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Bomb...James Bomb...
Apr. 9th, 2003 01:44 amokay, you know how i was wanking before about in Bush’s Joseph-Campbell-gone-horribly-wrong binary-oriented pea-sized little brain the world is a Star Wars narrative in which he is Han Solo (Solo, lone cowboy, except that Harrison Ford got to be President in Air Force One AFTER battling the Axis of Evil, I mean, the Empire, whereas Bush chooses to go about it ass-backwards, drawing inpiration for his logic, m.o. and general conduct from another famous narrative, Alice in Wonderland)? Well, I have thought about it, and it’s not Star Wars. There is too much war/weapons porn going on, with “deep penetrator missiles” and 3-D blueprints of airplanes that a little beyond just “phallic” for it to be Star Wars. Star Wars wasn’t sexy. You know what’s sexy? James Bond is sexy. We are living in a James Bond narrative because, well, he’s going to hell and who’s coming with him? That’s right, we are.
Okay, so partially this has to do with the un-50s. It has to do with the discourse of evil. Osama Bin Laden. Saddam Husein, whose name gets transmongrified into Sodom Husein, in the great dating-back-to-Medieval-morality-plays tradition of making the characters’ names allegorical. And sexually/sinfully allegorical, too--consider the names of sultry James-Bond succibi like Honey Ryder and Pussy Galore. Consider the names of the other players/villains. “Chemical Ali”? Come on, what the fuck. I mean, that’s either a bad DJ name, or a bad James Bond name. You take the fact that this guy gassed thousands of Kurds and should be tried in the Hague for War Crimes, and in five syllables, you reduce it to a sounbyte, a catchy simulacra signifier, not for what transpired, but for the discourse of creating enemies with names like Chemical Ali who serve the Axis of Evil. THE AXIS OF EVIL--if that’s not some James Bond-ism for aspirations of world domination, then what is? Except, of course, James Bond is really all about British empire/Western colonialism. That’s the subtext anyway--it’s not delocalized pure-as-Kantian-driven-snow ethical opposition to world domination that drives the James Bond machine--it’s the constant project of defending champions. Like, they already dominate the world. Except now the subtext has become text. And the villains have literally been constructed to fit into these cinematic archetypes. At least the villains in James Bond movies usually do have some gadget or another that will cause much unpleasantness in the world. All the WMDs that have been “found!” in Iraq since the start of the war have been, well, pesticide. George Bush, Agent Double Uh-Oh vs. Sodom “Pesticide Man” WhoSayin’. Sayin’ what? Nothin’. That’s *right*
Okay, so partially this has to do with the un-50s. It has to do with the discourse of evil. Osama Bin Laden. Saddam Husein, whose name gets transmongrified into Sodom Husein, in the great dating-back-to-Medieval-morality-plays tradition of making the characters’ names allegorical. And sexually/sinfully allegorical, too--consider the names of sultry James-Bond succibi like Honey Ryder and Pussy Galore. Consider the names of the other players/villains. “Chemical Ali”? Come on, what the fuck. I mean, that’s either a bad DJ name, or a bad James Bond name. You take the fact that this guy gassed thousands of Kurds and should be tried in the Hague for War Crimes, and in five syllables, you reduce it to a sounbyte, a catchy simulacra signifier, not for what transpired, but for the discourse of creating enemies with names like Chemical Ali who serve the Axis of Evil. THE AXIS OF EVIL--if that’s not some James Bond-ism for aspirations of world domination, then what is? Except, of course, James Bond is really all about British empire/Western colonialism. That’s the subtext anyway--it’s not delocalized pure-as-Kantian-driven-snow ethical opposition to world domination that drives the James Bond machine--it’s the constant project of defending champions. Like, they already dominate the world. Except now the subtext has become text. And the villains have literally been constructed to fit into these cinematic archetypes. At least the villains in James Bond movies usually do have some gadget or another that will cause much unpleasantness in the world. All the WMDs that have been “found!” in Iraq since the start of the war have been, well, pesticide. George Bush, Agent Double Uh-Oh vs. Sodom “Pesticide Man” WhoSayin’. Sayin’ what? Nothin’. That’s *right*
