It's Grεεκ To Me

RichardTheBruce

From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming, 1957.
Chapter Fourteen - Darko Kerim

Across the bridge, the car nosed to the right down a narrow cobbled street parallel with the waterfront and stopped outside a high wooden porte-cochère.

A tough-looking watchman with a chunky, smiling face, dressed in frayed khaki, came out of a porter's lodge and saluted. He opened the car door and gestured for Bond to follow him. He led the way back into his lodge and through a door into a small courtyard with a neatly raked gravel parterre. In the centre was a gnarled eucalyptus tree at whose foot two white ringdoves were pecking about. The noise of the town was a distant rumble and it was quiet and peaceful.

They walked across the gravel and through another small door and Bond found himself at one end of a great vaulted godown with high circular windows through which dusty bars of sunshine slanted across a vista of bundles and bales of merchandise. There was a cool, musty scent of spices and coffee and, as Bond followed the watchman down the central passageway, a sudden strong wave of mint.

At the end of the long warehouse was a raised platform enclosed by a balustrade. On it half a dozen young men and girls sat on high stools and wrote busily in fat, old-fashioned ledgers. It was like a Dickensian counting-house and Bond noticed that each high desk had a battered abacus beside the inkpot. Not one of the clerks looked up as Bond walked between them, but a tall, swarthy man with a lean face and unexpectedly blue eyes came forward from the furthest desk and took delivery of him from the watchman. He smiled warmly at Bond, showing a set of extremely white teeth, and led him to the back of the platform. He knocked on a fine mahogany door with a Yale lock and, without waiting for an answer, opened it and let Bond in and closed the door softly behind him.

`Ah, my friend. Come in. Come in.' A very large man in a beautifully cut cream tussore suit got up from a mahogany desk and came to meet him, holding out his hand.

A hint of authority behind the loud friendly voice reminded Bond that this was the Head of Station T, and that Bond was in another man's territory and juridically under his command. It was no more than a point of etiquette, but a point to remember.

Darko Kerim had a wonderfully warm dry handclasp. It was a strong Western handful of operative fingers---not the banana skin handshake of the East that makes you want to wipe your fingers on your coat-tails. And the big hand had a coiled power that said it could easily squeeze your hand tighter and tighter until finally it cracked your bones.

Bond was six feet tall, but this man was at least two inches taller and he gave the impression of being twice as broad and twice as thick as Bond. Bond looked up into two wide apart, smiling blue eyes in a large smooth brown face with a broken nose. The eyes were watery and veined with red, like the eyes of a hound who lies too often too close to the fire. Bond recognized them as the eyes of furious dissipation.

The face was vaguely gipsy-like in its fierce pride and in the heavy curling black hair and crooked nose, and the effect of a vagabond soldier of fortune was heightened by the small thin gold ring Kerim wore in the lobe of his right ear. It was a startlingly dramatic face, vital, cruel and debauched, but what one noticed more than its drama was that it radiated life. Bond thought he had never seen so much vitality and warmth in a human face. It was like being close to the sun, and Bond let go the strong dry hand and smiled back at Kerim with a friendliness he rarely felt for a stranger.

You Only Live Twice, Ian Fleming, 1964.
Chapter 16 - The Lovesome Spot

The man stopped talking. He raised his head and gazed up at the moon. He politely lifted his shining top hat. Then he replaced it, tucked his umbrella under one arm and sharply clapped his hands. Then walking, as if to a business appointment, calmly, purposefully, he took the few steps to the edge of the bubbling fumarole, stepped carefully over the warning stones and went on walking. He sank slowly in the glutinous grey slime and not a sound escaped his lips until, as the tremendous heat reached his groin, he uttered one rasping 'Arrghh!' and the gold in his teeth showed as his head arched back in the rictus of death. Then he was gone and only the top hat remained, tossing on a small fountain of mud that spat intermittently into the air. Then the hat slowly crumpled with the heat and disappeared, and a great belch was uttered from the belly of the fumarole and a horrible stench of cooking meat overcame the pervading stink of sulphur and reached Bond's nostrils.

Bond controlled his rising gorge. Honourable salary-man had gone to honourable ancestors - his unknown sin expiated as his calcined bones sank slowly down into the stomach of the world. And one more statistic would be run up on Blofeld's abacus of death. Why didn't the Japanese Air Force come and bomb this place to eternity, set the castle and the poison garden ablaze with napalm? How could this man continue to have protection from a bunch of botanists and scientists? And now here was he, Bond, alone in this hell to try and do the job with almost no weapon but his bare hands. It was hopeless I He was scarcely being given a chance in a million. Tiger and his Prime Minister were certainly exacting their pound of flesh in exchange for their precious MAGIC 44 - one hundred and eighty-two pounds of it to be exact!

Cursing his fate, cursing Tiger, cursing the whole of Japan, Bond went on his way, while a small voice whispered in his ear, 'But don't you want to kill Blofeld? Don't you want to avenge Tracy? Isn't this a God-given chance? You have done well tonight. You have penetrated his defences and spied out the land. You have even found a way into his castle and probably up to his bedroom. Kill him in his sleep tomorrow I And kill her too, while you're about it! And then back into Kissy's arms and, in a week or two, back over the Pole to London and to the applause of your Chief. Come on! Somewhere in Japan, a Japanese is committing suicide every thirty minutes all through the year. Don't be squeamish because you've just seen a couple of numbers ticked off on a sheet in the Ministry of Health, a couple of points added to a graph. Snap out of it! Get on with the job.'

And Bond listened to the whisper and went on round the last mile of wall and back to the gardeners' hut.

CommanderRoss

Abacus of death. If they want to return to a death/die title, here's one that'll work perfectly!

RichardTheBruce

Does Q explain what an abacus is, or does the villain.

Or it can just be the name of a killer spy satellite with DIE-uh-munds, of course. Hasn't been done for a while.

CommanderRoss

Or going back to voodoo, where a Dr. Kananga Jr. Has a counting rack, and when he moves a skull a politician is killed. I know, not many see that as a problem, but it's a starting point.... It's a nice blackmail setup for spectre too. Bond needs to find out how the abacus is connected to the real world, and then stop it.

