Live and Let Die (1973)

     You know what? I think I had James Bond pegged all wrong. My initial experiances and the way people seem to talk about the franchise led me to believe that Bond movies were all fairly typical action blockbusters lightly flavored with cold war era spy fiction and sci-fi with an unusually high level of racism and mysogyny due to the franchise's adhirance to tradition, and the power fantasy it was created to cater to. However, as we move further along the franchise into the seventies I can't help but get the sense that, while they are spy/sci fiction action blockbusters they aren't at all typical.

    There's an underlying surreal quality to all the Bond films that I've watched recently, and it wasn't until the cold open of Live and Let Die that I noticed it. Really, I should have noticed sooner. Even as boring as it was, we had imagry that was strikingly surreal in Dr. No. The dramatic shift from the Bond theme to a jazzy cover of 3 blind mice that leads into 3 apparently blind men committing the assassinations that kickstart the plot. In Goldfinger there's the famous image of Jill Masterson laying dead on the hotel bed covered in gold paint, and later in Diamonds Are Forever we are "treated" to a gorgiously composed underwater shot of Plenty O'Toole's corpse. Her sheer nightgown and hair floating beautifully about her, and her face a peaceful picture of serenity, and dead. It went beyond the deaths of the franchise's many sexy women too. Bond breaking onto the moon training simulation set in the same movie, and then escaping in a moonbuggy comes to mind; as do Bambi and Thumper two sexy female body guards who try and kill Bond with gymnastics. However, with Live and Let Die I had no choice but to notice the underlying surreality of the franchise at this stage in it's history. The movie was so thick with surreality I would have to be blind to not notice.

    The surreality begins in ernest with the cold open. After we see an assassination of a UN representitive a peculiar (to me) funeral procession in Harlem is observed by a man we later learn is a british agent. The procession proceeds down the street accompanied by a brass band playing a somber funeral march. The agent is joined by a local and the agent asks "Whose funeral is this." and the man responds "Yours" and proceeds to stab the agent with a knife. The funeral procession stops at the dead agent's corpse, and the men holding up the coffin lower the coffin on top of the body, and then lift the coffin somehow with the body inside. The tone of the funeral procession suddenly changes to one of celebration as the band switches to an upbeat tune, and the mourners open their brightly decorated umbrellas and proceed to dance down the street. What a nonsensical way to assassinate someone. What if the agent didn't stop to observe the funeral? What if he didn't ask whose funeral it was (the assassin seemed to be waiting for him to say just that thing)? If the goal of the funeral was to hide the body discreetly wouldn't the big brass band just draw attention to the event? and what about the sudden change in tone when the body was successfully hidden in the coffin that would just draw more attention from bystanders who might be prone to telling the authorites. It leaves logic entirely by the wayside. The surreality continues throughout the movie with repeated, and plot significant references to mysticism. Throughout the middle of the movie, the antagonist, a heroin traffiking mob boss, Kananga gains accurate information on Bond's movements and whereabouts from a tarot card reader (a woman amusingly named Solitaire) that he employs. The movie plays the Terot reader and her abilities completely straight as part of some mystical voodoo practice, and the movie never really questions the reality of her abilities. Perhaps most surreal and inexplicable is the appearance Baron Samedi. Baron Samedi appears as a tall voodoo priest in San Monique (where Kananga grows his poppy plants) that uses his seeming eternal resurrection, and skeleton inspired face and body paint to scare locals away from Kananga's drug operation. This seems normal enough if a bit odd, but the movie, much like it does with Solitaire's tarot, plays Baron Samedi's supernatural powers completely straight. In a scene where we see Baron Samedi rise from a grave (not supernaturally as we later learn there's a lift under the grave site) Bond promptly shoots him in the head revealing that Baron Samedi is actually a hollow statue. Still normal enough but, looking closer, an attentive viewer would notice Samedi's eyes still moving even though half his head is missing. Later in that scene a more flesh and blood Samedi appears who Bond promptly kills, seemingly definitively, until the final shot where Samedi is seen alive and well.

    So now that I've established that Live and Let Die is surreal lets dig a little deeper. Hopfully, you've noticed a pattern connecting all the surreal elements I've mentioned. If you haven't please re-read the proceeding paragraph and see if you can pick up on what they all have in common. This paragraph will still be here when you get back. If you found that all the surreal elements I mentioned were culturally alien to the presumed white audience of James Bond, then you and I are thinking along the same lines. Soon after writing the movie I did some light wikipedia-ing. The funeral depicted during the cold open was (supposed to be) a jazz funeral (many practitioners of that tradition find the term inappropriate so from here on out I will used the prefered description: funeral with music). It's a tradition practiced in New Orleans (across racial boundries) wherein the funeral is accompanied by a brass band. While, as the film depicts, the tone of the music does change during the funeral, it usually changes as the body is seperated from the mourners, typically when the body is entombed not arbitrarily during the procession. Tarot I have some prior knowledge about having been exposed to it as part of my occult cinema class. The film suggests a strong connection between Solitaire's ability to do tarot readings, and the voodoo magic that the local cult believes in. As far as I'm aware there is no tangible connection between the religious signifiers the movie classes as voodoo (voodoo is a rather broad and somewhat racist term for a variety of belifes and practices) and tarot. Baron Samedi on the other hand has his roots in Haitian Vodou. He is a Loa or spirit who oversees death (I apologize if I have misunderstood these beliefs I have only done a modicum of research on wikipedia). Of course the movie treats him as a middle manager type hench who acts as little more than a scarecrow. 

    It should be clear by now that Live and Let Die has a race problem. That in and of itself is nothing unexpected. James Bond has a very long, very storied, history of racism that is well documented and very obvious, but Live and Let Die's racism is uniquely interesting in that it leans very heavily on exoticism. In order to make the movie interesting, because the formulaeic Bond plot is undoubtedly stale by the eighth film, the filmmakers chose to gather up a mishmash of cultural signifiers and practices they associated with black culture and toss them haphazardly throughout their formula to bring some kind of flavor to their stale franchise (which has incidentially just had to replace it's lead actor). There's a joke in here somewhere about British people stealing spices, but I'm not smart enough about history to make it. The motive for mining black cultural signifiers specifically seems to be to cash in on the growing popularity of "blaxploitation films". This post has gone on long enough already so I won't expound upon that particular genre much, but suffice to say Blaxploitation was a genre that featured black stories and characters to exploit the market of black film goers. This was of course a double edged sword as it increased visibility of black filmmakers and actors and centered black characters, but also perpetuated harmful steriotypes and exoticism. Live and Let Die, in appropriateing black cultural practices and signifiers for its surreal tone, manages to carry over the negative aspects of blaxploitation and none of the postitive aspects.

    Despite the tone of ALL of the above I really enjoyed Live and Let Die. The silliness and surreality isn't limited to ignorant portayals of black culture. Kananga is finally defeated by being inflated like a balloon until he explodes, Bond commendeers an old woman's pilot lesson pretending to be a substitute instructor much to her frustration, and the movie diverts a lot of time to a bumbling Louisiana State Shariff attempting (poorly) to respond to an over the top speedboat chase that takes up about a third of the film. It was a really entertaining watch and incredibly well paced. Hopfully next week, when I watch The Man With the Golden Gun I'll be able to devote my post to things I actually like about the movie. Until then!