It’s a good quote and absolutely helps prove Getachew’s points. The problem is that in the scene she quotes, M refers to James Bond as “Bond” not once, but twice. I cannot fathom what Getachew was thinking. Did she not watch the movie? Did she not even watch the whole scene in question? Perhaps she found the quote written up somewhere else and never bothered to actually see what it is that she was writing about.
Whatever the case may be, James Bond is referred to as “Bond” by M on multiple occasions, making the initial assertion a nonsensical one. The error might be forgivable if Getachew’s point was that in this movie, or in this sort of talk between M and Bond, he was always a number and never a person. That simply isn’t the case though. The fact that Bond is referred to as such by M twice in this scene calls the validity of Getachew’s entire piece into question. And, beyond that, one would have thought that the editors of the book would have engaged in a modicum of fact-checking and caught this incredibly egregious mistake.
Moving away from Getachew and on to other pieces, I was shocked when reading Dean A. Kowalski’s piece, “The Millennium Bond and Yin-Yang Chinese Cosmology.” Kowalski writes that Brosnan’s Bond, in reaction to Paris Carver dying in Tomorrow Never Dies, appears "visibly shaken" and that such a response is “an entirely new character wrinkle” (Page 225) for Bond. Kowalski also discusses in this paragraph Lazenby’s Bond losing his wife at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. However, by stating that the death of Paris is the first time Bond appears "visibly shaken," Kowalski denies the emotional response of Lazenby's Bond (OHMSS being made well before Tomorrow Never Dies).
This is foolish, as certainly Lazenby’s Bond was incredibly shaken by the event, holding his now dead wife and telling her that it was okay and that they had “all the time in the world” at the film’s end. Why Kowalski finds Lazenby's Bond undisturbed by this turn of events and yet quite disturbed by the death of Paris (after which Bond merely proceeds to get drunk in his room, alone) is unclear. It is apparent that Kowalski is aware of the events at the end of OHMSS. But his dismissal of Bond’s distress over his wife's murder on their honeymoon is unfathomable.
Article comments
1 - professays
James Bond has definitely the most amazing success in spite of the fact its plot hasn't been changed for years.
2 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
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