RichardTheBruce

Galata / Γαλατᾶς / ˈgælətə / noun
1. the Greek-named commercial area and port on the Golden Horn, Istanbul
2. also the main bridge there
3. also a famous tower there

Greek (γαλακτος or gálaktos; γαλατά or galatá, milk). Italian (Calato, lowered).

Galata (Γαλατᾶς): the Greek-named neighborhood on the north shore of the Golden Horn. Also the the name of the main bridge running across to Istanbul (no longer Constantinople). In the Middle Ages, it existed as a citadel for a colony of the Republic of Genoa with Galata Tower at the top elevation. .

Present-day Galata known as Karaköy is a section of Beyoğlu (Pera), in Istanbul.

Galata

Galata Tower

Galata Bridge

RichardTheBruce

From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming, 1957.
Chapter 12 - A Piece of Cake

`All right then,' said M. There was a note of relief in his voice. He leant back in his chair and gave several quick pulls on his pipe to get it going. `This is what's happened. Yesterday there was a long signal in from Istanbul. Seems on Tuesday the Head of Station T got an anonymous typewritten message which told him to take a round ticket on the 8 p.m. ferry steamer from the Galata Bridge to the mouth of the Bosphorus and back. Nothing else. Head of T's an adventurous sort of chap, and of course he took the steamer. He stood up for'ard by the rail and waited. After about a quarter of an hour a girl came and stood beside him, a Russian girl, very good-looking, he says, and after they'd talked a bit about the view and so on, she suddenly switched and in the same sort of conversational voice she told him an extraordinary story.'

M paused to put another match to his pipe. Bond interjected, `Who is Head of T, sir? I've never worked in Turkey.'

`Man called Kerim, Darko Kerim. Turkish father and English mother. Remarkable fellow. Been Head of T since before the war. One of the best men we've got anywhere. Does a wonderful job. Loves it. Very intelligent and he knows all that part of the world like the back of his hand.' M dismissed Kerim with a sideways jerk of his pipe. `Anyway, the girl's story was that she was a Corporal in the M.G.B. Had been in the show since she left school and had just got transferred to the Istanbul centre as a cipher officer. She'd engineered the transfer because she wanted to get out of Russia and come over.'

`That's good,' said Bond. `Might be useful to have one of their cipher girls. But why does she want to come over?'

Chapter 14 - Darko Kerim

Punctually at nine, the elegant Rolls came for him and took him through Taksim square and down the crowded Istiklal and out of Asia. The thick black smoke of the waiting steamers, badged with the graceful crossed anchors of the Merchant Marine, streamed across the first span of the Galata Bridge and hid the other shore towards which the Rolls nosed forward through the bicycles and trams, the well-bred snort of the ancient bulb horn just keeping the pedestrians from under its wheels. Then the way was clear and the old European section of Istanbul glittered at the end of the broad half-mile of bridge with the slim minarets lancing up into the sky and the domes of the mosques, crouching at their feet, looking like big firm breasts. It should have been the Arabian Nights, but to Bond, seeing it first above the tops of trams and above the great scars of modern advertising along the river frontage, it seemed a once beautiful theatre-set that modern Turkey had thrown aside in favour of the steel and concrete flat-iron of the Istanbul-Hilton Hotel, blankly glittering behind him on the heights of Pera.

Across the bridge, the car nosed to the right down a narrow cobbled street parallel with the waterfront and stopped outside a high wooden porte-cochère.

A tough-looking watchman with a chunky, smiling face, dressed in frayed khaki, came out of a porter's lodge and saluted. He opened the car door and gestured for Bond to follow him. He led the way back into his lodge and through a door into a small courtyard with a neatly raked gravel parterre. In the centre was a gnarled eucalyptus tree at whose foot two white ringdoves were pecking about. The noise of the town was a distant rumble and it was quiet and peaceful.

Chapter 15 - Background of a Spy

Kerim led Bond to the door. There came again the warm powerful handclasp. `The car will bring you to lunch,' he said. `A little place in the Spice Bazaar.' His eyes looked happily into Bond's. `And I am glad to be working with you. We will do well together.' He let go of Bond's hand. `And now I have a lot of things to do very quickly. They may be the wrong things, but at any rate,' he grinned broadly, `jouons mal, mais jouons vite!'

The head clerk, who seemed to be some sort of chief-of-staff to Kerim, led Bond through another door in the wall of the raised platform. The heads were still bowed over the ledgers. There was a short passage with rooms on either side. The man led the way into one of these and Bond found himself in an extremely well-equipped dark-room and laboratory. In ten minutes he was out again on the street. The Rolls edged out of the narrow alley and back again on to the Galata Bridge.

A new concierge was on duty at the Kristal Palas, a small obsequious man with guilty eyes in a yellow face. He came out from behind the desk, his hands spread in apology. `Effendi, I greatly regret. My colleague showed you to an inadequate room. It was not realized that you are a friend of Kerim Bey. Your things have been moved to No. 12. It is the best room in the hotel. In fact,' the concierge leered, `it is the room reserved for honeymoon couples. Every comfort. My apologies, Effendi. The other room is not intended for visitors of distinction.' The man executed an oily bow, washing his hands.

If there was one thing Bond couldn't stand it was the sound of his boots being licked. He looked the concierge in the eyes and said, `Oh.' The eyes slid away. `Let me see this room. I may not like it. I was quite comfortable where I was.'

He washed and went out of the room and down the stairs. No, there had been no messages for the Effendi. The concierge bowed as he opened the door of the Rolls. Was there a hint of conspiracy behind the permanent guilt in those eyes? Bond decided not to care if there was. The game, whatever it was, had to be played out. If the change of rooms had been the opening gambit, so much the better. The game had to begin somewhere.

As the car sped back down the hill, Bond's thoughts turned to Darko Kerim. What a man for Head of Station T! His size alone, in this country of furtive, stunted little men, would give him authority, and his giant vitality and love of life would make everyone his friend. Where had this exuberant shrewd pirate come from? And how had he come to work for the Service? He was the rare type of man that Bond loved, and Bond already felt prepared to add Kerim to the half-dozen of those real friends whom Bond, who had no `acquaintances', would be ready to take to his heart.

