Bomb...James Bomb...

[lapsedmodernist]

okay, 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*

Comments

the facts

[flynngrrl.livejournal.com]

We all know that James Bond is the only adventurer who makes it out of his stories alive and well, except for the ladies he romances. I ask you, is he reomancing the American Public [you and me] or the Corporate Sector? He's doing things for them that are almost impossible - getting that tax break - just like the tasks a princess might set for her suitor. I can almost picture them right now, raising their eyebrows and delicately extending a manicured hand for him to kiss.

Re: the facts

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

well, he is the unaware simulacrum james bond. he thinks he stands for JB's quests and panache, but really he just stands for his own retardation (and the collective retardation of his cabinet) in terms of trying to act out world domination according to some game-theory model that's not even current because it is a Cold War model of Big Binary Oppositions, whereas in reality what he (and we) are all going to get is a horrible Foucauldian whack-the-mole model of global conflict--terrorism/repression/more terror/more repression, etc. It's like making the Israel-Palestine predicament a model for "how to run the world." So I am sure he *thinks* he is romancing the World (I think the American Public does not need to be romanced, it's like faithful MoneyPenny, which is why he can't even process the real dissenting opposition, there is no room for that in the role of MoneyPenny--she can wisecrack, and chastise a little bit, but once the battle starts she is behind him 100%), but the world isn't buying it.

[klingrap.livejournal.com]

It's such a fuckin' travesty, it may as well be a PARODY of James Bond... I'd say Austin Powers, but that would be denigrating to Myers' comic genius.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

i know, i thought of Austin Powers too when i was writing that entry, but the thing is, Austin Powers is a self-aware narrative (to the baseline extent that all parodies are). The Shrub & Co. lack self-awareness. You know what they are like? There is this movie that I saw on Mystery Science Theater 3000 called Agent 00007 with NEIL Connery (who I think is Sean Connery's brother, fer real), which is like a bootleg Bond movie, except the bootlegging happenned in the production sector. It's an Italian movie that kind of takes the Bond formula, and casts Sean Connery's brother as the agent, except the movie is REALLY REALLY BAD, and the MST3K folks are screaming at the screen every time he tries to do something seductive or badass: "You are not SEAN! you are NEIL CONNERY, not SEAN!"

I feel like we need the MST3K team to MST3K this war and scream that at the president: "You are not James Bond! You are George Bush, and a bad one at that!"

[nuncstans.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. You know, though, it's ok because I saw on CNN headline news that the weapons of mass destruction, which obviously belong to Sodom, as in, literally are supposed to be, like, in his possession at all times, like in his personal bond-villain subterranean factory with soviet-style ambience, MAY HAVE BEEN MOVED OUT OF IRAQ. So that makes sense.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

totally, his own personal factory! that he carries on his person! to create "unconventional" attacks! and HE COULD BE ANYWHERE! he is probably in a small ice castle on some uber-iceberg in the Antarctica as we speak

Star Wars Thing

[universaldonor.livejournal.com]

The parallel is not Bush=Solo, it's Bush=Senator/Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine. People have to understand Star Wars as a giant political narrative about the rise and fall of the Galactic Empire, because that's all that matters. Solo is window dressing, and Vader is a hired goon. The rise of Palpatine through lies and manipulation and gladhandling and soothing tones is pretty clever and awesome, as those things go. I think it's very dangerous to say that the Bush administration isn't self-aware, because it partially absolves them by virtue of stupidity. They know exactly what they are doing, and they always have. They also know that they can never let down their guard (although the Halliburton contract did seem a bit unsubtle even for them). Remember how the Emperor "temporarily" granted himself "special executive powers" to deal with the "rebellion" that HE ACTUALLY CREATED? That should fill you with chills as you see the parallels. Chilled? It's gettin' cold in herre.

Re: Star Wars Thing

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

well, they are self-aware, just falsely so (as in, they are possibly aware that a Bond/Bible/Star Wars narrative is there referent, they might even mine the texts for metaphores, they are just not aware of how fucking retarded and dangerous it is) which i don't think excuses stupidity. it's like after a certain point stupidity, in a quantitative leap, is transformed into evil. it's sort of like Hannah Arend's the banality of evil, except the stupidity of evil. i totally agree with your Bush=emperor analysis (and the parallels are fucking scary, esp. with the "temporary" "special powers"= "sunset" provisions of Patriot I that may now become permanent"), but i was not talking about the REAL parallels. i was talking about the fact that Bush *thinks* he exists in a James Bond reality...Star Wars does not work anymore because in the post na-na-la-la discourse, it is epistemologically impossible for the insurrectionts to be heroes. those functional archetypes are pinned to the opposite sides of the binary axis.

Shit Fuck Shit!!

[universaldonor.livejournal.com]

I just got chills again, dood. I never really made the connection between the fall of the WTC and the destruction of the Death Star. Oh man.

...

Wow.

...

Um. I'm having a difficult time writing about this. Even Mother Theresa cheers when the Death Star blows up. So now everybody can explain to me right now how the WTC is different. TELL ME HOW IT IS DIFFERENT.

Re: Shit Fuck Shit!!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

well, that is a very good question. i have several thoughts on the matter.

1) if the new party line is that the "insurrectionists"/"imperialists" are necessarily the "bad guys" then it is our duty to look at it critically. Surely, if WTC is an anti-Empire act, then it is similar (but not equivalent) to Death Star.

2) The problem is, Death Star is not only the Symbol of the Empire (and if we are making an argument for the US as an economic empire, not military one, although those categories have recently totally collapsed into each other, then WTC works as a symbol, as, would, say, the New York Stock Exchange), it is also the command seat of the Empire. That is not true for the WTC that is equivalent to the Death Star symbolically in that analysis, but in practice where ordinary people worked their 9-5 jobs, and, from a Marxist POV, were also subjects of the Empire (albeit internal ones, where repression was more subtle and less fist-like).

3) In terms of America being an Empire, in a way it has always been, but shit really hit the fan AFTER 9/11, cuz now it is no longer an "Empire," it is an Empire, or about to be, as soon as the colonization of Iraq, Syria and whoever else gets done. I am not excusing American policies pre-Bush, but at the same time, blurring the spectrum into One Big Bad Foreign Policy, while fair in a lot of ways, downplays the complete horror of what Bush, Rumsfield and the rest of the cabal are doing at the moment. So for the sake of building a counterdiscourse that is effectual now, and now just pessimistic historical analysis, America is Empire NOW, after 9/11, now it's Empire like in Star Wars, and the destruction of WTC occurred before that new world order paradigm got ushered into place.

So those would be the differences, I guess.