tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/uk-movies-42501/articlesUK movies – The Conversation2023-12-27T15:48:36Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2191382023-12-27T15:48:36Z2023-12-27T15:48:36ZWhere do all of James Bond’s gadgets come from? A geologist tells the raw truth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563295/original/file-20230713-15-u5em9p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C8%2C1880%2C804&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Spectre (2015), Daniel Craig and Ben Whishaw respectively play the world's most famous secret agent and his gadget supplier.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzvxegcZzPU">Spectre</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Laser watches, fingerprint guns, explosives and, of course, over-equipped cars: the list of gadgets flaunted by James Bond is as bewildering as the mind of their inventor, Q. While some of these gadgets actually exist (laser, fingerprint recognition, back reactor), others, as we shall see, are more fanciful. </p>
<p>But they all have one thing in common: the raw materials needed to make them, and in particular the <a href="https://mineralinfo.fr/fr">mineral resources</a> that geologists are helping to extract from the earth’s crust. Below are some that jumped out of the screen for me. </p>
<h2>The fast, inconspicuous cars of the world’s most famous secret agent</h2>
<p>In 1964’s Goldfinger, James Bond (Sean Connery) has to give up his Bentley for an Aston Martin DB5 modified by Q (the unforgettable Desmond Llewelyn). This is the first of eight appearances of a car that will go on to become inseparable from 007.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The Aston Martin DB5, James Bond's historic car" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537729/original/file-20230717-138681-wy16lv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537729/original/file-20230717-138681-wy16lv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537729/original/file-20230717-138681-wy16lv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537729/original/file-20230717-138681-wy16lv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537729/original/file-20230717-138681-wy16lv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537729/original/file-20230717-138681-wy16lv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537729/original/file-20230717-138681-wy16lv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Aston Martin DB5, which first appeared in Goldfinger in 1964. This car is made from aluminium extracted from bauxite ore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">N. Charles</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The auto is a good example of how products have become more complex and incorporated a greater diversity of raw materials over time. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537731/original/file-20230717-248129-ixx1gi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="zoom on a pink mineral with pinkish and whitish spots" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537731/original/file-20230717-248129-ixx1gi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537731/original/file-20230717-248129-ixx1gi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537731/original/file-20230717-248129-ixx1gi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537731/original/file-20230717-248129-ixx1gi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537731/original/file-20230717-248129-ixx1gi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537731/original/file-20230717-248129-ixx1gi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537731/original/file-20230717-248129-ixx1gi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bauxite : the main ore of aluminium, the metal used in 007’s DB5, which takes its name from Baux-de-Provence, France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">N. Charles</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The DB5 contains an array of minerals, starting with aluminium, a metal known to make cars lighter. The latter is derived from bauxite, an ore mined in Jamaica near Ocho Rios, which, incidentally, served as the setting for Crab Key Island, Dr No’s hideout, in 1962.</p>
<p>The body of the DB5 is made of aluminium and magnesium alloy plates resting on a tubular steel structure. The engine block is aluminium, as are the pistons and cylinder head. The connecting rods and crankshaft are made of steel doped with chromium and molybdenum for greater strength. The aluminium rims are mounted on chromed steel hubs, as are the spokes.</p>
<p>Of course, we mustn’t forget the <a href="https://mineralinfo.fr/sites/default/files/documents/2021-03/silice_industrielle_rp-66167-fr_2016revise2020.pdf">silica in the windows</a>, the <a href="http://infoterre.brgm.fr/rapports/RP-69037-FR.pdf">copper in the electrical wiring</a>, the lead in the battery or the carbonates and <a href="https://mineralinfo.fr/sites/default/files/documents/2021-03/kaolin_argiles_kaoliniques_rp-67334-fr_2018.pdf">kaolin in the paint</a>, and the petrol to make the whole thing run at top speed.</p>
<p>The automotive industry has come a long way since 1964, and one innovation follows another, each bringing its new share of unique materials. Several dozen are needed today for a standard vehicle - and what can we say about the latest racing cars driven by 007 since 2000, such as the BMW Z3 or the Aston Martin Valhalla? </p>
<p>This goes on with electric vehicles, whose batteries rely on <a href="https://theconversation.com/relocaliser-lextraction-des-ressources-minerales-en-europe-les-defis-du-lithium-138581">lithium</a>, cobalt, graphite, <a href="https://mineralinfo.fr/fr/ecomine/sulfate-de-nickel-un-ingredient-cle-des-batteries-li-ion">nickel</a> and <a href="https://mineralinfo.fr/fr/ecomine/marche-des-terres-rares-2022-filieres-dapprovisionnement-aimants-permanents">rare earths</a>. In 1971 <em>Diamonds Are Forever</em>, James Bond can be seen flying and driving around in no less than an electric lunar module. More recently, in <em>Dying Can Wait</em> (2021), the Aston Martin Valhalla is a plug-in hybrid, but James Bond has not yet gone all-electric.</p>
<h2>Golden guns that would melt in real life</h2>
<p>Another cult item is the Walther PPK, the German pistol used by 007 in many of the Bond films. It’s a weapon made from a stainless steel alloy. Although the steel is mainly iron, it also contains other elements depending on its use and the properties required: chromium, molybdenum, nickel, manganese, carbon, silicon, copper, sulphur, nitrogen, phosphorus, boron, titanium, niobium, tungsten, vanadium, and cerium.</p>
<p>Much more precious, Francisco Scaramanga’s (Christopher Lee) pistol is made of solid gold and assembles everyday objects to go unnoticed during checks: lighter, cufflinks, fountain pen as well as a cigar case. Limited to one shot, the pistol fires bullets of 4.2 mm calibre, weighs 30 g and is made of 23-carat gold with traces of nickel. So much for fiction.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="gold pistol at the museum" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537734/original/file-20230717-129345-k99hdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537734/original/file-20230717-129345-k99hdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537734/original/file-20230717-129345-k99hdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537734/original/file-20230717-129345-k99hdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537734/original/file-20230717-129345-k99hdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537734/original/file-20230717-129345-k99hdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537734/original/file-20230717-129345-k99hdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Francisco Scaramanga’s gold pistol, solid gold here being unrealistic for dedicated use… The bullet, also in gold, is engraved</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flickr.com/photos/66857806@N02/14592496766">Gareth Milner, Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In reality, it’s hard to imagine a gun made entirely of gold, a very dense and, above all, very soft metal, which wouldn’t withstand the repeated power of a gunshot for very long. In jewellery, gold is often combined with silver, copper or zinc to make it wearable. On 4 December 2023, one kilogram of gold was trading at around €66,000, an all-time record (<a href="https://www.gold.org/">World Gold Council</a>). It’s hardly surprising, given that gold has been a precious, unalterable, shiny metal with a deep yellow colour since Antiquity, arousing covetousness and serving as a safe haven.</p>
<p>In <em>Love from Russia</em> (1963), James Bond receives 50 gold British sovereigns in a briefcase brimming with gadgets. Attracted to the gold coins, the enemy Grant opens the booby-trapped case while holding 007 at gunpoint. Tear gas escapes, saving Bond’s life.</p>
<h2>James Bond and his high-tech enemies</h2>
<p>The saga has also always been about surprising the general public with cutting-edge technology, which may be little known at the time of the film’s release.</p>
<p>What better example than the <a href="https://www.sfpnet.fr/le-laser-principe-de-fonctionnement">laser</a>, which, should we be reminded, stands short for <em>Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.</em> The saga likes to beam it as often as possible, alternatively adding it to pistols, watches, cars, and satellites.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="plastic laser gun" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537736/original/file-20230717-243941-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537736/original/file-20230717-243941-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537736/original/file-20230717-243941-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537736/original/file-20230717-243941-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537736/original/file-20230717-243941-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537736/original/file-20230717-243941-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537736/original/file-20230717-243941-ymm8xc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Laser guns (plastic !) from the space base in Moonraker, 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Charles</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <em>Goldfinger</em> (1964), film director Guy Hamilton chooses to bypass Ian Fleming’s novel of the same name by threatening James Bond not with a chainsaw, but a laser.
The latter were also used in other Bond films: satellites in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Murder Another Day (2002); laser pistols in Moonraker (1979); laser watches in Never Again (1983) and Goldeneye (1995); laser-equipped cars in Killing Is No Game (1987), etc.</p>
<p>Lasers can be used to a variety of ends. For one, telemetry: from the Greek “tel” (“remote”) and “metros” (“to measure”), this practice consists in remotely measuring physical and electrical data. Other uses include cutting objects and projecting light.</p>
<p>Physicist Théodore Maiman introduced the first operational laser in the real world in May 1960 (<a href="https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201005/physicshistory.cfm">American Physical Society</a>), right before James Bond. </p>
<p>This first laser used a ruby, a mineral in the corundum (aluminium oxide) family, like sapphire. But this is a <a href="https://www.gemsociety.org/article/understanding-gem-synthetics-treatments-imitations-part-4-synthetic-gemstone-guide/">synthetic ruby</a> created from aluminium oxide (<a href="https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/13/aluminium">from bauxite</a>) mixed with a tiny amount of <a href="https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/24/chromium">chromium</a> (mainly produced from chromite). There are different types of laser, depending on the application:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Crystalline lasers: made of silica glass (from very pure quartz) or synthetic ruby or sapphire crystals (aluminium oxide doped with <a href="https://mineralinfo.fr/sites/default/files/documents/2020-12/fichecriticitetitane171017.pdf">titanium</a>, <a href="https://mineralinfo.fr/sites/default/files/documents/2020-12/fichecriticitechrome171003.pdf">chromium</a> or rare earths : neodymium, ytterbium, praseodymium, erbium or thulium) ;</p></li>
<li><p>Fibre lasers : composed of optical fibres based on silica (derived from ultra-pure quartz) and doped with <a href="http://infoterre.brgm.fr/rapports/RP-65330-FR.pdf">rare earths</a> (metals extracted mainly from minerals such as bastnaesite, monazite or xenotime) ;</p></li>
<li><p>Gas lasers: using helium (extracted from natural gas deposits) and neon (extracted from atmospheric air gases) or CO<sub>2</sub> ;</p></li>
<li><p>Organic dye lasers.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The red light beam in <em>Goldfinger</em> was emitted from a laser (probably ruby) whose brightness was amplified by special effects.</p>
<p>However, the destructive nature of the laser is pure fiction. During filming, an operator used an acetylene torch under the pre-cut table even though Sean Connery was lying on it !</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537735/original/file-20230717-210016-ygo2ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537735/original/file-20230717-210016-ygo2ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537735/original/file-20230717-210016-ygo2ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537735/original/file-20230717-210016-ygo2ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537735/original/file-20230717-210016-ygo2ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537735/original/file-20230717-210016-ygo2ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537735/original/file-20230717-210016-ygo2ez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shark’s teeth (</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/111748974@N02/26039238632/">Shaun Versey, Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, since we all know the bad guys like to bare their teeth, let’s mention the surgical steel jaw of the impressive Shark (Richard Kiel) in <em>The Spy Who Loved Me</em> (1977) and <em>Moonraker</em> (1979). It’s a stainless and corrosion-resistant steel that limits the risk of allergic reactions when it comes into contact with the skin. Its composition includes iron, nickel, chromium, manganese and molybdenum.</p>
<p>James Bond is like many other citizens, he consumes mineral raw materials on a daily basis. At a time of energy, ecological and digital transition, mineral resources are essential elements in the decarbonisation of our activities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolas Charles ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>At Q’s of course! But he doesn’t pull them out of his sleeve. In Spectre (2015), Daniel Craig and Ben Whishaw play the famous spy and his gadget supplier.Nicolas Charles, Géologue, PhD, BRGMLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2199452023-12-17T15:33:47Z2023-12-17T15:33:47ZJames Bond and Aston Martin’s DB5: behind the scenes of one of cinema’s most successful product placements<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566088/original/file-20231215-29-4apoeo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C20%2C1920%2C1256&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James Bond (Daniel Craig) behind the wheel of an Aston Martin in 'Death Can Wait'.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Ian Fleming’s most famed character, James Bond, first graced the screen in 1962, ushering in a cinematic obsession that has grossed more than 7 billion dollars since its creation.</p>
<p>Across 26 feature-length films, the James Bond saga has evolved through the ages and met the expectations of audiences. The saga’s latest films, which introduced Daniel Craig in the lead role in 2006, marked a break with the past. The protagonist appears both more robust and more fragile, more in line with the character as sketched out in the original novel, and the tone darkens. Action and espionage remain, while drama supersedes comedy. The films presented a different narrative archetype by following a common thread, each character beginning each film with the stigma (physical and psychological) of the previous one.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Craig-Bond marks a break in the saga.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there is another, less discussed success that has been delighting the particular crowd of ad agencies: that of product placement. As Aston Martin’s DB5 turns 60 this year and we get ready to enjoy a 007 flick or two during the festive period, I take a look at how the Aston Martin brand has become essential to the series.</p>
<h2>Bond-Craig earns his stripes</h2>
<p>For the first time in 1964’s <em>Goldfinger</em> (Hamilton), James Bond drives an Aston Martin – model DB5 – like his literary alter ego (<em>Goldfinger</em>, Ian Fleming, 1959). The DB5 appeared in eight Bond films – <em>Goldfinger</em>, <em>Thunderball</em> (Young, 1965), <em>Golden Eye</em> (Campbell, 1995), <em>Tomorrow Never Dies</em> (Spottiswoode, 1997), <em>Casino Royale</em>, <em>Skyfall</em>, <em>Spectre</em> and <em>No Time to Die</em> – and was driven by Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sean Connery, <em>Goldfinger</em>, 1964.</span>
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<p>In the prologue to <em>Casino Royale</em>, the British agent enters a room reserved for casino staff – the remote surveillance area. Bond scans the hotel’s cameras for the face of his enemy, who gets out of an Aston Martin DB5. This rookie, James Bond, catches a glimpse of the car via an interposed screen.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The appearance of the Aston Martin DB5 in <em>Casino Royale</em>.</span>
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<p>By placing the character in the same situation as the cinema-goer, the director distances Daniel Craig from the character of James Bond. It’s a clever <em>mise en abyme</em> to show that the actor is not yet “in the game”. Nevertheless, the agent identifies the vehicle, a “magnificent 1964 Aston Martin”, which belongs to Dimitrios, a terrorist linked to the Cipher. Later, Bond is playing poker with his enemy. Dimitrios has three kings in his hand. To keep up, he bets his Aston Martin DB5. James Bond calls and wins the game with three aces. On leaving the Casino, Bond climbs into his new car – Bond-Craig has taken possession of his Aston Martin.</p>
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<p>In this scene, the Aston Martin is not part of the kit provided by MI6. James Bond has to fight to win the right to be behind the wheel of his character’s mythical car. It’s a strategic battle: when Daniel Craig was unveiled as the next actor to wear the Bond suit, the media focused on his physique, which is far more athletic than his predecessors. We might have expected a muscular action scene, but Martin Campbell conceives instead a scene of psychological tension. It was a poker move for the production: imposing an actor very different from Bond standards and imagination, but also for the new hero who gradually becomes the character.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Bond-Craig for the first time at the wheel of the Aston Martin DB5 in <em>Casino Royale</em>.</span>
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<p>The prologue scene reveals how the protagonist becomes a Double-0. In the viewer’s mind, he is not yet established as James Bond. And by getting behind the wheel of the Aston Martin DB5, Daniel Craig takes a symbolic step toward his character. This product placement <a href="https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=39871">can be described as narrative</a>, because it is in itself a major dramatic node and launches the plot. It can also be described as qualifying, as the Aston Martin inserted represents a primordial and fundamental attribute in the construction of James Bond’s identity and his coded universe.</p>
<h2>Aston Martin breaks records</h2>
<p>As proof, having won the confidence of “M”, later in the mission MI6 entrusted him with a new car: a latest-generation Aston Martin DBS. The new model is unveiled in the film. And if the new face of Bond has to convince by outdoing himself in his role (and in the economic revenues it should generate), his car seems to be in symbiosis, because it too breaks records: the Aston Martin DBS rolls over seven times at 120 km/h, the world record for the greatest number of rolls (according to the Guinness Book). The car was crushed, but managed to protect the agent, who emerged from this impressive stunt unscathed.</p>
<p>Like the armour of a modern-day knight, the car is inseparable from 007. The DBS also features in the opening sequence of <em>Quantum of Solace</em>. Bond-Craig begins his revenge at the wheel of this powerful model in a chase that showcases the car’s performance. The agent has bonded forever with Aston Martin and continues his association, not to say partnership, in subsequent opuses.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The four Aston Martin models in the film <em>Dying Can Wait</em> (scheduled for release in April 2021).</span>
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<p><em>No Time to Die</em> features four Aston Martin models: the DB5, the Aston Martin V8 (similar to the one in the 1987 film <em>The Living Daylights</em>), the DBS Supperleggera (driven by the new female agent 00 Nomi) and the mid-engined Valhalla.</p>
<h2>From rupture to return to tradition</h2>
<p>Although Bond-Craig drives an Aston Martin, the staging of the product breaks with that of the previous films: the car is just a car, and for once it is not accompanied by innovative gadgets. It wasn’t until <em>Skyfall</em> that the head of MI6’s “Q” section, who supplied 007 with his famous gadgets, returned. <em>Skyfall</em>, the 50th anniversary of the franchise, sounds like a tribute to the saga: the film echoes the past while wiping the slate clean.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it and the films that followed retained what had been achieved over the previous six years: a serious spirit and a dark tone, without denying the saga’s heritage. The film marks the return of some of the traditional elements – such as gimmicky product placements – that had disappeared from previous films starring Craig.</p>
<p>In the film, “Q” warns Bond – and the audience: “Perhaps you were expecting an explosive pen? They don’t make gadgets like that much these days…” However, the Aston Martin featured in <em>Skyfall</em> reveals its assets once more. Like the original in <em>Goldfinger</em>, it is equipped with two machine guns in the front bumper, tyre-piercing screws in the rear axles, an ejector seat for hostile passengers, a bullet-proof plate that rises up behind the rear window and a device that disperses slippery oil to lose a pursuing car. If the pen no longer explodes, the car (re)becomes a weapon like in the early days of James Bond.</p>
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<p>In the final part of the film, Silva’s men blow up the legendary car, provoking 007’s almost irrational anger. To destroy his Aston Martin is to touch him to the core.</p>
<p>In the next film, <em>Spectre</em>, the DB5 is just a carcass before being refurbished in the workshop of “Q”. At the end of the story, Bond chooses to leave MI6 rather than Madeleine. Before bidding farewell with his new love on his arm, he picks up his 1964 Aston Martin, the “last thing” he needs. And the story between Aston Martin and 007 isn’t over, as Bond-Craig and his famous steed will be back again in <em>No Time to Die</em>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The explosion that destroys the mythical Aston Martin DB5 in <em>Skyfall</em>.</span>
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<h2>The performative effect of product placement</h2>
<p>The release of <em>No Time to Die</em> coincided with Aston Martin’s decision to resume production of the DB5 after more than 50 years. Twenty-five units were manufactured and each sold for 3 million euros. This is no ordinary DB5, but the DB5 <em>of James Bond</em>. Created in partnership with the films’ producers, EON Productions, the car is called the “DB5 Goldfinger Continuation” and features some of the gadgets used in the films: the smoke generator, rotating number plate holders, retractable bumpers and the telephone in the driver’s door.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Aston Martin relaunches production of James Bond’s DB5.</span>
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<p>Aston Martin has built up a storytelling operation over several years by placing itself at the heart of the film saga. The brand blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality, between the identity of the actor and that of the character (as in the <a href="http://www.culturepub.fr/videos/heineken-daniel-craig-vs-james-bond/">“Daniel Craig VS James Bond”</a> commercial, produced by Heineken (United States, 2020), and between the fictional car and the one sold in dealerships.</p>
<p>The “DB5 Goldfinger Continuation” gives consumers the illusion of being a super agent or, failing that, a consumer-actor. The 007 films need the brand to immortalise the character. The brand needs the films to perpetuate its prestige and the fascination it inspires. James Bond and Aston Martin, or how product placement shapes an unbreakable alliance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Delphine Le Nozach ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The release of “No Time to Die”, scheduled for next spring, is an opportunity to analyse the role of the Aston Martin brand and the way it contributes to the construction of the character.Delphine Le Nozach, Maître de conférences en Sciences de l'information et de la communication, Université de LorraineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1733922022-01-24T11:31:43Z2022-01-24T11:31:43ZJames Bond: the spy who loved Europe – and inspired scores of copycat European movies in return<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440263/original/file-20220111-23-1zonc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5196%2C3329&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Last year’s James Bond blockbuster, No Time to Die, is permeated by a sense of closure. For one thing, the ironically titled movie brings closure to Daniel Craig’s portrayal of the famous fictional spy. By having Bond finally forgive his double-agent former lover Vesper Lynd for her betrayal in the 2006 Bond film, Casino Royale, No Time to Die brings closure to the character’s story arc that began 15 years ago. But it also reverses the misogynistic conclusion of Ian Fleming’s very first Bond book – with its infamous final line (“The bitch is dead now”), and 007’s commitment to never letting any woman take advantage of him again.</p>
<p>There is another type of closure reverberating throughout the movie. Although No Time to Die is the first Bond picture of the Brexit era, its visual, musical and thematic winks to the past serve as a reminder of this franchise’s historical ties to a cosmopolitan – and therefore also European – idea of Britain. </p>
<p>The Bond movies have often been not only blatantly imperialist and chauvinistic, but deeply nostalgic and aspirational in their attempt to create a world in which Britain remains a central piece on the global chessboard. This was encapsulated by the poised, righteous and unshakeable agent single-handedly saving the day against impossible odds. </p>
<p>And yet, even such an Anglo-centric bastion of patriotic pride has a rich history with the rest of the continent. For six decades the films that brought us this quintessentially British character found their place at the core of European popular culture, joyfully integrating the UK’s national identity into continental dynamics: Bond’s soft power was perhaps one of Britain’s greatest cultural influences on the rest of Europe – and Europe, in turn, provided the perfect backdrop to his exploits.</p>
<h2>Serving Her Majesty (not so secretly)</h2>
<p>The first handful of Bond adaptations (starring Sean Connery and George Lazenby) were made before the UK formally joined what was then the European Economic Community (EEC). But the celebrated British film critic <a href="https://www2.bfi.org.uk/people/kim-newman">Kim Newman</a> noted in a 1986 article in Monthly Film Bulletin (not available online) how those early entries were aimed at an international market from the outset. They cast stars from French, German and Italian popular cinema to play seductresses and/or villains taking up much of the screen time. </p>
<p>On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was shot in Switzerland (ski chases!) and on Portuguese beaches, to name just two locations. It gave viewers in and outside the UK the chance to vicariously visit different European landscapes, promoting holiday destinations at a time when the expansion of commercial air travel was ushering in a <a href="http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/europe-on-the-road/the-history-of-tourism#section_7">touristic boom</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Vistas of sweeping splendour: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The series became a massive success both at home and across the English Channel. In France alone, Dr No grossed almost five times its original cost and Goldfinger sold <a href="https://www.cbo-boxoffice.com/v4/page000.php3?inc=fichemov.php3&fid=1514&t1=2">over 6 million tickets</a>. In West Germany, Bond movies were <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Light_Motives/AQmducGXm1MC?hl=en">so popular</a> that their distributor re-released older entries along with each new production.</p>
<p>In turn, the 007 series inspired a flood of imitations and variations. Richard Rhys Davies’ The <a href="https://www.kisskisskillkillarchive.com/book-shop/">International Film Guide</a> identifies almost 300 spy films produced in France, Italy, Spain and West Germany just between 1964 and 1968. Most of these so-called “Eurospy” films were co-productions involving companies and crews from multiple countries, shot on location across the continent and widely distributed (sometimes even across the Iron Curtain). </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">All the best locations: Venice from the movie Casino Royale.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The proliferation of the Bond archetype in western European cinema and its role in shaping a set of references recognisable across the continent (a pan-European imagination) was like a lowbrow counterpart to the efforts – admittedly more deliberate and sophisticated – by formal EEC institutions such as the European Commission and the European parliament <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/abs/enlargement-and-the-historical-origins-of-the-european-communitys-democratic-identity-19611978/8EC9F6FBCBEA560526C27508B603A0FC">to foster a common European identity</a>. </p>
<p>And, while in the early decades of European integration – set against a backdrop of the cold war – these efforts tended to focus on the shared political and social values of western European democracies, it was a cultural identity that acted as a bridge to transcend ideological borders and appeal to those European countries on the eastern side of the cold war divide.</p>
<p>Britain was a central player not only in those early efforts, but also in the push to bring central and later eastern European countries into the EU fold as the Soviet bloc crumbled. Popular culture and “high politics” were never far apart – but culture could reach more freely across the boundaries that constrained political and institutional efforts.</p>
<h2>From Europe with Love?</h2>
<p>Just as Bond contributed to an anglicising of European culture, so Eurospies also participated in a sort of Europeanisation of British culture. Film historian Adrian Smith <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13619462.2021.1925547">has reconstructed</a> the largely forgotten circuit of distributors and cinema chains that used to routinely supply the UK with continental knock-offs of 007 – and not just in the big cities, but provincial cinemas as well. </p>
<p>European vistas and bodies were regularly presented as targets of desire, associating the rest of the continent with exciting adventure and luxury, as seen, for example, in the scenic sequences in Paris, Barcelona and Athens from 1965’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_077:_Mission_Bloody_Mary">Agent 077: Mission Bloody Mary</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Agent 077: Mission Bloody Mary.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Given James Bond’s historical role as a link between the UK and continental Europe, it seems appropriate that, in No Time to Die, we first find him back in Italy, a country that Daniel Craig has visited in every one of his instalments except for Skyfall, his mind on past and current lovers (both played by French actresses). Cultural entanglement is stronger even than top-level diplomacy. </p>
<p>But if 007 has achieved closure by making peace with his past, the aftershocks of Brexit suggest that it will still take Britain a while to accommodate to its new, post-EU reality. If, as traditionally promised by the end of the film’s credits, “James Bond will return”, it remains uncertain what form the character will take in the future. It’s an uncertainty that uncannily mirrors the UK’s relationship with Europe – and its search for a role in today’s world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rui Lopes has received funding from Portugal's research council Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. Emma De Angelis of the Royal United Services Institute collaborated in the writing of this article.</span></em></p>For six decades, this quintessentially British character has forged a strong relationship with the continent.Rui Lopes, Lecturer in Contemporary History, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1086992018-12-13T12:32:15Z2018-12-13T12:32:15ZWatership Down: family-friendly BBC version risks losing the power of epic original<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250435/original/file-20181213-178579-6koihr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hazel and his gang survey the view from Watership Down</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Author Richard Adams may have thought it was just “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/dec/10/true-meaning-watership-down-revealed-ahead-of-revival-its-rabbits?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail">a story about rabbits</a>”, but for more than 40 years, Watership Down has functioned as a litmus test for what is and is not considered to be suitable content in children’s entertainment. With the BBC and Netflix’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/28/bbc-and-netflix-team-up-for-new-watership-down-production">new television adaptation</a> on the horizon this Christmas, much speculation surrounds how it will compare with the legendary representations of violence in the novel and 1978 animated film adaptation. </p>
<p>It has been <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/27/bbc-remake-watership-down-with-less-violence-to-avoid-scarring-c/">reported</a> that the new adaptation will tone down the violence to be more suitable for family viewing. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qiex1rVlEg">trailer</a> and a recent preview screening at the BFI offer the first glimpses into this more tempered approach, and invite reflection on the way we think about horror in children’s media more broadly.</p>
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<p>Based on Adams’ 1972 novel, the new mini-series will screen as two feature-length episodes and depict the epic journey of a group of rabbits who flee their doomed warren (set to be destroyed by humans to make room for a housing development) in search of a new home. Along the way, they encounter threats in the form of humans and their technology, other animals and other rabbits. </p>
<p>The mini-series is being presented as a new adaptation of the novel, with no relation to the 1978 film beyond their shared source text. But the film helped to make the novel (which is surprisingly sophisticated for what is ostensibly a children’s animal story) more accessible to a wider and younger audience, and the film’s imagery still looms large in the British cultural imagination. In particular, the film is remembered for inflicting trauma upon unsuspecting young viewers who may have been expecting something tamer from a U-rated animated film about rabbits, but which actually presents shocking imagery of animal death and violence. </p>
<p>Social media is rife with memes that continue to perpetuate this reputation by humorously juxtaposing such imagery with the film’s questionable status as children’s entertainment, while <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/29/parents-furious-after-channel-5-screens-watership-down-on-easter-sunday">Channel 5</a> ignited public debate after controversially presenting the original film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/29/parents-furious-after-channel-5-screens-watership-down-on-easter-sunday">on Easter Sunday</a> two years running.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250216/original/file-20181212-76986-1br4jq1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250216/original/file-20181212-76986-1br4jq1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250216/original/file-20181212-76986-1br4jq1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250216/original/file-20181212-76986-1br4jq1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250216/original/file-20181212-76986-1br4jq1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250216/original/file-20181212-76986-1br4jq1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250216/original/file-20181212-76986-1br4jq1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250216/original/file-20181212-76986-1br4jq1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">General Woundwort: one of the many memes about Watership Down circulating on social media.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">One of the many memes about Watership Down circulating on social media.</span></span>
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<p>For many, it will therefore be difficult not to compare the mini-series with the film, particularly with regards to the treatment of violence. That the mini-series is <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/05/12/how-cgi-changed-movies-forever_a_21358758/">digitally animated</a> is interesting in this regard, as it has the potential to give the production a photo-realistic visual style, unlike the more abstract, hand-drawn “<a href="https://conceptartempire.com/cel-animation/">cel-animation</a>” of the film, which adheres more closely to classic cartoons. The style of the mini-series thus risks making any sequences of violence seem more realistic – and potentially more frightening to child viewers – and will need to tread carefully in order not to offend. </p>
<p>But it also risks taking an overcautious approach and experiencing the fate of the animated series broadcast by CITV in 1999, which has failed to make a lasting cultural impression with its far more sanitised adaptation.</p>
<h2>Family friendly</h2>
<p>Reports that the mini-series will tone down the violence inherent to Watership Down might be of some relief to parents looking for family-friendly Christmas viewing, but potentially worrying for fans hoping for a faithful adaptation. A recent preview of the first episode of the mini-series reveals that the new adaptation attempts to please both camps with an approach that takes after not the 1978 film, but more recent cinematic influences. </p>
<p>In a post-screening Q&A at the BFI, producer <a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/watership-down/62228/bbcnetflix-watership-down-as-traumatising-as-ever">Noam Murro stated</a> his intention to approach the series like a feature film. This is most evident in the action-oriented fight sequences, such as a battle between the rabbit protagonists and a flock of birds, that would not be out of place in any contemporary action blockbuster. </p>
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<span class="caption">Richard Adams reading from Watership Down.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Reeves-Hall</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>But these sequences are almost entirely bloodless. The film’s blood-red portrayal of the consequences of violence, rendered so brightly in the stylised cel-animation, is downplayed in the mini-series to the extent that the few appearances of colour red blend in with the series’ earthy colour palette. The approach of the mini-series therefore seems to be not so much to depict less violence, as has been widely reported, but to depict more violence, with less of the bloody aftermath. This approach might seem more palatable to concerned parents, but it also risks lowering the stakes of the rabbits’ plight – something the film cannot be accused of. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.fantasy-animation.org/blog/2018/11/12/review-the-legacy-of-watership-down-animals-adaptation-animation">New research</a> presented at the University of Warwick earlier this year argued that the film’s violent content is a necessary element that conveys the devastation of human impact upon the environment, as well as the evils of the fascist rabbit antagonists headed by the formidable General Woundwort, seen in the picture above. </p>
<p>Watership Down’s pro-environmentalism, anti-fascist messages – and the bloody violence that helps them to make an impression – remain sadly pertinent to today’s culture and absolutely worth communicating to children. Although the dialogue of the new adaptation is heavy with references to the barbarity of humans, it is questionable whether these will have a lasting impression without visuals to match.</p>
<p>I hasten to add that I am not advocating showing the corpses of small animals to toddlers, but rather that the situation calls for some nuance. The horror in Watership Down – whether novel or film – is never without a specific moral or narrative purpose. </p>
<p>Ironically, memes such as those above obscure this clarity in favour of shock value and broad generalisations: about Watership Down, about children’s media, and about children themselves. The problem is not that Watership Down is horrific, or even that its horror defies our conceptions of what is suitable for children, but rather that we lump children into a homogenised group that responds to all media in the same way, regardless of age, emotional maturity or taste. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1072877749142986752"}"></div></p>
<p>By contrast, a cursory scroll through <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=%23watershipdown&src=typd">#WatershipDown</a> on Twitter contains as many fond remembrances of the film as those recounting traumatic childhood viewing experiences; many comments straddle both of these categories at once. </p>
<p>Regardless of how the new adaptation handles violence, the best it can hope for will be its ability to evoke such a varied range of responses. Viewers should also remember that Watership Down is not for all children – but those children who are ready and willing to engage with it may find much more to like than just violent delights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Lester does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Has the BBC pulled its punches in this family-friendly version of the classic 1972 novel?Catherine Lester, Lecturer in Film and Television, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1077352018-11-29T15:12:04Z2018-11-29T15:12:04ZDisobedience: new film shines a light on LGBT+ lives in Orthodox Jewish world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247986/original/file-20181129-170223-qwavzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz in DIsobedience.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of Curzon Artificial Eye</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than a decade after Naomi Alderman’s novel <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Disobedience-author-winner-Baileys-Fiction/dp/0141025956/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543495720&sr=8-1&keywords=disobedience+by+naomi+alderman">Disobedience</a> caused a stir with its story of a lesbian relationship between the daughters of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of Hendon in North London, a star-studded film adaptation has just arrived in British cinemas. </p>
<p>Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams offer compelling portrayals of long-lost lovers who reunite in a passionate, colourful affair on the screen, while in the background, the Orthodox community threatens to destroy Esti (McAdams), who is still a member of it.</p>
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<p>Disobedience is a timely film. For many years, Orthodox Jewish communities, unlike their more progressive denominational sisters, have avoided or deferred conversations about their LBGT+ members. When I was growing up, attending an Orthodox Jewish school, we students asked our teacher, an Orthodox rabbi, how Orthodox Judaism felt about homosexuality only to be told, “There are no homosexual Jews”. </p>
<p>To the credit of my classmates, we all laughed. The world already knew about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/27/harvey-milk-40-years-on-legacy-san-francisco-lgbtq">Harvey Milk</a> and Gertrude Stein and Allen Ginsberg. Of course, he might have meant, “There are no homosexual Orthodox Jews,” implying Orthodox as the only way to be Jewish. </p>
<p>But still, it was laughable. In fact, until the 2001 documentary <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278102/">Trembling Before G-d</a>, which featured personal stories by Jews torn by their conflicting devotion to Orthodoxy and their non-heterosexual orientations – a documentary Alderman says helped inspire her to write her novel – discussions of LGBT+ were quietly relegated to the personal spaces of the home, the therapist’s office, even the rabbi’s office. But they were not publicly aired. </p>
<h2>Attempting to change</h2>
<p>Scholars such as Samuel Heilman, considered one of the foremost authorities on Orthodoxy, have decried this silence. In his 2006 book, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/219403">Sliding to the Right</a> (2006), Heilman calls for the “need [for rabbis] to find a way to harmonise Orthodoxy with such thorny issues as feminism [and] homosexuality”. And, in September 2018, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, made a first attempt to do so.</p>
<p>The purpose of <a href="https://chiefrabbi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/The-Wellbeing-of-LGBT-Pupils-A-Guide-for-Orthodox-Jewish-Schools.pdf">Mirvis’s report</a>, The Wellbeing of LGBT+ Pupils: A Guide for Orthodox Jewish Schools, is not to solve the “thorny issue” of homosexuality within an Orthodox framework – perhaps that is asking too much as a start. </p>
<p>The recommendations are actually quite modest. Much of the report focuses on anti-homophobic bullying and, to a lesser degree, suggests role models. “For a young person who is discovering their sexuality or gender identity,” the guide notes, “hearing role models such as teachers and school leaders using terms related to LGBT+ lives sensitively can be hugely powerful”. But whether these recommendations are only to show compassion for LGBT+ students or to demonstrate the feasibility of being a part of the LGBT+ community while remaining in the Orthodox fold is not spelled out. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247988/original/file-20181129-170253-16dpqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247988/original/file-20181129-170253-16dpqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247988/original/file-20181129-170253-16dpqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247988/original/file-20181129-170253-16dpqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247988/original/file-20181129-170253-16dpqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247988/original/file-20181129-170253-16dpqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247988/original/file-20181129-170253-16dpqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Ronit (Rachel Weisz) with Esti (Rachel McAdam) and her husband David (Alessandro Nivola).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of Curzon Artificial Eye</span></span>
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<p>Testimony in Mirvis’s report from former pupils of Orthodox Jewish schools reveals the loneliness and alienation that young people in these kinds of environments endure. Avoiding the oft-touted (though far more by the Christian right than Jews) <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+18%3A22&version=NIV">Leviticus 18:22</a> – “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination” – but also avoiding some of the interesting, nuanced commentary that revered Jewish sages produced about sexual ambiguity in the ancient world, the report instead highlights the generic, universal human duty to kindness, as expressed in Leviticus 19:18: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”</p>
<h2>Stay or go?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/07/chief-rabbi-lgbt-report-ephraim-mirvis">In a Guardian article</a>, Alderman, who left Orthodox Judaism after publishing Disobedience, concluding through the writing of the book that she couldn’t stay in a community with no place for its LGBT+ members, praised the chief rabbi’s report. She wrote that she feels “proud” of the community that she came from for moving in the right direction. In fact, she didn’t say – but perhaps should have – that she feels pride for her own contribution to the change in that community that must have felt, a little over a decade ago, like an impossibility.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247989/original/file-20181129-170235-uev5lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247989/original/file-20181129-170235-uev5lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247989/original/file-20181129-170235-uev5lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247989/original/file-20181129-170235-uev5lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247989/original/file-20181129-170235-uev5lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247989/original/file-20181129-170235-uev5lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247989/original/file-20181129-170235-uev5lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Research by the author was recently published.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
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<p>My research focuses on representations of Orthodox Jewish women, and in my <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Women-Valor-Karen-Skinazi-author/dp/0813596017/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543495977&sr=8-1&keywords=skinazi">new book</a>, Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture, I write at length about the ways that Orthodox Jewish communities are sensationally depicted in literature and film and popular media as being dangerous places for women. </p>
<p>Examples abound: earlier this month, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000113m">BBC Radio 4 did an exposé</a> on the ultra-Orthodox community of Stamford Hill, painting a terrifying image of an archaic and unethical patriarchy whose “subservient” women were forced into crime. </p>
<p>Watching director Sebastián Lelio’s film adaptation of the novel, I was pleased to see both women’s agency and sexual diversity – such important and nuanced issues in Orthodox Judaism – brought to the big screen. That said, I found the film somewhat disappointing. In a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00017wn">recent radio interview</a>, Alderman praised the film, including its ending, which is dramatically changed from the novel’s. </p>
<p>Her reason is sound: “There is no single right answer for frum [Orthodox] LGBT+ people,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/24/naomi-alderman-disobedience-faith-sexuality-leaving-community?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR1npL4eywPa6WuDNGdHqt8S4bXT1rGpvjrZNZeU0xTKDRcsUH02mCD01m8">she wrote last week in The Guardian</a>. I sympathise with her point – though for me, Lelio undoes some of the good work that Alderman did in her novel. In the novel, Esti stakes a fresh new path that promises the possibility of coexistence between Orthodoxy and lesbianism. In the film, Esti seems to be leaving the community.</p>
<p>If everyone who didn’t fit into Orthodoxy’s unrealistic and dated vision of itself as free of LGBT+ issues and members – the vision that my teacher tried to claim years ago – were either silent or left, then Orthodox communities could actually retain this image. But that is not the way forward, and it seems even the chief rabbi agrees. So, perhaps it is worth seeing the film – but only as a companion to the far more powerful novel.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107735/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen E. H. Skinazi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How Orthodox Jewish communities are struggling to come to terms with LGBT Issues.Karen E. H. Skinazi, Senior Teaching Fellow and Director, Liberal Arts, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1076582018-11-27T16:58:26Z2018-11-27T16:58:26ZNic Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci: giants of the 70s cinema trod dark new ground in sexual revolution<p>Deaths in close proximity have a tendency to invite comparisons. We may look for connections between two otherwise unrelated figures whose passing in quick succession makes them final bedfellows. Often any such links are purely arbitrary, but with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/25/nicolas-roeg-obituary">Nicolas Roeg</a> (1928-2018) and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46342644">Bernardo Bertolucci</a> (1941-2018), who died on November 23 and 26 respectively, there is a certain logic to putting them in harness, even though they never worked together. Cultural commentators have already <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/26/sex-factor-nicolas-roeg-and-bernardo-bertolucci-transgressive-legacy-metoo-ryan-gilbey">begun to do so</a>, and with good reason.</p>
<p>Both filmmakers had diverse careers stretching over half a century, but as directors they were giants of the 1970s. In particular, both were at the forefront of the liberalised depiction of sex following the relaxation of censorship restrictions in both the US and the UK. </p>
<p>Roeg’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/16/performance-i-still-dont-fully-understand-it-behind-the-scenes-photos-from-the-cult-classic">Performance</a> (1970, co-directed with Donald Cammell) and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/aug/15/artsfeatures.edinburghfilmfestival">Bad Timing</a> (1980) and Bertolucci’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2012/feb/22/bertolucci-the-conformistt">The Conformist</a> (1970) and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/11/04/archives/screen-1900-bertoluccis-marxist-saga.html">1900</a> (made in 1976), among others, all featured notably explicit sexuality – but their key works in this regard were released almost concurrently.</p>
<h2>Famous sex scenes</h2>
<p>A visitor to the West End of London in late 1973 could have found the directors’ seminal works playing first run in different cinemas, both with “X” ratings. Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972) scandalised morality campaigners with its brutally casual passion between lovers (Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider) who don’t even know each other’s names. </p>
<p>Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) is a horror movie, but midway through there’s a tenderly sensual scene of lovemaking between husband and wife (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) so intense that it led many viewers to believe that the sex <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BtcBeOD3Ok">might have been</a> performed for real.</p>
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<p>That rumour has long since been put to bed (no pun intended). But Last Tango was different. The question of what actually happened on set was raised in a 2007 interview with Schneider, in which <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-469646/I-felt-raped-Brando.html">she claimed</a> to “have felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci”. Apparently intended metaphorically, this comment has since been taken literally.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/dec/04/last-tango-in-paris-director-says-maria-schneider-butter-scene-not-consensual">2013 interview</a> (not widely seen until 2016) the director admitted that he and Brando had together conspired to introduce butter as a lubricant in an act of simulated sodomy, without telling the actress until immediately beforehand in order to produce an authentic reaction on camera. In a passage often omitted from subsequent accounts of the incident, Schneider clarified that “even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real, I was crying real tears”. </p>
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<p>According to Schneider, it was Brando’s idea to use the butter, but it was Bertolucci she blamed for not telling her – she appeared to have forgiven the actor but not the director.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-we-should-no-longer-consider-last-tango-in-paris-a-classic-69874">Why we should no longer consider Last Tango in Paris 'a classic'</a>
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<p>In the age of #MeToo, this particular controversy has not abated and it is likely to blight Bertolucci’s memory. No such real-life scandal has attached itself to Roeg, despite the often-appalled reactions to some of his films, even by their own distributors. But there are other reasons to link these two filmmakers besides the obvious one of sexual representation.</p>
<h2>Odd men out</h2>
<p>Some years ago, attempting to explain Roeg’s creative inactivity (he made only one feature film after 1995), an industry professional earnestly told me that cinema is not a medium for intellectuals – at least not in its commercial form. That, it seems, was what made Roeg such an odd man out in British filmmaking after his 1970s heyday and why after a while he seemed almost unemployable unless he suppressed his individuality. Yet in several of his most characteristic films he married a dazzling visual surface and a self-consciously dense approach to storytelling with wide audience appeal.</p>
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<p>As a product of the so-called European “art” cinema, Bertolucci was virtually obliged to be an intellectual, a vocation he had no trouble in fulfilling. And yet, like Roeg, the Italian auteur was also able to cross over into the mainstream. Last Tango was financed and released by United Artists, a major Hollywood studio, and <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=lasttangoinparis.htm">proved a huge hit</a>. </p>
<p>Other US majors backed some of his later ventures in the hope of similar success. Bertolucci’s most conventionally prestigious film, the multi-Oscared <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/apr/15/the-last-emperor">The Last Emperor</a> (1987), is that rare beast, a cerebral epic.</p>
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<p>The Last Emperor was one of six pictures Bertolucci made with producer <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10705934/Jeremy-Thomas-Britains-auteur-film-producer.html">Jeremy Thomas</a>, whose white-bread family background (he was the son of “Doctor” series director Ralph Thomas and the nephew of “Carry On” helmsman Gerald Thomas) belies the offbeat, ambitious projects he has supported as an independent producer. </p>
<p>It’s no coincidence that Thomas also produced three films by Roeg, whom <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100524091710/http://www.berlinale-talentcampus.de/story/89/1789.html">he once called</a> “the greatest living British director”, beginning with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/aug/15/artsfeatures.edinburghfilmfestival">Bad Timing</a>. Bertolucci <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10705934/Jeremy-Thomas-Britains-auteur-film-producer.html">he called</a> one of “the most significant filmmakers that ever walked the Earth”.</p>
<p>Nicolas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci challenged the commonly drawn distinctions between mainstream and independent, art and commerce, accessibility and difficulty. It’s their achievement in reconciling these apparent opposites, and the sheer brilliance of their best work, that should survive them, not the controversies their work engendered – whether on or off the screen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107658/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheldon Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The pair never worked together, but their controversial depiction of sex links them in the minds of movie historians.Sheldon Hall, Reader in Film and Television, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1056152018-10-30T08:31:56Z2018-10-30T08:31:56ZHalloween: five film and TV picks to watch on a dark scary evening<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242782/original/file-20181029-76387-tcvwrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">bbernard via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As All Hallow’s Eve approaches, October is the time of year to embrace the macabre – and what better way to relax after trick or treating than to gorge yourself on a few scary movies. With cinema screens likely to be dominated by the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/10/17838130/halloween-movie-review-jamie-lee-curtis-michael-myers-david-gordon-green-tiff-2018">long-awaited sequel</a> to John Carpenter’s classic Halloween, here are five of the best recent scary titles currently available for streaming: four horror stories to rattle your bones and a zombie comedy to coax you back out from behind the sofa.</p>
<h2>Calibre (2018)</h2>
<p>Ever since Robin Hardy’s seminal 1973 film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/the-wicker-man">The Wicker Man</a>, British horror films have explored the relationship between town and country as a source of cinematic nightmares and this is no exception.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/29/calibre-review-highlands-horror-story-overcomes-cliche-to-bag-a-netflix-release">Calibre</a> begins with two friends, father-to-be Vaughan and thrill-seeker Marcus, travelling from Edinburgh to the Highlands of Scotland to hunt deer. They arrive in a small village and head to the pub, where they meet the local villagers, including Logan, the leader of the community. Rather than relying upon supernatural scares, the story is driven by the actions of the two self-centred friends, and the reactions of the community to what they do.</p>
<p>What is effective about Matt Palmer’s film is the way he exploits the tradition of the potential threat of small, isolated villages and their inhabitants. Do the community worship some pagan god, or are they simply hardworking people watching their village gradually succumb to economic decline?</p>
<p>Gripping and original, Calibre is a tense, effective thriller that ratchets up the tension through a taut, logical sequence of cause and effect that tips gradually over into the arena of nightmares.</p>
<h2>The Haunting of Hill House (2018)</h2>
<p>Turn off your phone, grab some snacks and settle down for ten hours of the finest horror drama in decades. Shirley Jackson’s seminal novel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/oct/26/haunting-hill-house-netflix-family-horror">The Haunting of Hill House</a> has been filmed on numerous occasions, most successfully by Robert Wise for his 1963 masterpiece of suspense and understatement, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/22/haunting-wise-horror">The Haunting</a>.</p>
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<p>This new version from Mike Flanagan (Gerald’s Game) is more of a new work inspired by the original source. It reimagines characters from the book as members of the Crain family, who lived in the house for a summer, leaving under mysterious and terrifying circumstances. Ultimately it is the family that is haunted, traumatised by the presences lurking within the corridors of Hill House.</p>
<p>Flanagan is fast becoming <a href="https://www.slashfilm.com/mike-flanagan-is-one-of-the-best-modern-horror-directors/">one of the most significant voices</a> in contemporary horror. He builds an overall atmosphere of Gothic dread, using lavish, beautifully designed sets and roving camerawork to place the audience in the house with engaging and sympathetic characters who you really care about.</p>
<p>Treat yourself, because this series will be talked about as a masterpiece of TV horror for years to come.</p>
<h2>The Alienist (2018)</h2>
<p>Serial killer stories have become a staple of horror tales. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/book-review-the-eyes-dont-have-it-the-alienist-caleb-carr-little-brown-pounds-1699-1374683.html">Based on a novel</a> written by American historian and author Caleb Carr and directed by <a href="https://unitedkingdom.diplomatie.belgium.be/nl/nieuws/interview-jakob-verbruggen-director-bbc-series-fall">Jakob Verbruggen</a> (Black Mirror), <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-demand/2018/04/19/alienist-review-winningly-grotesque-deliciously-macabre-period/">The Alienist</a> tells the story of the pursuit of a serial killer in New York by a group of amateur investigators led by the mysterious Dr Lazlo Kreizler (Daniel Bruhl), who is by profession an alienist – the forerunners of today’s psychiatrists or psychologists.</p>
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<p>Kreizler is called in to use his understanding of the human psyche to help the corrupt New York police force find a brutal killer, who has murdered a young boy and mutilated the body. Accompanied by a newspaper illustrator, John Moore (Luke Evans), and Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning), the strong, independent secretary to the chief of police, they must discover the identity of the murderer before they kill again.</p>
<p>While the story may sound very familiar, what makes The Alienist so effective is the unusual New York setting, the focus upon psychological rather than criminal investigation, and the interweaving of the fictional story with real-life characters. The series has a plot that twists and turns, never fully revealing itself until the precise moment it needs to.</p>
<h2>1922 (2017)</h2>
<p>Stephen King is known as the master of horror, but there’s far more to King than scares. The most acclaimed King adaptations, Misery (1990) The <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/10532526/The-Shawshank-Redemption-review.html">Shawshank Redemption</a> (1994) and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Observer_review/0,,141530,00.html">The Green Mile</a> (1999) aren’t tales that revolve around killer clowns or haunted cars. Rather they are character dramas with elements of the uncanny, such as the unnatural calm surrounding Tim Robbins’ Andy Dufresne in Shawshank, or John Coffey’s ability to absorb the evil of the world in The Green Mile.</p>
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<p>Similarly in <a href="https://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/1922-review-stephen-king-1202568940/">1922</a> – directed by <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/p/zak-hilditch/25728/">Zak Hilditch</a> (Transmission) – Nebraska farmer Wilfred James (Thomas Jane) narrates the story of how he murdered his wife, dumping her body down a well on his property. From this basic premise develops a tense, dust-bowl drama focusing on the investigation into the disappearance and the consequences of the murder for both James and his son.</p>