The car went back over the Galata Bridge and drew up outside the vaulted arcades of the Spice Bazaar. The chauffeur led the way up the shallow worn steps and into the fog of exotic scents, shouting curses at the beggars and sack-laden porters. Inside the entrance the chauffeur turned left out of the steam of shuffling, jabbering humanity and showed Bond a small arch in the thick wall. Turret-like stone steps curled upwards.

`Effendi, you will find Kerim Bey in the far room on the left. You have only to ask. He is known to all.'

Bond climbed the cool stairs to a small anteroom where a waiter, without asking his name, took charge and led him through a maze of small, colourfully tiled, vaulted rooms to where Kerim was sitting at a corner table over the entrance to the bazaar. Kerim greeted him boisterously, waving a glass of milky liquid in which ice tinkled.

`Here you are my friend! Now, at once, some raki. You must be exhausted after your sight-seeing.' He fired orders at the waiter.

Chapter 16 - The Tunnel of Rats

`If only we could hear,' Kerim said, shaking his head sadly. It would be worth diamonds.'

`It would solve a lot of problems,' agreed Bond. Then, `By the way Darko, how did you come on this tunnel? What was it built for?'

Kerim bent and gave a quick glance into the eyepieces and straightened up.

`It's a lost drain from the Hall of Pillars,' he said. The Hall of Pillars is now a thing for tourists. It's up above us on the heights of Istanbul, near St. Sophia. A thousand years ago it was built as a reservoir in case of siege. It's a huge underground palace, a hundred yards long and about half as broad. It was made to hold millions of gallons of water. It was discovered again about four hundred years ago by a man called Gyllius. One day I was reading his account of finding it. He said it was filled in winter from "a great pipe with a mighty noise''. It occurred to me that there might be another "great pipe'' to empty it quickly if the city fell to the enemy. I went up to the Hall of Pillars and bribed the watchman and rowed about among the pillars all one night in a rubber dinghy with one of my boys. We went over the walls with a hammer and an echo-sounder. At one end, in the most likely spot, there was a hollow sound. I handed out more money to the Minister of Public Works and he closed the place for a week---"for cleaning''. My little team got busy.' Kerim ducked down again for a look through the eyepieces and went on.

`We dug into the wall above waterlevel and came on the top of an arch. The arch was the beginning of a tunnel. We got into the tunnel and went down it. Quite exciting, not knowing where we were going to come out. And, of course, it went straight down the hill---under the Street of Books where the Russians have their place, and out into the Golden Horn, by the Galata Bridge, twenty yards away from my warehouse. So we filled in our hole in the Hall of Pillars and started digging from my end. That was two years ago. It took us a year and a lot of survey work to get directly under the Russians.' Kerim laughed. `And now I suppose one of these days the Russians will decide to change their offices. By then I hope someone else will be Head of T.'

RichardTheBruce

From Russia With Love, Terence Young, 1963.
Bond and Tatiana meet at the Galata Bridge, Istanbul, Turkey.

RichardTheBruce

Cyclops / Κύκλωψ / ˈsaɪ·klɒps / noun
1. in Greek myth, a savage race of giant one-eyed creatures
2. tiny freshwater predators, crustaceans with a single eye

Greek (kuklos, circle; ops, eye; kuklops, round-eye). Latin (cyclops).

Cyclops (Κύκλωψ): one-eyed giants. The original three were blacksmiths: Arges, Steropes, Brontes. Born of Uranus and Gaea. Brothers to Hecatoncheires and the Titans. Imprisoned by Cronu, set free by Zeus.

Different Cyclopes populated Sicily: shepherds, stupid and violent, with connections to Poseidon. Famously, the Cyclops Polyphemus loved Galatea and was blinded by Odysseus.


Cyclops attacks

Odysseus blinds Polyphemus.

And again.

Harryhausen's Cyclops

RichardTheBruce

Moonraker, Ian Fleming, 1955.
Chapter XXI - 'The Persuader'

Hurriedly she told him all she knew, beginning with the notebook.

His body was as rigid as a board against her, and he hardly breathed as he listened to the incredible story.

Then they were running into Canterbury and Bond put his mouth to her ear. "Going to try and chuck myself over the back," he whispered. "Get to a telephone. Only hope."

He started to heave himself up on his knees, his weight almost grinding the breath out of the girl.

There was a sharp crack and he fell back on top of her.

"Another move out of you and you're dead," said the voice of Krebs coming softly between the front seats.

Only another twenty minutes to the site! Gala gritted her teeth and set about bringing Bond back to consciousness again.

She had only just succeeded when the car drew up at the door of the launching-dome and Krebs, a gun in his hand, was undoing the bonds round their ankles.

They had a glimpse of the familiar moonlit cement and of the semi-circle of guards some distance away before they were hustled through the door and, when their shoes had been torn off by Krebs, out on to the iron catwalk inside the launching-dome.

There the gleaming rocket stood, beautiful, innocent, like a new toy for Cyclops.

Goldfinger, Ian Fleming, 1959.
Part Three: Enemy Action
Chapter Fifteen - The Pressure Room

BOND'S REACTION was automatic. There was no reason behind it. He took one quick step forward and hurled himself across the desk at Goldfinger. His body, launched in a shallow dive, hit the top of the desk and ploughed through the litter of papers. There was a heavy thud as the top of his head crashed into Goldfinger's breastbone. The momentum of the blow rocked Goldfinger in his chair. Bond kicked back at the edge of the desk, got a purchase and rammed forward again. As the chair toppled backwards and the two bodies went down in the splintering woodwork, Bond's fingers got to the throat and his thumbs went into its base and downwards with every ounce of his force.
Then the whole house fell on Bond, a baulk of timber hit him at the base of the neck and he rolled sluggishly off Goldfinger on to the floor and lay still.

The vortex of light through which Bond was whirling slowly flattened into a disc, a yellow moon, and then into a burning Cyclops eye. Something was written round the fiery eyeball. It was a message, an important message for him. He must read it. Carefully, one by one, Bond spelled out the tiny letters. The message said: SOCIÉTÉ ANONYME MAZDA. What was its significance? A hard bolt of water hit Bond in the face. The water stung his eyes and filled his mouth. He retched desperately and tried to move. He couldn't. His eyes cleared, and his brain. There was a throbbing pain at the back of his neck. He was staring up into a big enamelled light bowl with one powerful bulb. He was on some sort of a table and his wrists and ankles were bound to its edges. He felt with his fingers. He felt polished metal.

A voice, Goldfinger's voice, flat, uninterested, said, 'Now we can begin.'

Agent Under Fire, Electronic Arts, 2001.
Cyclops oil platform, Cyclops Oil, Malprave Industries, South China Sea.
https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/Cyclops_oil_platform

Infiltrating Cyclops oil platform

CommanderRoss

The Galata bridge reminds me of an idea for a thread I've had, but haven't got the time to dive into: vehicles, places, trains, boats and places as described by Fleming, but then for real. Of course he often enough mentions imaginary places and vehicles, but sure does mention real ones as well, and we wouldn't have to stick to Bond, but could elaborate on Thrilling Cities and The Diamond Smugglers, even (allthough I don't know about that one ) Chitty Chitty Ban Bang. I'd be very interested if the cafe's and hotels he describes still exist, and what they used to look like and what they look like now.

Agent_99

The cars and planes would be a lot of fun to go into. I love the descriptions of 1950s airline travel.

CommanderRoss

Agent_99 wrote: »

The cars and planes would be a lot of fun to go into. I love the descriptions of 1950s airline travel.

yes, me too. and in Thrilling cities he even gives the registrations of the Comets he's flying. Would be interesting to find nes articles on the DC6 he was flying to Hawaii that got an engine fire (flying friday the 13th...).

Maybe I can set something up this weekend, but feel free to take the lead!

RichardTheBruce

Poseidon / Ποσειδῶν / pə-ˈsī-dᵊn / noun
1. Greek god of the sea and horses, source of earthquakes
2. US missile type launched from submarines

Greek (ποσις/posis, husband or lord; δα/da, earth).

Poseidon (Ποσειδῶν): god of sea, horses, earthquakes, storms. Earth-shaker. Moody, greedy god of Olympia. Born of Cronus and Rhea. Husband to Amphitrite, the Nereid. Triton, a human-fish combination, was born to them. Father to Orion, Polyphemus, Pelias, others. Noted womanizer, even with sister Demeter (their union in equine form produced the horse Arion).

When the Olympians defeated the Titans, division of the world gave Zeus the sky, Hades the underworld, and Poseidon the seas. Worshiped or at least respected by sailors and navigators; also worshiped for fertility. Traveled using a horse-drawn chariot. Carried a signature trident--the three-pronged spear. The Roman equivalent is Neptune.

Sided with the Greeks in the Trojan War, until compelled by Zeus to desist. Harassed Odysseus during his adventure. In competition for the city of Athens, his beautiful (saltwater) fountain lost to Athena's gift of the olive.

RichardTheBruce

Agent Under Fire, Electronic Arts, 2001.
Mission 10 - Poseidon
https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/Agent_Under_Fire

At Malprave Industries, Bond, posing as a journalist, sees that the CEO is a woman he met at the embassy, Adrian Malprave. After collecting evidence, he makes his escape from the facility. Analysis of the computer message from Romania mentions "Damaged Goods," believed to be a codename for Dr. Natalya Damescu, formerly in the employ of Malprave, now under protection at the British embassy in Romania. She also has inside information to offer. Carla the Jackal, an infamous terrorist who also killed Zoe, leads a raid on the embassy. Bond fights the terrorists before running into Damescu. After a confrontation with the Jackal, Bond picks up a data chip on something known as Poseidon, and delivers it to R for analysis.

The chip leads Bond to an oil rig in the South China Sea. After running into Bloch, Bond follows him into Poseidon, an underwater base devoted to clone development. After destroying the lab, he climbs onto a submarine bound for a Royal Navy aircraft carrier. On the submarine, Bond finds Zoe, who reveals that the woman he "saved" from the Identicon facility was a clone meant to infiltrate the CIA, and that the Jackal intended to kill Bond.

Thunderfinger

RichardTheBruce

Oedipus. Okay, @Thunderfinger . Nothing identified directly in Fleming or film dialog. But like some sort of psychological issue, there it is running under the surface.

RichardTheBruce

Oedipus/ Οἰδίπους / ˈiːdɪpəs/ noun
1. King of Thebes and tragic hero in Greek myth
Also:
1. in psychology, Sigmund Freud (who rejected the Electra Complex) established the Oedipus Complex
2. from Karl Popper, Oedipus effect (1957) is for "the self-fulfilling nature of prophecies or predictions."
3. in nature, there is the Gamboa worm salamander (a.k.a. Oedipus complex)

Greek (Οἰδίπους/Oidípous, swollen foot).

Oedipus/ Οἰδίπους : born to King Laius and Queen Lacosta of Thebes. On the warning of an oracle that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother, the infant Oedipus was left to die at Cithaeron. Rescued by a shepherd, adopted by King Polybus of Corinth.

As an adult visiting Delphi, Oedipus learned of the prediction he would kill his father and marry his mother. He planned to never to return to Corinth and avoid that fate.

During travel to Thebes, he meets Laius who provokes argument. Oedipus kills Laius. At Thebes, the Sphinx terrorizes all she encounters with a riddle--destroying anyone who cannot answer it. Oedipus solves it. The Sphinx kills herself. In reward, Oedipus is given the throne of Thebes and marries Queen Jocasta. Born to them are Eteocles, Polyneices, Antigone, Ismene.

The truth is revealed. Jocasta kills herself. Oedipus blinds himself with pins from her dress and leaves Thebes with Antigone, Ismene. In his death at Colonus, Qedipus is swallowed by the earth to be a guardian of the land.

Baby Oedipus is found

Oedipus and the Sphinx

Oedipus, who could not and now cannot see.

The Riddle

Sphinx:
What goes on four feet in morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening.

Oedipus:

Man. On all fours as an infant. Two legs as an adult. Add a walking stick when he is old.

The Second Riddle

Sphinx:
There are two sisters. One gives birth to the other. She gives birth to the first. What are they?

Oedipus:

Day and Night. In Greek, ἡμέρα and νύξ are feminine forms.

RichardTheBruce

Tomorrow Never Dies, Roger Spottiswoode, 1997.

