Postmodernism posed a far more serious threat to MI6 than Soviet spies ever could. Bond’s shark-sprint for the truth falls apart into a messy and ever-widening entropic spiral. In Pynchon, this structure is preserved, but knowing as he does that the object petit a does not exist, he simply takes away the MacGuffin. In spy stories the hero jets off around the world in search of the Thing that allows disparate events to reveal themselves as products of a singular Plan. His novels (especially V, with its deliberate Bond insert) subject the spy story to the (un)logic of post-structuralism. But before there could be Austin Powers, there was Thomas Pynchon. It’s hard to do a Bond story these days, with the end of the Cold War, the rise of feminism, and an inherent ridiculousness to the form that perfectly crystallises itself in Austin Powers, which managed to carry out a satire of the Bond films simply by replicating them in every detail. James Bond, meanwhile, is a man in search of the transcendental signifier. But over and above that, they stand for a universe that is not required to make sense. He’s in Lovecraft territory those trillion-tentacled monsters from outer space that intrude upon stately New Englanders were always a barely concealed metaphor for one man’s horror of black and brown bodies in their nameless shoals, leaking degradation over a world fissuring from imperial decline. Instead, there’s CNN, complimentary soap, and blithe miles of homes and highways. Where are the goons? Usually this is when some gormless lunks try to jump him, and from there it’s only a short kidnapping to the supervillain’s lair, where someone will tell him everything he needs to know, saving him the trouble of doing any detective work. Bond on his balcony faces a city that does not end, from horizon to horizon. Ciudad Juárez is ‘the Beast’ the scarred and hollowed-out Earth is itself a cosmic evil. This isn’t the ordinary Burkean sublime, but something far stranger. Another recent film about Anglo imperialists in Latin America, this year’s Sicario, was an example of what could be called ‘landscape horror’, fine-tuned to Yanqui racism: long panning shots of barren or broken landscapes, the blasphemous edge between lawnmower-perfect American suburbia and the desert beyond, or Mexican cities that seem to sprawl without reason over the hills and valleys, protoplasmic shoggoth-blots poised to gobble up the border. When done right, Cthulhu stories don’t need to actually portray the Great Old Ones they can lurk in the deconstructive background, appearing as a hollowness in the mise-en-scène, a spacing and a vastness suspended just beyond sight. The Cthulhu mythos only works if its characters don’t realise that they’re in it. He looks out at Mexico City, and something looks back. He makes himself a slapdash vodka martini from the little bottles in the minibar, pouring the entire stub of vodka and a passionless vermouth glug into one of the film-wrapped plastic cups from the bathroom, and drinks it on his balcony. He takes a taxi to his blankly intercontinental chain hotel. Say 007 arrives at Mexico City Airport at four in the afternoon. If you’ve seen Spectre, it should already be obvious to you that the James Bond franchise is a spinoff, taking place entirely within HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |