all Japanese are hard
to read, and very few men with fluffy white cats on
their laps are likely to attend church on a regular
basis...." (p. 81)

Okay, will be back, and on to (or back to) ...

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