Wai Lin: If I didn't know better, I'd say you were following me around, Mr. Bond.

Bond: You'll have to admit, though... we seem to have developed a certain attachment to each other.

Wai Lin: Hopefully not for long.

Bond: Another Carver building. If I didn't know better, I'd say he'd developed an edifice complex.

Sinn Sathorn Tower, Bangkok, Thailand

RichardTheBruce

Media, Myth, and Society, Arthur Asa Berger, 2012.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yAXIF8PIVl4C&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq="james+bond"+oedipus&source=bl&ots=ukairX-ZhB&sig=ACfU3U2hIt_-aoqXNsdJs0XLFCLkSZ6Acw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiXxIWTzJzkAhUBj1kKHTAqBa44ChDoATACegQIBxAB#v=onepage&q="james bond" oedipus&f=false

We will find a different interpretation of the significance of the
Oedipus myth in the writings of Sigmund Freud and will find examples
of the Oedipus myth hidden in many mass-mediated and other texts,
from Shakepeare's Hamlet to King Kong and the James Bond spy stories.
What follows now is an analysis of the Oedipal aspects of James Bond
stories and other aspects of the Bond phenomenon.

James Bond and the Oedipus Complex
In Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott's Bond and Beyond: The Political
Career of a Popular Hero we find a discussion of the Bond novels and the
Bond "formula." They write:

Just as Vladimir Propp argued that "all fairytales are of one type in regard
to their structure," so Eco argues that, at the level of the plot, the Bond novels
are structurally uniform. Indeed, he further contends that the "Bond for-
mula" is merely a variant of the archetypical structure of the traditional fairy
tale. According to Propp, the basic plot elements of the fairytale consists of
functions performed by its central protagonists--the hero, the villain, the
princess--in developing the course of action within the story. Likewise, Eco
argues that the main characters of the Bond novels are motivated by the
functions assigned to them, functions which he likens to a series of moves
required by the rules of the game. (1987:79)

James Bond, code name OO7, is a British secret agent created by Ian
Fleming in 1953, whose adventures are found in 12 novels and two col-
lections of short stories by Fleming and 22 films, as well as comic strips
and video games. (DVDs of the Bond films and his novels are available
at Amazon.ccom and other internet sites, and Bond films are often rerun
on television.) He is, then, one of the most popular and long endur-
ing popular culture heroes of recent times. In their book, Bennett and
Woollacott argue that to understand his cultural significance, we must
recognize Bond's Oedipal problems. They write:

In You Only Live Twice, Bond is going through a peculiarly acute phase in his
ever-ongoing, never-to-be-resolved Oedipal crisis. Indeed, between them,
You Only Live Twice and its sequel The Man with the Golden Gun, offer a fairly
explicit rehearsal of the Oedipus myth. Bond is sent away to a foreign land,
is given another name, loses his memory so that like Oedipus, he lacks a
knowledge of his true identity and parentage, eventually leaves those who
have adopted him (Kissy) and journeys back to his homeland where (having
been captured and brainwashed by the KGB en route) he attempts, in the
opening pages of The Man with the Golden Gun, to kill M. (1987: 125-126)

As the authors point out, Bond is continually threatened by symbolic
castration by the powerful figures that capture him in various adventures.
They suggest that we find these Oedipal themes in the Bond adven-
tures because Fleming had not resolved his Oedipal problems and was
excessively fond of his mother and hostile towards his father. Fleming was
not consciously introducing Oedipal themes in his books; these themes
were in his unconscious and then were reflect in his books.

In a typical Bond novel, Bond meets and is attracted to a beautiful
woman. Later, a powerful and older male figure captures Bond and plans to
kill him. Bond finds a way to escape and kill the villain and then is able to
have a sexual relationship with the woman. Let's consider the novel Dr. No, a
book that reflects, among other things, Fleming's racism, in some detail...

RichardTheBruce

Suggested reading, at your own risk.

[

filmREVIEW: Skyfall
http://www.contemporarypsychotherapy.org/volume-4-no-2-winter-2012/filmreview-skyfall/

Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench
Distributor: Sony Pictures International
Released: 26 October 2012
Reviewer Zachary Boren

James Bond. He’s had 23 movies over 50 years. Six different actors have played him in the big screen series, and there have been five eras for the character (sorry Lazenby). The current incarnation, Daniel Craig’s, has deviated somewhat from what 007 has traditionally been about. Since his introduction in 1962’s Dr No, James Bond has been the male fantasy, the ultimate aspiration. For the longest time Bond was simply cool; he drank martinis, killed and karate chopped all the baddies, slept with all the beautiful women, and he never cried (except Lazenby). It was a formula that worked, and only the backdrop would change. But somewhere down the line, around The World Is Not Enough (1997), it stopped working. The world had changed, the audience had changed, and so must Bond.

In the last three Bond films, all starring Craig, there has been a concerted effort to give the character depth. Perhaps most significant is the introduction of continuity and the acknowledgement of time passing. Until Casino Royale (2006) the Bond films were absolutely self-contained. Not only this but the Bond films of the 20th century were careful not to disrupt the fantasy. Though Roger Moore was 57 when he starred in A View To A Kill (1985), Bond’s age was not mentioned. On the other hand, Craig’s Bond in Skyfall is considered a relic of another time, technically outdated and physically decaying. This Bond is mortal. This Bond’s bullet wounds no longer magically heal, and neither do his psychological traumas. He loses Vesper, his ladylove, at the end of Casino Royale and he spends the entirety of Quantum of Solace, the following film, grieving. Skyfall completes the reconstruction of a James Bond, now a real boy, and demonstrates the fertile territory the franchise can now explore.

The foundation of this new Bond is his relationship with M, the head of MI6. As played by Dame Judi Dench, M is the closest thing Bond has to a mother. Her 00 agents are her children and 7 is clearly her favourite. It is revealed in Skyfall that Bond is an orphan – “orphans make the best agents” – and it is also suggested that his only relationship is with M. She is not an affectionate mother figure, more reserved, and even a bit cold. She risks his life in an operation at the film’s outset, a moment that super-villain Silva (Javier Bardem) emphasizes. Silva, formerly an MI6 agent loyal to M, was supposed to have been sacrificed years before. He had been M’s golden boy before Bond, and is deeply hurt that he has been replaced. Silva wants Bond to see that M does not care for him. Bond failed his physical and psychological examinations, yet M put him back in the field. Is this a sign of indifference towards him or of faith in him? Silva believes it’s the former: “Mommy’s been bad.”