<p>At the heart of King’s prose is his ability to create characters you can relate to in a fully drawn and instantly recognisable world. Wilfred becomes a fully rounded individual whose fate you come to care about in spite of the awful thing he does, drawing you into the story world where the action grips from the first moment.</p>
<h2>Santa Clarita Diet (2017)</h2>
<p>It wouldn’t be Halloween without a zombie flick and – if you need a breather from all these serious horrors – look no further than <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/03/barry-review-hbo-santa-clarita-diet-netflix-comedy-murder/556196/">this zombie comedy</a>, one of the sharpest and funniest horror-inflected series of recent years.</p>
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<p>Suburban couple Sheila and Joe Hammond are real estate agents whose lives are turned upside down when Sheila turns into a zombie. With the help of their daughter Abby and nerdy teenager-next-door Eric, they have to set aside their world of bake sales and dinner parties in favour of murder and mutilation.</p>
<p>The tone is set in the first episode as Sheila (played by Drew Barrymore), in the process of becoming a zombie, interrupts a viewing of an upmarket suburban home she is selling to extravagantly throw up – an outrageous sequence which sets up the love-it-or-leave-it style of the show.</p>
<p>Undeniably the it gory televisions – but in a way that is deliberately excessive and designed to be fun. Think of legendary British horror comedy <a href="https://www.metacritic.com/movie/shaun-of-the-dead">Shaun of the Dead</a> and you’re in the right ballpark. A strong, gutsy comedy with a strong message about non-conformity and being yourself, Santa Clarita Diet is an absolute delight. If you can get past that first scene that is.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Four spine chillers and a slapstick zombie comedy film to get you back out from behind the sofa.Simon Brown, Associate Professor of Film and Television, Course Leader BA Film Cultures, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1054152018-10-22T13:34:41Z2018-10-22T13:34:41ZMike Leigh’s Peterloo: a worthy film that’s long on detail and short on drama<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241607/original/file-20181022-105767-oyf2bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sill from Peterloo.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cornerstone Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labour MP Chris Williamson certainly seems to have enjoyed Mike Leigh’s new film Peterloo, which recreates the 1819 massacre in St Peter’s Field in Manchester. Williamson, the <a href="https://www.totalpolitics.com/articles/diary/chris-williamson-gets-talked-future-labour-leader-nec-results-land">Corbynite member for Derby North</a> quoted in his enthusiastic tweet the Shelley poem, <a href="https://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Shelley/the_mask_of_anarchy.htm">The Mask of Anarchy</a>. Shelley wrote it to commemorate the massacre during which 15 people were killed and an estimated 700 injured when armed yeomanry attacked 60,000 peaceful pro-democracy and anti-poverty protesters.</p>
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<p>Williamson is a keen supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party – one that celebrates proletarian struggle and solidarity, even when it has sometimes led to conflict. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, infamously described the violent student protests of 2010 as “<a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/parties/labour/uncovered-john-mcdonnell-praises-2010-riots/">the best of our movement</a>”. So it was always likely that Peterloo, a film about the bloody suppression of a popular demonstration would find favour on the left.</p>
<p>But when Leigh announced in April 2015 he was making a film about Peterloo, Corbyn was an obscure backbench MP fighting to retain his seat in that year’s general election campaign. The 2015 contest saw voters elect the first majority Conservative government in more than 20 years, with a mandate to continue to implement austerity measures. Leigh’s film has been released in a transformed context – having come <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/general-election-2017-38466">close to winning the 2017 election</a> with his promise to end austerity, Corbyn is widely believed to have reset the political agenda. And his mantra, “the many not the few” is clearly inspired by Shelley’s poem.</p>
<p>Leigh himself is reserved about what message should be derived from his film – at the Manchester premiere <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-manchester-45897596/peterloo-massacre-movie-s-manchester-premiere">on October 17</a> he confined himself to vaguely noting that the film is: “Relevant to so much that is going on.”</p>
<h2>Forgotten massacre?</h2>
<p>It is striking how marginal a place Peterloo plays in popular accounts of Britain’s democratisation. The film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/17/the-peterloo-massacre-and-history-lessons-that-echo-through-the-ages">sparked a debate</a> about whether – and how – the massacre should be included in school history curricula. Meanwhile there is little evidence, beyond a small red plaque, to remind visitors to St Peter’s Square that they are on the site of the massacre.</p>
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<span class="caption">A new red plaque replaced the old blue memorial in 2007 and is more explicit about events of August 1819.</span>
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<p>Before its release some critics on the right of the political spectrum expressed fears that Leigh’s Peterloo would be a left-wing “<a href="https://unherd.com/2018/09/peterloo-disgrace-little-democracy/">fake history</a>”. But few historians could criticise the film for inaccuracy: as a period drama its attention to surface detail is scrupulous. And substantively it presents a sober version of the past – Leigh reproduces (at some length) some of the key speeches of the time. This unfortunately makes the film feel longer that even its 154 minutes. Explanation of background issues such as <em>Habeas Corpus</em> and the Corn Laws is especially laboured. There are also too many characters – as Leigh squeezes as much historical detail as possible into the film. It feels hard to care too much about any of them. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the almost complete absence of a soundtrack is presumably meant to contribute to the film’s seriousness – but unfortunately it only further undermines the film’s its impact as a drama.</p>
<h2>Political subtext</h2>
<p>Leigh does use his film to express a point of view but it is hardly controversial. He depicts an unfair society, one in which the Duke of Wellington receives government largesse for winning the Battle of Waterloo – while a soldier who fought under his command is shown as being rewarded with PTSD, unemployment and finally a yeoman’s sword in the belly for protesting about his fate. </p>
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<span class="caption">The Massacre of Peterloo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Cruickshank</span></span>
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<p>Leigh makes it hard not to feel contempt for those Manchester magistrates and government ministers whose careless and callous disregard for the humanity of people calling for reform led to the Massacre. But few historians would say he got that call wrong – society in the years after Waterloo was hardly an egalitarian Utopia. </p>
<p>Even so, Leigh’s film shows the massacre as a cock up rather than a conscious act. The crowd did not hear the reading of the Riot Act which meant they did not know they had to disperse. But, that said, he certainly doesn’t spare the audience the full horror of the cavalry charge which concludes the film.</p>
<p>If Leigh treats the past with perhaps too much respect to make a compelling drama, others have been less scrupulous. Fearing Corbynites would use the film to further their attack on capitalism, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6092853/DOMINIC-SANDBROOK-says-attempts-blame-Peterloo-Massacre-capitalism-twisted-history.html">Dominic Sandbrook</a>, the Daily Mail’s favourite historian, even doubted Peterloo could be described as a “massacre”. </p>
<p>Meanwhile <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/read-jeremy-corbyn-speech-full-13311639">Corbyn’s speech</a> at the Labour Party conference in September made great play on the associations of his movement with the legacy of the event, noting that it was an uncaring Tory government that sent in the troops. </p>
<p>Perhaps some Corbynites really do imagine Theresa May as a modern-day Lord Liverpool and her government as uncaring and oppressive as his. But someone should tell <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/13/how-britain-voted-2017-general-election/">the 44% of working-class voters</a> who backed the Conservatives in 2017 despite Corbyn’s call to end austerity. Such voters will decide whether Labour will win the next election or not, and they appear not to be much moved by the romance of proletarian struggle be it in the past or present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105415/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Fielding is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>As a left-wing rallying cry, this account of the 1819 massacre in Manchester fails to rouse the inner revolutionary.Steven Fielding, Professor of Political History, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1037182018-09-25T13:45:05Z2018-09-25T13:45:05ZDM Thomas’s The White Hotel and why some novels are ‘unfilmable’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237893/original/file-20180925-149970-lg27kx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Babi Yar: the World War II atrocity is one of the themes of The White Hotel.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Babi-yar.jpg">GoldbergShalom</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There have been several attempts over the years to make a movie out of DM Thomas’s critically acclaimed 1981 novel, <a href="http://www.conceptualfiction.com/whitehotel.html">The White Hotel</a>. But despite the involvement of such giants of the screen as David Lynch, Bernardo Bertolucci, Terrence Malik and David Cronenberg – who made a name for himself as a director <a href="https://litreactor.com/columns/behold-the-unfilmable-the-literary-adaptations-of-david-cronenberg">who can adapt</a> so-called “unfilmable books” – the novel has this far proved resistant to film adaptation. </p>
<p>In the absence of a film version, the book was recently <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/aug/03/dennis-potter-adaptation-of-the-white-hotel-to-premiere-on-radio-4">adapted for radio by the BBC</a>, directed by Jon Amiel and based on a screenplay written by the late Dennis Potter in the 1980s. </p>
<p>DM Thomas himself wrote in 2004 about the tortuous and sometimes tortured battle over <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/aug/28/books.featuresreviews">screen rights for his novel</a>, but apart from the saga over rights – so familiar to any novelist whose work has pricked the attention of film-makers – what was it about the book itself that meant a radio adaptation succeeded when film adaptations have failed?</p>
<p>There are a number of media, cultural and economic conventions that can explain this. But, in general, books that have been called “unfilmable” are books that are hard to read: weighty, ponderous, abstract, complex, convoluted, labyrinthine, densely allusive and excessively long. Or books that treat terrifying, horrifying, revolting or repulsive subjects.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237891/original/file-20180925-149967-y91sp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237891/original/file-20180925-149967-y91sp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237891/original/file-20180925-149967-y91sp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237891/original/file-20180925-149967-y91sp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237891/original/file-20180925-149967-y91sp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237891/original/file-20180925-149967-y91sp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237891/original/file-20180925-149967-y91sp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237891/original/file-20180925-149967-y91sp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the greatest books never filmed: The White Hotel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abebooks</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The White Hotel is a difficult read – for a start there’s the unreliable, psychologically disturbed, potentially hallucinating narrator, whose obscene and surreal narratives are followed by representations of horrific historical events and natural disasters. The book’s sections shift jarringly across textual forms and styles – rational, psychoanalytic case notes melt into mythological explorations of psychological symbols. Stories of strange mental states jolt into collective, realist histories. It’s a challenging read. </p>
<p>By contrast, mainstream film conventions require a clear narrative structure and a degree of temporo-spatial logic and continuity. They tend not to favour excessively “talky” screenplays, preferring to tell their stories through visuals and structure them via editing. </p>
<p>These and other reasons that books <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/louispeitzman/20-books-that-are-almost-impossible-to-adapt">have been considered unfilmable</a> have been widely discussed. They include historical sprawl (Gabriel Garciá Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude), multiple worlds (Stephen King’s Dark Tower series), too many characters (David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest), and multiple unreliable narrators who confuse the story (Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves). </p>
<p>Some novels are written with a stream of consciousness that keeps the story inside a character’s head (James Joyce’s Ulysses and Thomas Bernhard’s Woodcutters); there may be lack of clear plot and dynamic action (Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse), fantasies too elusive for film’s special effects (H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness), or a book may be too distressing or obscene to visualise realistically (Art Spiegelman’s Maus and The White Hotel).</p>
<h2>Satisfying the censors</h2>
<p>Censorship has also limited the number and scope of books that are allowed to be filmed – as films are more tightly controlled and censored than books. The reasons for this tighter control of visual images have ancient roots in Judaic, Islamic and Protestant Christian religions which represent the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/nov/10/language-learning-for-religious-reasons">word as divine</a> and the <a href="https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1200&context=jstae">visual image as profane</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237902/original/file-20180925-149961-cvuul1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237902/original/file-20180925-149961-cvuul1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237902/original/file-20180925-149961-cvuul1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237902/original/file-20180925-149961-cvuul1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237902/original/file-20180925-149961-cvuul1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237902/original/file-20180925-149961-cvuul1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237902/original/file-20180925-149961-cvuul1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Babi Yar memorial in Kiev, Ukraine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roland Geider</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their legacy persists in secular censorship practices. The <a href="https://www.ilianfilm.com/the-motion-picture-production-code.html">US Motion Picture Production Code (MPCC) of 1930</a> ruled that: “The latitude given to film material cannot … be as wide as the latitude given to book material,” because “a book reaches the mind through words merely; a film reaches the eyes and ears through the reproduction of actual events”. It concluded that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The mobility, popularity, accessibility, emotional appeal, vividness, straightforward presentation of fact in the films makes for intimate contact on a larger audience and greater emotional appeal. Hence the larger moral responsibilities of the motion pictures. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The MPCC advocated censoring films more stringently than books because film “reaches every class of society”, while other arts have their “grades for different classes”.</p>
