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OHMSS and the 60s
TripAces
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While doing some research on my latest Bond article, I came across a fascinating (to me) piece from the NY Times, Feb. 1, 1970. "What Sex! What Violence! What Else Is New?" In it, J. Marks has a take on On Her Majesty's Secret Service that is worth reading. Search for it if you have a NY Times account. I'll post this short section of the piece:
"Why was I so disturbed by the lavish violence which had previously amused me so much? Was it possibly because I had been in Chicago and seen real people and real friends bashed and battered? Was it because I had seen young Bob Kennedy cut down in the pantry of a Los Angeles Hotel and the Hell’s Angels brutalize a crowd at a rock festival in Altamont, Calif., or because I was desperately sick of the useless obscenity of death in Vietnam?"
I love this stuff. I like the fact that we have here a preserved artifact of the times and culture from which OHMSS came, as well as that cultural response to it. I am certain Hitchcock's Frenzy was met with a similar response: all that violence in the 50s and 60s seemed just fine. The 60s counterculture changed everything, not just in movie-making and the creation of ratings, but also in the tastes of the audience.
Oh what an era for OHMSS. It's fitting that in that era of change, Bond too changed, from Connery to Lazenby.
"Why was I so disturbed by the lavish violence which had previously amused me so much? Was it possibly because I had been in Chicago and seen real people and real friends bashed and battered? Was it because I had seen young Bob Kennedy cut down in the pantry of a Los Angeles Hotel and the Hell’s Angels brutalize a crowd at a rock festival in Altamont, Calif., or because I was desperately sick of the useless obscenity of death in Vietnam?"
I love this stuff. I like the fact that we have here a preserved artifact of the times and culture from which OHMSS came, as well as that cultural response to it. I am certain Hitchcock's Frenzy was met with a similar response: all that violence in the 50s and 60s seemed just fine. The 60s counterculture changed everything, not just in movie-making and the creation of ratings, but also in the tastes of the audience.
Oh what an era for OHMSS. It's fitting that in that era of change, Bond too changed, from Connery to Lazenby.
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Comments
I, like the majority here, do not hold a NY Times account. Otherwise, this nugget of info is just an appetizer and, perhaps, should be posted on one of the many other OHMSS discussions.
You still have time to save this thread, Aces. :D
It might be illegal for me to do so? X_X
This OHMSS issue would evidently go on to be the start of similar cycles that the Bond movies would have to go through. I'd be very interested to be able to read the rest of the article.
That's never stopped me!
Here you go everyone:
Whew!
Mr. Marks strikes me as a gigantic ninny and an insufferable prig. He's also a terrible writer--witness his over-reliance on leaden sarcasm--and a terrible thinker. He relies on the old trick of deciding that the reactions of some (we never know how many) people in the audience are those of the entire mass audience. And like an egomaniac he decides the mass audience thinks exactly the same he does--wrongly. Audiences were not, after all, tired of James Bond, as the grosses for Diamonds Are Forever and Live And Let Die demonstrated. And if some audience members "came out looking perplexed," it was probably because of something Marks never bothers mentioning, perhaps because it would capsize his argument about the film's supposed sadism.
Marks whines a good deal about "lavish violence" and confuses stylized violence with the real thing. He reminds me of those well-intentioned fools who complained about Horror comics in the 1950s and how their violence would lead to juvenile delinquency. In this case, sensitive Mr. Marks can no longer distinguish between Bond and Vietnam. But while he endlessly whines about the film's supposed sadism, he is completely silent when it comes to discussing the most significant act of violence in the entire film, an act no one could take pleasure in, aside from Blofeld himself. The end of OHMSS confronts the viewer with bloody violence that cannot be laughed off or enjoyed. For Marks to not address that, even in a veiled form to avoid spoilers, shows that as a critic he is a fraud.
The rest of his screed is even more simpleminded and smug ("We would rather do it ourselves because we do it so much better"--sure). But it shows how distraught some people were by the end of the sixties--so distraught they projected onto Bond everything they hated about the world: Madison Avenue, the Vietnam War, middle-aged men, etc. As it turned out, the rest of the country didn't share his opinions. Neither did his generation. And while Mr. Marks is now no more than a forgotten journalist, OHMSS enjoys a higher critical reputation than ever, and is acclaimed as a classic even by people who aren't hard-core Bond fans.
Indeed, Marks come across as a bit sheltered. But I like that what we have here is an authentic take on the film, preserved in time. By our standards today, OHMSS is pretty tame.
I think it is difficult to divorce OHMSS from the times. Lazenby certainly couldn't, and his "free love" lifestyle and "hippie" hairstyle did not sit well with Cubby and Saltzman (at least from the accounts I have read). Lazenby even admitted in Everything or Nothing that he didn't want to be associated an "old fashioned" secret agent, because it made him seem like a square (I'm paraphrasing here).
Of all of the Bond films, I find OHMSS to have the most compelling cultural backdrop.
I could be wrong, but even at the time the violence would not have been egregious--1969 was also the year of films like The Wild Bunch, which was literally blood-drenched. But your larger point is correct: from a counter-cultural perspective, Bond stood for militarist warmongering, slick, violence, soulless materialism, etc. A modern Marks would undoubtedly be savaging the films for misogyny, racism, neoliberalism, etc.
Yes, and his mistake, along with Marks's, was in presuming that every young person felt the same, when in fact the "silent majority" was still eager to see Bond. Moreover, it was the very familiarity of Bond that they liked, embodied by Connery's return and the formulaic quality of that and the ensuing Moore films.
By the way TripAces, just what is your latest Bond article and where will it be published? You've whetted my appetite.
Thanks for posting the entire article, @Revelator.
I posted the NYT article at the Commander Bond forum as well, and forum member Glidrose uncovered some very surprising information about Mr. Marks.
In short, at first glance our journalist friend looks like a very respectable figure. It turns out he was a charlatan, a truly great one!