In Skyfall, M is the ultimate Bond girl: Mother. It’s an evident demonstration of the Oedipus complex, her two agents fighting for her love. Silva and Bond have a sibling rivalry, a dynamic that Freud considered to be an extension of the Oedipus complex. They compete for M, even if they don’t know what they want from her. Theirs is a rivalry of biblical proportions, comparable to Cain, Abel and the jealousy that gave birth to fratricide. The homoerotic undertones, most obvious when Silva has captured 007, further complicate this volatile relationship.

Silva is a rare kind of Bond villain; his evil is not so simple. When he bites down on his emergency cyanide tablet, his mouth is destroyed and his face disfigured. When his ‘mother’ allows his death Silva has been psychologically annihilated. This is a place of terror and it inevitably pushes him to psychosis: fear and devastation have driven him mad. Silva’s pursuit of power, particularly over M, is the only way he can keep himself together. His dentures are shiny and new but they are not real; this Silva is novel and angry and bloodthirsty because he was abandoned, left to die by the mother he loved and whose approval he sought. In the movie’s climactic scene, Silva approaches M with a gun in hand. She is already wounded, clutching her bleeding abdomen. Upon realizing this, Silva leaps to her aid, concerned for her well being: “What have they done to you!?” As he had done earlier in the film, Silva hesitates to kill M. He’s conflicted; he’s won her but he doesn’t know what to do next. He decides that they should die together with one shared bullet as if they are one person. He may want revenge but only because her forgiveness and love seem impossible. This is not a simple “I want to rule the world” baddie but a hysterical child who has been abandoned by his mother.

The reception to Craig’s Bond films, especially Skyfall, suggests that future editions will continue humanizing the character, exploring his past, questioning his future, slowly approaching his death.

- Zachary Boren has been the Film Coordinator at The British Independent Film Awards and regularly contributes to Raindance Film Festival.

Culture
James Bond's New, Not-So-Progressive Mommy Complex
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/11/james-bonds-new-not-so-progressive-mommy-complex/265010/
Noah Berlatsky
Nov 12, 2012

Rather than updating the franchise's gender roles, Skyfall takes them to
Oedipal extremes.

MGM / Columbia

Skyfall, the new James Bond film, is obsessed with the aging of James Bond films. Daniel Craig, who just two movies and six years ago was playing a young, cocky, erratic young agent, is now supposed to be an aging, cocky erratic old agent—grizzled but still deadly, not to mention priapic. Inevitably in a Bond film, the anxiety about growing old is linked to anxiety about growing less manly. And that anxiety is soothed with a procession of male bodies for Bond to violently mutilate and a slightly less numerous procession of hot young things to whom he can show the ropes and other bits.

But gender roles have changed since Sean Connery raped that lesbian vixen Pussy Galore in the barn and made her like it. In response to our brave new and at least nominally feminist world, the last two Daniel Craig films worked hard to update Bond's brand of machismo. In Casino Royale (2006), Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) was presented as Bond's equal, creating an actual convincing love story—and an actual bitter betrayal. In Quantum of Solace (2008), Lynd's ghost functions as the main female presence: a hidden wound that secretly drives the implacable Bond's quest for blood and vengeance. In both cases, Lynd's dramatic and emotional stature offset the franchise's obsessed commitment to testosterone—or provided the necessary justification for that commitment, depending on how you look at it.

For Craig's third outing, though, Lynd is gone. Rather than trying to replace her with another believable love interest, Skyfall takes another tack. The main female lead here is the formidable M (Judi Dench), Bond's boss and the head of MI6. M is referred to by her agents as "Mum," and Skyfall is—very atypically for a Bond film—focused not only on women as sex objects, but also on women as mothers.

Just as the sex objects in previous Bond films were sometimes untrustworthy, motherhood in Skyfall is an ambivalent thing. The first set piece of the movie concludes with M issuing an order that results in Bond's apparent death. He then goes on a bender involving sultry Mediterranean babes and lots of liquor, as if he's recovering from a lover's quarrel. The main antagonist, Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), also has major mommy issues. A former MI6 agent, he believes he was betrayed by M and is obsessed with destroying her agents and killing her. In an unpleasant nod to Ian Fleming's virulent homophobia, Silva's mother fixation is linked to his decadence and predatory homosexuality. He's a twisted momma's boy, and his personal sick fixation on M is contrasted with Bond's straight (ahem)-arrow commitment to duty and country.

In fact, in terms of the movie's gendered logic, you could say that Silva's mistake is in seeing M as a mother when—despite the female body—she is in fact a father. Throughout the film, M insistently rejects the traditional mother's role of nurturer for the traditional father's insistence on duty and tough love. Sometimes, the female father is played for laughs, as when Bond, returned from the dead, shows up in M's apartment with no place to stay—and she tells him in no uncertain terms that he is not going to spend the night. At other times, the female father is presented more solemnly—as when, in a moment of weakness, M wonders if she made a mistake in her treatment of Silva, and Bond tells her that no, she was just (like every good father) doing her job.

Either way, though, the result is the same. M's motherliness validates the film's, and indeed the franchise's, masculine performance. It's no accident that (despite some detours to exotic locales) much of Skyfall is set in London or—at the climax—in Bond's Scottish childhood home. The mother and the motherland are what we fight for; the idealized imagined masculine can bust some heads in the name of the idyllic imagined feminine.

And what better way to validate this symbiotic gendered violence than to have the mother herself stand up and trumpet the manly virtues? Thus it is M who sends Bond out into the field though she knows he is not at 100 percent, trusting the inspiration of her (and his country's) need to overcome his weakness. And it is M who delivers the speech to the legislators about the evils of terrorism and the strong, ruthless agents who are needed to protect the weak, spineless public. You civilian overseers with your quaint concerns about loss of life and due process and ethics: You're such children. But don't worry your little heads about it, and mommy and daddy—or even better, mommy/daddy—will pile dead bodies at the barricades on your behalf.