<p>Even following the relaxation of the MPPC and similar censorship laws in other nations in the late 20th century, these considerations persist. When James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) was made into a film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/nov/19/ulysses-1967-film-review">by Joseph Strick in 1967</a>, it remained <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/after-33-years-censor-lets-irish-audiences-see-banned-ulysses-film-701740.html">banned in Ireland until 2000</a>, whereas the book was <a href="https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft5s200743&chunk.id=d0e193&toc.id=&brand=ucpress">never officially banned</a> in Ireland.</p>
<h2>Million dollar question</h2>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6fxGrSmXvoI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>When David Cronenberg filmed William S. Burroughs’s so-called unfilmable Naked Lunch (1959) in 1991, and was criticised for not being faithful to the book, <a href="http://www.beatdom.com/naked-lunch-on-film-filming-bthe-unfilmable/">he retorted that</a> a “straightforward adaptation”, featuring all of the book’s far-flung locations and representing its most shocking scatological and sexual passages would “cost US$100m and be banned in every country in the world”. So the book could be filmed, but it could not be financed or pass film censorship laws.</p>
<p>Financing and censorship are interconnected: films have to reach a much larger audience than novels or radio plays to turn a profit, and must therefore appeal to the mainstream. BBC Radio 4 has a much smaller audience and can appeal to other demographics on other radio channels. </p>
<p>For all of these reasons, a word-only adaptation for the niche audience of BBC Radio 4, aired on a Saturday afternoon – a time when listener numbers are close to being the lowest of the week – clearly offered an economically viable and socially acceptable venue for transmitting this brilliant and challenging novel in another media form. For this, at least, we must be grateful.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103718/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kamilla Elliott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Everyone has a favourite novel that hasn’t made it to the screen. Here’s why.Kamilla Elliott, Professor of Literature and Media, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1017412018-08-21T10:59:37Z2018-08-21T10:59:37ZIdris Elba: isn’t it time for a black James Bond?<p>A black Bond? It’s an apparently unproblematic and straightforward question, right? Well, not quite. When suggested quite quizzically by a colleague, it sparked a series of reactionary positions in the staff room, especially from the 007 traditionalists.</p>
<p>In fact, whispers that the very suave – and yet indisputably black – actor Idris Elba could potentially play Bond have ignited social commentaries about race, filmic representation and literary integrity around the world.</p>
<p>The issue was shaken and stirred (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) by a recent report in the <a href="https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/722149/james-bond-idris-elba-first-black-007-barbara-broccoli-luther-daniel-craig">Daily Star</a>, in which director Antoine Fuqua recalled a discussion with Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, who allegedly said “it is time” for a black actor to star as 007 and that she is confident “it will happen eventually”.</p>
<p>Interestingly, this little nugget sat at the top of a story about Fuqua launching his latest business venture – an app that allows people to listen to movies online with surround sound. But reporters know how to sell stories to their editors and so the headline, main picture and the first half dozen paragraphs were devoted to Elba’s Bond prospects. </p>
<p>Despite the fact that Fuqua’s management subsequently insisted that the conversation was “made-up stuff”, the question of Elba as the new Bond dominated the comments below the story, which included one reader asking: “What would be the outcry if Martin Luther King was played by a white bloke?” What indeed?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1028552314183999488"}"></div></p>
<p>Elba himself is keeping us guessing: “<a href="https://twitter.com/idriselba/status/1028552314183999488">My name’s Elba, Idris Elba</a>” he tweeted at 9am on August 12, followed three hours later with: “<a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/idris-elba-responds-bond-rumours-saying-believe-hype/">Don’t believe the hype</a>”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1028625167927398401"}"></div></p>
<p>Elba’s no mug. He knows how to fan the flames of speculation. And I’m unashamedly going to fall into his trap. So is it time for a black James Bond? What the heck – why not?</p>
<h2>Tall, dark and handsome</h2>
<p>Is it beyond fictionalisation – or the limitations of our individual and cultural imagination – to comprehend a reality in which there’s a devilishly handsome and sophisticated black Englishman with an MI6-approved licence to kill. It gives new – or should I say restores (in my humble opinion) the original – meaning to “tall, dark and handsome”, right? Everything that Bond is supposed to be.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be more surprising, and perhaps unsettling, if such an imagining, even in fiction, couldn’t withstand the assumed fragility of our liberal mindedness? Especially when we are supposed to live in a post-racial society where – ironically – inequalities, discrimination and oppression are nonexistent. If they <em>are</em> nonexistent in the material world, it seems they are alive and well in the figments of our imagination. </p>
<p>Cast your mind back to the media’s preoccupation with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s “<a href="https://news.sky.com/story/what-can-meghan-markle-do-for-black-britons-11372616">racially progressive</a>” interracial union, or France’s international posturing as a bastion of ethno-racial equality, with its “colourblind” government <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-french-law-makes-minorities-invisible-a7416656.html">prohibition</a> on referencing the race and ethnicity of its citizens. Is that enough to convince you that we live in a multicoloured land of bliss where all is possible?</p>
<p>Rallying against this romanticism are traditionalists – or Bond literalists – who, in all their intransigent preoccupation with conserving the historically white purity and scriptural heritage of the Bond franchise, are irked at a blackened prospect. They offer a plethora of counter arguments, not least that in 1953 Casino Royale, the first in Ian Fleming’s 12-book Bond series, the secret agent is described as a white Englishman of part Scottish and Swiss heritage who was educated at Fettes College.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1029085694000545793"}"></div></p>
<p>To which I submit: we aren’t in the 1950s. The films are no longer time-warped in black-and-white – they have changed and adapted to reflect the cultural zeitgeist of cinematic and contemporary public consciousness.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to note that these purists are not all white – disproportionally so, yes – but not all. Some <a href="https://twitter.com/TheDon_Dizz/status/1028624572357201921">non-white Bond enthusiasts</a> have also put in their own two cents’ worth, asking producers to “stick to the script” and insisting that being white is integral to Bond’s character. But can we racialise character?</p>
<p>Others, meanwhile, have called for their own black, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/james-bonds-ppk-gun-is-only-good-for-its-looks/2012/10/04/4892e07c-0e2b-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html?utm_term=.98651795ec1c">Walther PPK-wielding</a> agent, in the manner of 007, to not only tell their own new or complimentary stories but also avoid falling prey to potential accusations of tokenism in film.</p>
<h2>Colourblind casting</h2>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"678888094339366914"}"></div></p>
<p>Meanwhile, JK Rowling <a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/678888094339366914">decried critics</a> of the casting of black actress <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jun/05/harry-potter-jk--rowling-black-hermione">Noma Dumezweni</a> as the fictional Harry Potter character Hermione Granger, as “a bunch of racists” and that “white skin was never specified”, challenging normative assumptions that fictional characters are white, by default. </p>
<p>Supporters of Bond’s racial metamorphosis urge for better ethnic minority filmic representation in the spy genre and stress that fiction is not exempt from transformation even in the context of race. It’s a sentiment I share.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232706/original/file-20180820-30605-1g3jl4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232706/original/file-20180820-30605-1g3jl4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232706/original/file-20180820-30605-1g3jl4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232706/original/file-20180820-30605-1g3jl4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232706/original/file-20180820-30605-1g3jl4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232706/original/file-20180820-30605-1g3jl4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232706/original/file-20180820-30605-1g3jl4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colourblind casting? Orson Welles as Othello.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">United Artists via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I realise that my openmindedness unlatches a Pandora’s Box of “Whatabout-me-isms”. What about a polyamorous, gender-nonconforming, effeminate, anti-misogynist Gujarati Indian as Othello? Or, can I, as a Liverpudlian-accented, shaven-headed, transgendered lesbian, play Sherlock Holmes? Then again, what about a white Shaft? But wait wouldn’t that be “Whitesploitation”? Let’s not go there.</p>
<p>Would Elba make a fine Bond? Absolutely. Having seen 007 in all his white iterations, I’m all for a representational shift towards a salt-and-peppered Afro-textured, mahoganied urbanite. Too far fetched? Surely not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Edward Ademolu PhD, FHEA does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why can’t fiction’s most famous secret agent be played by Idris Elba? Just use your imagination.Dr Edward Ademolu PhD, FHEA, Dr of International Development; Global Development Institute, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/905642018-01-30T12:38:20Z2018-01-30T12:38:20ZFifty years ago A Kestrel for a Knave gave working-class Britain a voice: it’s needed again now more than ever<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204001/original/file-20180130-107713-1p7hfx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C1272%2C950&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Classic: an image from Ken Loach's 1969 film, Kes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">United Artists</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Half a century ago, a working-class writer by the name of Barry Hines wrote a tale of an impoverished boy and the bird he befriends. It’s a simple story with complex themes, which struck a real chord with the Britain of 1968. Adapted into a classic film by Ken Loach the following year, A Kestrel for Knave is about the politics of education, about what, how, and why we learn. It also reminds us that the circumstances of our background determine our life chances – that class matters. Its themes are just as relevant five decades on. </p>
<p>For Hines, education was always political: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>English literature was reading books about people who had been dead for hundreds of years … I wanted to read about a world I could identify, where people had to work for a living. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hines, who was brought up in Barnsley, Yorkshire – in the same neighbourhood his most famous novel was situated – came to books relatively late in his own education. A keen schoolboy sportsman, he trained as a PE teacher at Loughborough College. But when a roommate lent him a copy of Orwell’s Animal Farm, Hines – then aged 21 – found himself, for the first time in his life, reading for pleasure. He was hooked. </p>
<p>Just four years later, while working at a school back home in Barnsley, Hines wrote his first radio play, <a href="http://www.mckellen.com/stage/00042.htm">Billy’s Last Stand</a>, broadcast on the BBC in 1965. In 1966 his first book was published: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/mar/25/barry-hines-football-kes-the-blinder">The Blinder</a>, a semi-autobiographical tale of a footballer caught between the worlds of football and academia. </p>
<p>This was an era when there was an appetite for working-class, regional writing. It was an era when writers from humble backgrounds had access to networks, so scarce today, that could open the doors of opportunity. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/stan-barstow-writer-whose-novel-a-kind-of-loving-was-a-key-text-in-the-literary-revolution-of-the-2331329.html">Stan Barstow</a>, the author of A Kind of Loving helped Hines secure a literary agent, and <a href="http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/a-bradley.html">Alfred Bradley</a>, the producer who had commissioned his first play, helped the young teacher access a BBC bursary for northern writers. Crucially, this subsidy gave Hines temporary leave from his job to focus on his next project. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203519/original/file-20180126-100923-17hlxf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Working-class fiction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kestrel-Penguin-Modern-Classics-2000-05-25/dp/B01K0V1XB8/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1516958565&sr=8-8&keywords=kestrel+for+a+knave">Amazon</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was during this period that Hines met <a href="http://tonygarnett.info/">Tony Garnett</a>, another class warrior making popular political art. Fresh from producing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/31/cathy-come-home-50-years-homelessness-mental-health-problems">Cathy Come Home</a> with Loach, Garnett was looking for new writers. Would Hines write a TV play? “Not yet”, came the answer: “I’ve got this book going round in my head, and I’ve got to write it.” </p>
<p>Hines promised to tell Garnett and Loach when it was finished. They duly read the book – and the rest is history. In that moment the arts seemed open and accessible in a way that is unimaginable today – working-class voices were at the vanguard of cultural production. </p>
<p>It’s fair to say that the success of the film – and its iconic presence in the national imagination – has turned attention away from the novel on which it was based. But much of what gives the film its sense of lyricism emerged directly from Hines’s prose. Garnett described how the visual nature of Hines’s writing meant that the screenplay was “more or less a cut-and-paste job”. In early scripts, the producer and director literally copied pages from the book to punctuate the scenes of dialogue. These long passages of prose, highly textured descriptions of the South Yorkshire countryside, are written into the very fabric of the film. </p>
<p>Hines writes the landscape in minute, visceral detail – and in the process re-imagines the English pastoral tradition from a working-class perspective. The representation of nature becomes a political act.</p>
<h2>Hard times</h2>
<p>Hines’ lyricism offers readers a fleeting sense of relief from the harshness of Billy’s home and school life; where his imagination is allowed to prosper in defiance of those who oppress him. His brother, Jud, beats him, his mother neglects him, his classmates relentlessly mock him and, and in a scene made famous by the late Brian Glover, he is utterly and painfully humiliated on the football field. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_9nDHupVqVw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>It is against this backdrop of abuse that Billy meets Kes. His relationship with the kestrel unlocks a hunger for learning and, in the most arresting scene in the novel and film, Billy, so often silent and disinterested in school, is invited by his teacher to talk about his new-found passion for falconry. Billy finds a voice – and Mr Farthing and Billy’s classmates hang on his every word. </p>
<p>The liberation is tragically fleeting. Soon after Kes is killed by Jud. </p>
<p>Hines <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eJaQc1jr7BgC&pg=PT219&lpg=PT219&dq=if+there+had+been+gcses+for+falconry+billy+would+have+had+an+a+grade&source=bl&ots=z1MAW0vye6&sig=exXh9Fs64Ptr4S7BG8L1N0awOvM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQo8yi1f_YAhVHZVAKHShJANoQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=if%20there%20had%20been%20gcses%20for%20falconry%20billy%20would%20have%20had%20an%20a%20grade&f=false">later remarked</a> that if there had been “GCSEs for Falconry, Billy Casper would have been awarded an A grade”. But no such qualification exists – and by the end of the novel Billy is on the scrapheap, a victim of a class system which uses education to discipline rather than liberate its subjects. </p>
