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November 4, 2008
James Bond - Enemy of the Built Environment!
Here's an excerpt from a hoot of a review of the latest Bond - go read it all!
Yes, almost inevitably, the building does not survive its encounter with Bond, and as he saunters away from its smoking ruins, it occurred to me that few buildings ever do. Bond movies invariably end like Quantum: with 007 single-handedly trashing not only the plans of would-be world dominators but also their hideouts, which is a pity because most of them are rather splendid. Think of the stupendous submersible lair of Stromberg in the Spy Who Loved Me with its circular underwater windows and 2001-style furniture, the hollowed-out volcano in You Only Live Twice, the vertiginous control room in Moonraker, the elegant, if structurally unfeasible, ice palace in Die Another Day, and so forth. Some of the low-rent Bond baddies settle for oil rigs and such, but whatever the villain's crib of choice, you can guarantee it's going to get exploded. Those villains tend to put a great deal of effort into their bachelor pads, recruiting tasteful but evil architects, contractors, interior designers etc - it can't be easy. Then along comes Bond. The villains are the creators; Bond is the destroyer. He's basically an enemy of architecture.
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If Bond has a problem with architecture it can probably be traced back to his creator, Ian Fleming, who was certainly no fan of modernism. He even went as far as to name one of his best baddies after the Erno Goldfinger, architect of London's Trellick Tower among others. [see photo] Goldfinger the architect was apparently a neighbour of Fleming's in Hampstead, and the conservation-minded author was incensed when he demolished two Victorian houses to build his now-classic modern villas on Willow Road. So he returned the insult by lending Goldfinger's name to his fictional gold-loving megalomaniac. Another, less-controversial version of the story has it that Fleming played golf with Goldfinger's wife's cousin, but either way, poor Erno tried and failed to stop Fleming appropriating his name, and had to bear the association for the rest of his life.
Fleming's views on Le Corbusier were equally scathing, according to associates. In fact, on closer inspection, what is the archetypal Bond villain if not a modern architect? He is usually on a mission to "improve" humanity by wiping out the messy status quo and replacing it with some orderly, rational utopia of his own design. In Moonraker it's Hugo Drax who wants to start civilisation afresh in space. In the Spy Who Loved Me, it's Stromberg, who tries to wipe out the world's cities and create his own underwater world of Atlantis. "The only hope for the future of mankind," he says, echoing Le Corbusier. "We all have our dreams," responds Bond, resolving to ensure Stromberg's scorched-earth vision remains just that - a dream.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at November 4, 2008 2:02 PM