Are such lurid fantasies really deployed to protect innocence? Or is the luridness a goal in itself, and the innocence merely the excuse? Perhaps the answer lies in one of this film's entirely old-school Bond moments, involving a striking, morally ambiguous damsel-in-distress. Séverine (Bérénice Marlohe) seems sexy and dangerous—but Bond deduces that she is in fact a sex-slave who has been brutalized since her early teens, and that she is in fear for her life. The short conversation between Craig and Marlohe is perhaps the most realized sequence of the movie: The actress conveys both terror and vulnerability, and Craig comes across as concerned, competent, and empathetic.

But then, of course, Bond slips into the room of this sexually traumatized woman and casually screws her. Shortly thereafter, she is brutally murdered in front of him; his only reaction is a callous joke. I guess you could argue that Bond was putting up a tough façade—but there's little evidence for that in the film, which utterly forgets her existence and her trauma the instant they have served their purpose.

Séverine is just a body and a plot point, there to lend weight to Craig's perspicuity, sexiness, and imperviousness. Same goes for M, who, with her last lingering look and her final benediction, testifies to Bond's fitness for duty and inarguable adequacy. No woman is too old or too damaged to bolster Bond's swinging psychodrama. Skyfall, then, doesn't so much update Bond's gender roles as it extends them to their logical Oedipal extreme. It's taken 50 years of films, but at long last even mothers can be Bond-girls.

Agent_99

Rather marry a duck-billed platypus

RichardTheBruce

GoldenEye, Martin Campbell, 1995.

Trevelyan: In minutes and... no, seconds, the United Kingdom will re-enter the Stone Age. A worldwide financial meltdown.

Bond: And all so mad little Alec can settle a score with the world years on.

Trevelyan: Please, James. Spare me the Freud.

RichardTheBruce

Die Another Day, Lee Tamahori, 2002.

I. Guess. I'll. Die. Another day.
Sigmund Freud.
Analyze this, analyze this, analyze this.

Frost: Who sent you?

Jinx: Yo mama! And she told me to tell you she's really disappointed in you.

RichardTheBruce

The Ivory Hammer: The Year at Sotheby's, 1963.
"The Property of a Lady" by Ian Fleming

M. said, "Dr. Fanshawe is a noted authority on antique jewelry. He is also, though this is confidential, adviser to H.M. Customs and to the C.I.D. on such things. He has in fact been referred to me by our friends at M.I.5. It is in connection with our Miss Freudenstein."

Bond raised his eyebrows. Maria Freudenstein was a secret agent working for the
Soviet KGB in the heart of the Secret Service.

She was in the Communications
Department, but in a watertight compartment of it that had been created especially for her, and her duties were confined to operating the Purple Cipher—a cipher which had also been created especially for her. Six times a day she was responsible for encoding and dispatching lengthy SITREPS in this cipher to the C.I.A. in Washington. These messages were the output of Section 100 which was responsible for running double agents. They were an ingenious mixture of true fact, harmless disclosures and an occasional nugget of the grossest misinformation. Maria Freudenstein, who had been known to be a Soviet agent when she was taken into the Service, had been allowed to steal the key to the Purple Cipher with the intention that the Russians should have complete access to these SITREPS—be able to intercept and decipher them—and thus, when appropriate, be fed false information. It was a highly secret operation which needed to be handled with extreme delicacy, but it had now been running smoothly for three years and, if Maria Freudenstein also picked up a certain amount of canteen gossip at Headquarters, that was a necessary risk, and she was not attractive enough to form liaisons which could be a security risk.

M. turned to Dr. Fanshawe. "Perhaps, Doctor, you would care to tell Commander Bond what it is all about."

何？

Agent_99

Is that pic from the National Cryptologic Museum, @RichardTheBruce? I visited with a friend when I was in the US in March. (Initially we went to the wrong entrance and were made to turn round by guys with guns.)

RichardTheBruce

Yes, that's the same display of the Purple Cipher at the National Crytologic Museum as you said, @Agent_99.

There are also the Red and Jade Cipher machines.

RichardTheBruce

The Man with the Golden Gun, Ian Fleming, 1965.
Chapter 1 - "Can I Help You?"

A Miss Mary Goodnight was my secretary. She'd recognize me all right. So would dozens of other people at H.Q."

"Miss Goodnight's been posted abroad. Can you give me a brief description of H.Q., just the main geography?"

Bond did so.

"Right. Now, who was a Miss Maria Freudenstadt?"

"Was?"

"Yes, she's dead."

"Thought she wouldn't last long. She was a double, working for K.G.B. Section One Hundred controlled her. I wouldn't get any thanks for telling you any more."

M. rubbed the bowl of his pipe thoughtfully down the side of his nose. Well, fair enough! He turned back to the file.

I have comment, [wrote C.C.] to make on this man's alleged sexual potency when seen in relation to his profession. It is a Freudian thesis, with which I am inclined to agree, that the pistol, whether in the hands of an amateur or of a professional gunman, has significance for the owner as a symbol of virility--an extension of the male organ--and that excessive interests in guns (e.g., gun collections and gun clubs) is a form of fetishism.

The partiality of Scaramanga for a particularly showy variation of weapon and his use of silver and gold bullets clearly point, I think, to his being a slave to this fetish--and, if I am right, I have doubts about his alleged sexual prowess, for the lack of which his gun fetish would be either a substitute or a compensation. I have also noted, from a "profile" of this man in Time magazine, one fact which supports my thesis that Scaramanga may be sexually abnormal. In listing his accomplishments, Time notes, but does not comment upon, the fact that this man cannot whistle. Now it may only be myth, and it is certainly not medical science, but there is a popular theory that a man who cannot whistle has homosexual tendencies. (At this point, the reader may care to experiment and, from his self-knowledge, help to prove or disprove this item of folklore!--C.C.)

Chapter 3 - "Pistols" Scaramanga

So I would not be surprised to learn that Scaramanga is not the Casanova of popular fancy. Passing to the wider implications of gunmanship, we enter the realms of the Adlerian power urge as compensation for the inferiority complex, and here I will quote some well-turned phrases of a certain Mr. Harold L. Peterson in his preface to his finely illustrated The Book of the Gun (published by Paul Hamlyn). Mr. Peterson writes:

"In the vast array of things man has invented to better his condition, few have fascinated him more than the gun. Its function is simple; as Oliver Winchester said, with nineteenth-century complacency, 'A gun is a machine for throwing balls.' But its ever-increasing efficiency in performing this task, and its awesome ability to strike home from long range, have given it tremendous psychological appeal.