<p>In that moment when Billy is asked by his teacher to speak about Kes, our hero – up to this point utterly disengaged at school – finds agency for the first time, and Hines shows us a model of education where learning is an end itself. The classroom becomes a space of possibility, not of prescription. In these Utopian moments, the novel gives us hope. </p>
<p>I first read A Kestrel for a Knave at my own school, itself not far from Barnsley. I knew Billy Caspers, Juds, and Mr Sugdens. The story rang true, and Hines showed my classmates and me that working-class lives and landscapes were worthy of art. A Kestrel for a Knave has now disappeared from GCSE syllabuses, and there is little space for the novel elsewhere in a narrowing curriculum. </p>
<p>Five decades ago, the son of a miner wrote a book full of empathy and respect for someone who would today be sneered at by many as a “chav”. A Kestrel for a Knave was published across the world and Penguin enshrined it as a “<a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/57240/a-kestrel-for-a-knave/">Modern Classic</a>”. This was literature of and for the people. </p>
<p>In 2018, the landscape is depressingly different. <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Literature%20in%20the%2021st%20Century%20report.pdf">The economic decline of literary fiction</a> must be understood as a class issue. Without radical thinking on access to the arts and creative industries, the Billy Caspers of post-industrial Britain will remain voiceless.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90564/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Forrest does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The tragic story of a lonely, bullied boy who befriends a kestrel was an instant hit in the 1960s.David Forrest, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/884102017-12-06T12:15:24Z2017-12-06T12:15:24ZWhat would Moneypenny do? Sexual harassment, desire and James Bond<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197607/original/file-20171204-19594-1qptk4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Still from Dr No, courtesy of MGM</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>That James Bond’s longest relationship with a woman has remained, in spite of his proverbial boudoir skills, unconsummated for more than 60 years seems rather incongruous. Yet, Bond’s interaction with Miss Moneypenny, uneasily contained between risqué flirtation and out-and-out sexist behaviour, may give us an insight into the sex politics of the workplace and how they might have changed over six decades. </p>
<p>A staple character throughout the Bond film franchise, Moneypenny is a paradigm of changing attitudes towards sexual harassment and of its complex intersections with female desire.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SHKiViK9LpM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Montage of Moneypenny and Bond Scenes 1962-2012.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Conventional representations of women reflect the ways in which patriarchy has constructed gender roles: “Men act, women appear”, claimed John Berger in his influential 1972 work <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-john-berger-changed-our-way-of-seeing-art-70831">Ways of Seeing</a> – and, indeed, early film scripts tend to display Moneypenny as the passive recipient of Bond’s attention, relegating her own desire, much like her desk, outside the centre of power. </p>
<p>Similarly, in <a href="http://www.ianfleming.com/products/">Ian Fleming’s novels</a>, Moneypenny “functions as an object of desire, chiefly because she basks in the power that radiates from M”, as UK academics Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott put it in their 1987 book <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GbJaAAAAMAAJ&dq=bond+and+beyond&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=moneypenny">Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero</a>.</p>
<p>But Moneypenny is not only desirable – she also, actively, <em>desires</em>. In Dr No, directed by Terrence Young (1962), a flirtatious exchange between Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) and Bond (Sean Connery) sets the tone for the sexual tension of subsequent interactions. When accused of never taking Moneypenny out for dinner, Bond’s reply: “I would, you know. Only M would have me court-martialled for illegal use of government property” – questions Moneypenny’s ownership of her own body. </p>
<p>Australian cultural studies scholar <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719080951/">Tara Brabazon rightly suggests this could be harmless stuff</a>: Moneypenny’s “acknowledgment of flattery, rather than sexual harassment, renders Bond’s comments benign and banal”. But the troubling implication is that a woman’s consent might be dispensable, as long as employment regulations allow – or condone – certain uses of her body. She is, after all, government/corporate property.</p>
<h2>Hot-desking</h2>
<p>The problematic negotiation of the female body in a workplace regulated by the male gaze is illustrated in the ongoing discussion about <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/petitions/291.pdf">gendered dress codes</a>, from the 1980s so-called “power dressing” to more recent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/11/receptionist-sent-home-pwc-not-wearing-high-heels-pwc-nicola-thorp">parliamentary debates on compulsory high-heel policies</a>. But the persistent interest in Moneypenny’s physical and sartorial appearance does not mean she is simply the passive recipient of the male gaze and masculine control. In fact, it points to the female body as the bone of contention within the “office battle of the sexes”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197637/original/file-20171204-22967-1fcjys9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197637/original/file-20171204-22967-1fcjys9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197637/original/file-20171204-22967-1fcjys9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197637/original/file-20171204-22967-1fcjys9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197637/original/file-20171204-22967-1fcjys9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197637/original/file-20171204-22967-1fcjys9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197637/original/file-20171204-22967-1fcjys9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samantha Bond and Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MGM</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When a new Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) appears in GoldenEye in 1995, wearing a black evening dress, <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719080951/">to Brabazon</a>, “her clothes … signify a desiring and desirable woman, who is able to demand rights in the work place”. </p>
<p>Moneypenny’s ironic response to Bond’s leading question: “Out on some kind of assignment? Dressing to kill?”, situates her body as the source of active desire <em>outside</em> the work place: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I know you’ll find this crushing, but I don’t sit at home praying for an international incident so I can run down here all dressed up to impress James Bond. I was on a date with a gentleman.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Moreover, her playful reminder of sexual harassment legislation, warns Bond that she is neither “asking for it” nor “desperate” for Bond’s attention:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bond: Moneypenny, I’m devastated. What would I ever do without you?<br>
Moneypenny: As far as I can remember, James, you’ve never had me.<br>
Bond: Hope springs eternal.<br>
Moneypenny: This sort of behaviour could qualify as sexual harassment.<br>
Bond: Really? What’s the penalty for that?<br>
Moneypenny: Someday you have to make good on your innuendos.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This self-assured Moneypenny calls Bond a “cunning linguist” in Roger Spottiswoode’s 1997 Tomorrow Never Dies, while, in Michael Apted’s The World is not Enough (1999) she throws the suggestive cigar Bond brings her back from Cuba in the rubbish bin: “How romantic! I know exactly where to put that”, she jokes.</p>
<p>Indeed, the only way Moneypenny chooses to “consummate” her relationship is through a fantasy <em>she</em> is in control of. In Lee Tamahori’s 2002 Die Another Day, Bond’s body becomes a virtual sex toy, <a href="http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/vr-fantasy-sequence-in-die-another-day/view">when she borrows Q’s VR glasses</a>, which enable her to fulfil her sexual fantasies without compromising her independence.</p>
<p>This newfound assertiveness is a long shot from the air of desperation clinging to the characterisation of Caroline Bliss, her predecessor as Moneypenny in John Glen’s 1987 The Living Daylights and 1989 Licence to Kill. In the first of the two movies, Moneypenny’s failure to interest Bond (Timothy Dalton) in her Barry Manilow music collection is regrettably followed by a submissive acceptance of Bond’s patronising bottom patting.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197678/original/file-20171204-23037-1ve2469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197678/original/file-20171204-23037-1ve2469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197678/original/file-20171204-23037-1ve2469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197678/original/file-20171204-23037-1ve2469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197678/original/file-20171204-23037-1ve2469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197678/original/file-20171204-23037-1ve2469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197678/original/file-20171204-23037-1ve2469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Caroline Bliss and Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MGM</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Naomie Harris’s latest incarnation as Eve Moneypenny, initially deployed as a field agent alongside Bond (Daniel Craig), continues to challenge the active/passive, masculine/feminine binary divide. Her potential to emasculate Bond is most obviously referenced in her gunshot – which nearly kills him – in Sam Mendes’s 2012 Skyfall.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197677/original/file-20171204-23002-18fhggc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197677/original/file-20171204-23002-18fhggc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197677/original/file-20171204-23002-18fhggc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197677/original/file-20171204-23002-18fhggc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197677/original/file-20171204-23002-18fhggc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197677/original/file-20171204-23002-18fhggc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197677/original/file-20171204-23002-18fhggc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Naomie Harris and Daniel Craig in Skyfall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MGM</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her feminine sensuality, teasingly evoked when she shaves Bond with a cutthroat razor, gives way to her “phallic” threat visually symbolised by the blade she runs along Bond’s neck. Later, her response to his feigned jealousy about her sex life underscores her search for pleasure outside Bond’s control: “It’s called life, James. You should try it sometimes”, she quips in Spectre (2015) – also directed by Mendes. </p>
<p>Never a passive spectacle for Bond’s gaze, Moneypenny has been looking back at Bond with her own “eyes which [are] cool and direct and quizzical”, since her literary debut in Ian Fleming’s <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Casino-Royale-James-Vintage-Classics/dp/0099576856">Casino Royale</a> in 1953. But it would be simplistic to read Moneypenny’s escalating challenges to Bond’s control as the triumph of female empowerment. Sexual harassment is as much of a threat to women today as it was in the 1950s. Moneypenny’s message for us remains, therefore, ambivalent: while female desire positively challenges patriarchal rule, women’s bodies sadly remain contested sites of power negotiations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica Germana received an Everett Helm Fellowship to research the Ian Fleming Archive at the Lilly Library (Indiana University, Bloomington, 2011). </span></em></p>Changing sexual mores can be tracked by watching the way 007 flirts with Moneypenny and the way she reacts.Monica Germanà, Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/848692017-11-22T11:46:45Z2017-11-22T11:46:45ZHow our new technology will help blind people ‘see’ at the cinema<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195632/original/file-20171121-6061-1ocnyc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Sight loss affects around two million people in the UK, a number that is likely to increase to four million <a href="https://help.rnib.org.uk/help/newly-diagnosed-registration/registering-sight-loss/statistics">by 2050</a>. </p>
<p>Losing sight can of course change many areas of a person’s life – even seemingly insignificant things like being able to watch a good film or a new programme on television. A recent survey of over 100 <a href="http://enhancingaudiodescription.com/">visually impaired people</a> found that 34% hadn’t attended the cinema in the last 12 months. For sighted people this figure was found to be much lower at only six per cent. </p>
<p>A lot of this is down to the fact that going to the cinema when you are visually impaired can be challenging. Audio description (AD) is often relied on by blind and partially sighted people – this is like a narrator telling a story and explaining the visual content of the film. Around <a href="https://www.rnib.org.uk/sites/default/files/AD_pdf.pdf">40% of the cinemas in the UK</a> now include AD services. But these aren’t always available for use, either because of faulty equipment, cinema staff not knowing how to operate it, or issues with the headphones required for AD interfering with hearing aids.</p>
<p>One visually impaired person I spoke to explained how every time she tried to attend her local cinema, staff were unable to operate the equipment or the equipment was faulty. The cinema would then give her free vouchers for another film at another time, but upon her return, the same thing would happen. She now has a collection of vouchers she cannot use.</p>
<h2>Frustrated film fans</h2>
<p>The UK has been at the forefront of developments in AD and <a href="https://www.rnib.org.uk/sites/default/files/AD_pdf.pdf">in 2003 the goverment’s Communications Act</a> dictated that broadcasters had to ensure ten per cent of their programming had AD. The BBC, Channel 4, ITV and Sky committed to including AD in at least 20% of their content. </p>
<p>But although there has been an increase in AD on both broadcast and on-demand services, <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-1/on-demand-accessibility">the latter is still lagging behind</a>. This is in part why the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in partnership with <a href="https://www.moviereading.com/en/">MovieReading</a> have developed <a href="http://www.rnib.org.uk/new-app-brings-vod-blind-and-partially-sighted-people">an app</a> designed to overcome some of these limitations. The app allows users to download an AD track for a programme or film, and this then synchronises automatically to the original content. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195633/original/file-20171121-6072-1oc9bgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195633/original/file-20171121-6072-1oc9bgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195633/original/file-20171121-6072-1oc9bgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195633/original/file-20171121-6072-1oc9bgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195633/original/file-20171121-6072-1oc9bgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195633/original/file-20171121-6072-1oc9bgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195633/original/file-20171121-6072-1oc9bgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Going to the cinema can be difficult for visually impaired people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pexels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But another issue with the AD track is that it is often written and recorded by an AD provider. These tend to be external to the filmmaking crew – meaning it’s a system outside the creative workflows of film and television, and so doesn’t always align. Consequently, it’s not hard to see why so many blind and partially sighted people feel frustrated and give up on going to the cinema.</p>
<h2>Ears for eyes</h2>
<p>This is why my colleague and I started the <a href="http://enhancingaudiodescription.com/">enhancing audio description</a> project to deal with these issues.