"For possession of a gun and the skill to use it enormously augments the gunner's personal power, and extends the radius of his influence and effect a thousand times beyond his arm's length. And since strength resides in the gun, the man who wields it may be less than strong without being disadvantaged. The flashing sword, the couched lance, the bent longbow performed to the limit of the man who held it. The gun's power is inherent and needs only to be released. A steady eye and an accurate aim are enough. Wherever the muzzle points, the bullet goes, bearing the gunner's wish or intention swiftly to the target. . . . Perhaps more than any other implement, the gun has shaped the course of nations and the destiny of men."

In the Freudian thesis, "his arm's length" would become the length of the masculine organ. But we need not linger over these esoterica.

The support for my premise is well expressed in Mr. Peterson's sinewy prose and--though I would substitute the printing press for the gun in his concluding paragraph-- his points are well taken. The subject, Scaramanga, is, in my opinion, a paranoiac in subconscious revolt against the father figure (i.e., the figure of authority) and a sexual fetishist with possible homosexual tendencies. He has other qualities which are self-evident from the earlier testimony. In conclusion, and having regard to the damage he has already wrought upon the personnel of the S.S., I conclude that his career should be terminated with the utmost dispatch--if necessary by the inhuman means he himself employs --in the unlikely event an agent of equal courage and dexterity can be made available. [Signed "C.C."]

Beneath, at the end of the docket, the Head of the Caribbean and Central American Section had minuted "I concur," signed "C.A." To this Chief of Staff had added, in red ink, "Noted. C.O.S."

RichardTheBruce

Thrilling Cities, Ian Fleming, 1963.
Chapter X - Vienna

Returning to Vienna after so many years' absence, I found two great changes for the worse: the appalling congestion and noise that have hit all the capital cities (they have a good name for the motor-scooter--Schlurfrakete--Spiv-rocket), and the collapse of the pulsating intellectual life that was one of the great delights of Vienna before Hitler marched in.

I remember, in those days before the war, reading, thanks to the encouragement of the Forbes Denises, the works of Kafka, Musil, the Zweigs, Arthur Schnitzler, Werfel, Rilke, von Hofmannstal, and of those bizarre psychologists Weininger and Groddeck--let alone the writings of Adler and Freud--and buying first editions (I used to collect them) illustrated by Kokoschka and Rubin.

As I remember it, all these and many others made of Vienna a kind of Central-European Left Bank into whose fringes it was delightful to penetrate. In those days there seemed to be countless small satirical cabarets frequented by these people where, for a few Shillings, one could boast of having rubbed shoulders with genius. All this has utterly gone (though the Simplizissimus cabaret still has some of the sharp, destructive Austrian wit); and what has come musically out of Vienna, the city of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner, Schubert, Strauss and Lehar, in the last twenty years?

The intellectual demise of Vienna must, as must that of Munich and Berlin, be put down to the wholesale departure of 200,000 Jews who, whatever else their failings--and the race is generally considered to have shown itself in poor colours at this confluence of Slav and Central-European Jewry--create an atmosphere in which the intellect appears to flourish astonishingly.

I doubt if Vienna will ever regain her Bohemian atmosphere. With the total absence of an aristocracy or of any other elite (except for the ski champions), the Austrian bureaucrat, who is essentially a small man waiting for his pension, has complete control of the country. There is not a single Austrian millionaire, and not even a nouveau riche clique to provide artistic patronage. Moreover, neutrality does not create a stimulating atmosphere, and there are no tax benefits in Austria as there are in Switzerland to attract the modern intellectual exile. Nor does Vienna seem to regret her abdication from the world of the spirit. Although she has produced two Nobel Peace prizewinners and twelve Nobel prizewinners in medicine, physics and chemistry, how many of these people worked or received encouragement within their own national frontiers? It was an Austrian who constructed the first typewriter, another who invented the sewing-machine, another who constructed the first automobile, and another the first incandescent gas-mantle, to say nothing of the Kaplan turbine and the slow-motion camera. But who developed these things? Certainly not the Austrians. The truth is that the Austrian of the cities is a wonderful shrugger of shoulders, a witty denigrator, a man who really means it when he says, 'What does it matter?' 'Who cares?' And basically he hates all modern inventions and 'progress' for the simple reason that Franz Joseph hated them.

It is of course in this splendidly frivolous attitude to life that lies the real 'charm' of Austria for the visitor, and the despair of governments. By comparison with Italy, France and Switzerland, for instance, how wonderful it is to be in a beautiful country whose
inhabitants are so incompetent at extracting money from tourists, who make it a matter of personal pride not to cross the streets by the zebra crossings, and who mock at every effort by the government to make Austria into a great nation again!

Agent_99

Hello. I've had a busy evening.

Pontius Pilate: governor of Judaea (Greek: Πόντιος Πιλάτος, Pontios Pilatos)

Mount Pilatus: mountain in Switzerland, allegedly named after Pontius Pilate

Pilatus: Swiss aircraft manufacturer named after the mountain

Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter: flown off a mountain before the opening credits of GE

Here's how it looks now in its special GoldenEye livery:



And here's its complete history. Note that its film costume is the Air-Glaciers livery it wore at the time with a couple of red stars slapped on.

Bonus Bond connection from Wikipedia!

Besides its day to day role as an aircraft factory, the Stans [Pilatus] plant is perhaps best known for its use as a location for the film Goldfinger, and particularly the exterior shots where James Bond crashes his DB5 and is captured.

RichardTheBruce

More excellent work, @Agent_99.

Starting fresh on my side I confirmed the connections to GoldenEye and Goldfinger, nice.

The only additional mention I found was Anthony Zerbe playing Pontius Pilate in the 1985 television miniseries A.D.

So with this I should commit to a separate discussion of Roman and Latin connections for Bond. Some Greek items to continue with, then I'll properly represent Hercules, Pegasus, Pilatus and others.