The project aims to create an accessible soundtrack that is crafted in the production and postproduction stages of film and television.</p>
<p>This means that instead of having an external company creating a verbal commentary, film teams can work on creating an accessible version that follows the “vision” of the filmmakers. This ultimately helps to make the film engaging to everyone, regardless of their sight condition. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195634/original/file-20171121-6039-hgh86t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195634/original/file-20171121-6039-hgh86t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195634/original/file-20171121-6039-hgh86t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195634/original/file-20171121-6039-hgh86t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195634/original/file-20171121-6039-hgh86t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195634/original/file-20171121-6039-hgh86t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195634/original/file-20171121-6039-hgh86t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The project in action.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Additional sound effects can also be added to help clarify moments where, for example, the scene might be dominated by music. We are also exploring the use of “spatial audio” through loudspeakers and headphones to give visually impaired audiences more information. This could include things like where the characters are standing, where they are heading to and what objects are in the room. This is based on our <a href="http://enhancingaudiodescription.com/test/binaural-listening-tests-for-accessibility/">research on audio spatialisation</a> which showed that separating the position of the character’s voices allows visually impaired audiences to differentiate characters more easily, without the need for verbal descriptions. </p>
<p>We are also working on the idea of a first person narrator. This would see one of the characters in the story describing elements that would be impossible to convey through sound effects and spatialisation – such as colours and gestures. </p>
<h2>All ears</h2>
<p>When Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was released in 2002, it was the first film screened in the UK using a system that ensured the synchronisation of the AD track to the film. </p>
<p>This was a great advancement in the field of AD in relation to its transmission. But since then, not enough has changed to enhance the cultural experiences of visually impaired people. But it is hoped that with the use of this new technology, going to the cinema can soon be something that can be enjoyed by everyone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84869/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mariana Lopez receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p>This is what it’s like going to the cinema when you can’t see the screen.Mariana Lopez, Lecturer in Sound Production and Postproduction, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/869652017-11-09T15:04:18Z2017-11-09T15:04:18ZMurder on the Orient Express: why go to see remake when we know how it ends?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193952/original/file-20171109-27111-siukss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">21st Century Fox</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the distinguished crime novelist PD James, Agatha Christie’s distinctive contribution to the genre lies not in thematic complexity nor stylistic prowess, but in the meticulous fashioning of mysteries. In her 2009 book Talking About Detective Fiction, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/books/07book.html">James wrote that Christie</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… is a literary conjuror who places her pasteboard characters face downwards and shuffles them with practised cunning … Game after game we are confident that this time we will turn up the card with the face of the true murderer, and time after time she defeats us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If James is correct, however, and the satisfaction of a Christie story comes from its surprising plotting, then Kenneth Branagh’s new film adaptation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/05/murder-on-the-orient-express-review-kenneth-branagh">Murder on the Orient Express</a> would appear to be in difficulty. </p>
<p>It might be stretching things to claim that the plot of Murder on the Orient Express, written by Christie in 1934, is as familiar as that of Hamlet. Nevertheless, the identity in this instance of “the true murderer” is part of global cultural knowledge. Branagh’s film is after all merely the latest in a series of adaptations that include work for the big screen (Sidney Lumet’s <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/murder_on_the_orient_express/">Oscar-winning 1974 version</a>) and for TV (in 2001 and 2010), as well as for BBC Radio (1992-93).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mq4m3yAoW8E?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The plot’s secrets have also been disclosed in other books, films and TV shows with wide popular reach. An <a href="http://agathachristie.wikia.com/wiki/The_Unicorn_and_the_Wasp">episode of Doctor Who in 2008</a>, featuring Agatha Christie as a character, reveals “who did it”. Intriguingly, even Christie herself gave the attentive reader clues as to what happened on the Orient Express when she revived the character of Hercule Poirot in <a href="http://agathachristie.wikia.com/wiki/Cards_on_the_Table">Cards on the Table</a> (1936). </p>
<p>So, while some people may still be unfamiliar with the outcome of Murder on the Orient Express, many others will already be knowledgeable. Why, then, choose to watch Branagh’s film, with its unfolding of a familiar storyline? Christie’s own casual approach to narrative secrets in Cards on the Table is helpful here in freeing us from obsession with plot and prompting us to look instead for other sources of interest, both thematic and stylistic. </p>
<h2>Nostalgia film</h2>
<p>Recent critical approaches to Christie’s fiction have explored its constructions of gender, sexuality, class and nation. Studies such as JC Bernthal’s <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319335322">Queering Agatha Christie</a> (2016) have given the work new life, helping to free it from nostalgic trappings of vicarage and country house. Such revisionism, prompted by current social issues, is available not only to scholars but to anyone who adapts Christie.</p>
<p>In Branagh’s film, unfortunately, there are few signs the source material from the 1930s has been radically rethought. True, Colonel Arbuthnot is no longer the white British officer of the novel – but instead an African-American doctor. Elsewhere, however, the political and cultural traditions of Christie’s own period survive intact. Branagh’s Poirot, for example, reasserts a robust masculinity that contrasts with the vulnerability and torment conveyed by David Suchet in the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8222755/David-Suchets-Poirot-finally-boards-the-Orient-Express.html">2010 ITV adaptation</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193956/original/file-20171109-27106-9h7ksj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193956/original/file-20171109-27106-9h7ksj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193956/original/file-20171109-27106-9h7ksj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193956/original/file-20171109-27106-9h7ksj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193956/original/file-20171109-27106-9h7ksj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193956/original/file-20171109-27106-9h7ksj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193956/original/file-20171109-27106-9h7ksj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cast of Sidney Lumet’s Oscar-winning 1974 version starring Albert Finney as Poirot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The new adaptation is in other respects, too, less abrasive than its screen predecessors. It opens in bright sunlight, unlike Lumet’s big-screen version that begins visually and acoustically like film noir. It also avoids the violence of the ITV adaptation, which starts with a woman’s stoning in Istanbul and later shows the villain’s murder in all its goriness.</p>
<p>“Let horizons, décors and fashions lull you asleep,” as the <a href="https://www.belmond.com/trains/asia/eastern-and-oriental-express/">Orient Express’s own website</a> puts it. Branagh’s adaptation largely follows the comfortable rhythms of the luxury train from which it takes its title. Nostalgia powers this approach to Christie’s material, rather than ruder sources of energy. </p>
<h2>Exercising the eye</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/film-industry-statistics-research/weekend-box-office-figures">Box office returns</a> indicate that Murder on the Orient Express is currently the most popular film in the UK. Since it does not rewrite Christie’s plot, however, or offer significant thematic innovations, what might be the secret of its success?</p>
<p>Here it may be helpful to turn to very early film history and what has been called the “<a href="http://film110.pbworks.com/w/page/12610307/The%20Cinema%20of%20Attraction">cinema of attractions</a>”. This term refers to a body of films that offered exciting or unusual spectacles, rather than complex stories. The new Murder on the Orient Express should be thought of as a lavishly resourced “attraction” of this kind that is thereby able to enthuse viewers who know in advance whodunnit. </p>
<p>Where the narrative is familiar to them, spectators may instead be diverted by identifying the film’s many stars. The camera alights successively on actors who include Judi Dench, Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer. There is the pleasure, too, of comparing Branagh visually and dramatically with earlier screen versions of Poirot. </p>
<p>“It is an exercise, this, of the brain,” says Poirot in Christie’s novel as clues accumulate. Audiences already knowing the solution to the puzzle, however, will find the new film chiefly exercising their eyes instead. Where there is mental challenge, it may be to assess the effects of a high-angle interior shot, say, not to work out whose embroidered handkerchief was left in the dead man’s compartment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193953/original/file-20171109-27108-bmqwbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193953/original/file-20171109-27108-bmqwbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193953/original/file-20171109-27108-bmqwbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193953/original/file-20171109-27108-bmqwbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193953/original/file-20171109-27108-bmqwbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193953/original/file-20171109-27108-bmqwbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193953/original/file-20171109-27108-bmqwbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Judy Dench as Princess Dragomiroff with her maid, Hildegarde Schmidt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">21st Century Fox</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a short provocation called <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/in-defense-of-spoilers/381026/">In Defense of Spoilers</a>, Jonathan Rosenbaum argues that worrying about revealing a film’s storyline is not “a fit activity for grown-ups”. It exhibits narrow thinking that “privileges plot over style”. Why, asks Rosenbaum, is it frowned upon to say Orson Welles’ 1958 masterpiece <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/09/touch-of-evil-review-orson-welles">Touch of Evil</a> “begins with a time bomb exploding but [not] to say that the movie begins with a lengthy crane shot?”</p>
<p>It is thus not bad manners to give away the new film’s stylistic features. Branagh has chosen, for example, to use large-format, 65mm stock which gives a rich texture. There are swooping panoramas and extended tracking shots that impart movement, even as the train is stuck in snow. Such visual detailing is not secondary or unimportant, however, but actually essential to the pleasure of those watching who already know who wielded the knife.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Dix does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Just about everyone knows whodunnit. But there are other reasons to see a movie than just the plot.Andrew Dix, Lecturer in American Studies, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/828392017-08-31T07:49:25Z2017-08-31T07:49:25ZSex, secrets and murder most foul: following the threads of the Limehouse Golem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183831/original/file-20170829-6731-15ca4z4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lionsgate</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Peter Ackroyd’s novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) features in two adaptations this September: Opera Philadelphia’s <a href="https://www.chicagooperatheater.org/current-season/elizabeth-cree/">Elizabeth Cree</a>, and Juan Carlos Medina’s film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/sep/12/limehouse-golem-review-bill-nighy-peter-ackroyd-toronto-film-festival">The Limehouse Golem</a>. It seems that this is the golem’s moment – but why does Ackroyd’s neo-Victorian novel speak to us now, and how far does Medina capture the London of 1880?</p>
<p>The titular golem is a serial killer whose true identity may be the (fictional) journalist John Cree, or the (real life) <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/d/dan-leno/">music hall performer Dan Leno</a>, Karl Marx, or the novelist George Gissing. The worlds of music hall and of the reading room at the British Museum collide violently, reflecting Ackroyd’s fascination with histories written over each other. The film makes this image literal; the golem’s confessions scrawled over a copy of de Quincey’s <a href="https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/noa/pdf/27636_Roma_U13_Quincey.pdf">On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts</a> provide the vital clue.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183833/original/file-20170829-6731-1jxxyww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183833/original/file-20170829-6731-1jxxyww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183833/original/file-20170829-6731-1jxxyww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183833/original/file-20170829-6731-1jxxyww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183833/original/file-20170829-6731-1jxxyww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183833/original/file-20170829-6731-1jxxyww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183833/original/file-20170829-6731-1jxxyww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183833/original/file-20170829-6731-1jxxyww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Ghost of a Flea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Blake/Tate Britain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Literary interplay is present in the figure of the golem itself. A mythical creature from Jewish folklore, the film takes the image of the golem not from Hebraic literature but from William Blake’s painting The Ghost of a Flea (1819-20). Ackroyd fans will enjoy this reference to Blake’s influence on Ackroyd and on other psycho-geographic novels of murders in Limehouse and Whitechapel (most notably Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell).</p>
<h2>Shades of the Ripper</h2>
<p>While the setting of The Limehouse Golem predates the 1888 Whitechapel murders, both film and novel borrow liberally from the imagery of Jack the Ripper. This return to Ripper mythology is timely in the context of debates on how such events should be memorialised. The <a href="http://www.jacktherippermuseum.com/">Jack the Ripper museum</a>, opened in 2015, <a href="https://theconversation.com/jack-the-ripper-a-womens-history-museum-and-londons-fascination-with-all-things-gory-45456">drew criticism</a> for its glamorisation of Jack, and for its replacement of an original plan for a museum of East End women (as opposed to their murderers). While The Limehouse Golem employs many of the familiar Ripper tropes, there is an element of parody about them and the film has been described as putting a more feminist slant on its graphic imagery of East End prostitutes being disembowelled.</p>
<p>The Ripper crimes were sensationally reported in the <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/illustrated-police-news">Illustrated Police News</a>, a publication prominently featured in the film. Yet the film draws considerably on a sensational scoop in a rival publication, the <a href="http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/pmg/">Pall Mall Gazette</a>. The journalist and editor WT Stead’s series: <a href="http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/pmg/tribute/">The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon</a> (1885) explored not murder, but child prostitution.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183836/original/file-20170829-6736-1x5t8v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183836/original/file-20170829-6736-1x5t8v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183836/original/file-20170829-6736-1x5t8v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183836/original/file-20170829-6736-1x5t8v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183836/original/file-20170829-6736-1x5t8v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183836/original/file-20170829-6736-1x5t8v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183836/original/file-20170829-6736-1x5t8v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dangerous streets of Victorian London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lionsgate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Victorian sex trade</h2>
<p>Stead exposed the sexual trade in children by going undercover to show how easy it was to buy one. His report of July 6, 1885 carried the attention grabbing headline: “<a href="http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/pmg/tribute/armstrong/">A child of thirteen bought for £5</a>”. While Stead’s purchase of the child Eliza Armstrong had wider moral purposes, the exercise nevertheless earned him six months in Holloway Prison. Armstrong, by contrast, escaped to the Salvation Army in France.</p>
<p>The Maiden Tribute blended journalism with sensationalism and classical myth. Stead framed his report using Ovid’s myth of the Minotaur, the man-bull hybrid imprisoned in the labyrinth and fed by child sacrifices (the “maiden tribute”). In Stead’s update, London became the labyrinth, and sexual desire the beast. Stead cast himself as the hero Theseus, slaying the monster and finding his way out of the maze with a piece of thread, but legally found himself turned into the Minotaur. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P8EJAyk01kk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>While the Maiden Tribute appeared five years after the setting of The Limehouse Golem, film subtly references Stead’s work and its context. Elizabeth’s childhood sexual experiences are an obvious example – more subtly, Inspector Kildare (played by Bill Nighy), initially at a loss in his investigation, comments that “I just follow the threads”. Henry Goodman’s cameo as Karl Marx makes the point explicit when he says that the Golem’s victims are “sacrificial tributes in this labyrinth of London”.</p>
<h2>Sex and the city</h2>
<p>The outcomes of Stead’s investigations are also felt in The Limehouse Golem. The ensuing outcry led to the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/overview/sexualbehaviour19thcentury/">Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885</a>, raising the age of consent from 13 to 16, while the act’s <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/collections1/sexual-offences-act-1967/1885-labouchere-amendment/">Labouchere Amendment</a> criminalised homosexuality. When, in Medina’s film, Kildare keeps his homosexuality secret, and Vincent comments that a girl is sexually available once she is 16, it becomes clear that this version of 1880 is ahead of its time.</p>
<p>One might see these references as simple historical errors – and indeed The Limehouse Golem makes a few of them. Victorian hangmen did not work alone, nor in hoods, nor on the morning after sentencing. When the executioner comments that public hangings are reserved for the most hated criminals, he forgets that public hangings were abolished in 1868. No woman was cut in half in a magic trick <a href="http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-presentation-of-lady-to-be-sawn-in-half-illusion/">until 1921</a> (though some were beheaded). </p>
<p>Yet in a sense this is to miss the point: this is an adaptation not of a Victorian text, but a neo-Victorian one. The Limehouse Golem is more about an idea of the Victorian city than its historical reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Pittard has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>A new film brings to life the murky underbelly of Victorian London.Christopher Pittard, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.