Re: [Marxism] Bourne vs. Bond

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Carrol wrote,

"It was explicitly _not_ an "anti-CIA" picture. It was an
anti-Rogue-Element-in-the-CIA picture; in other words it was precisely
the view of the CIA that underwrites many of the conspiracy theories
from the Kennedy assassination on. The actual 'hero' of it was not
Bourne but the higher-up CIA woman to whom he passed over the evidence
on the Rogue Element; the last you see of her she is testifying to a
Senate Committee.

I liked the picture very much -- but the plot was exactly the plot of a
1000 B-westerns and quite a few more respectable westerns. The good guys
are being rousted by a local capitalist (usually a banker as Michael
Perelman pointed out in a recent lbo-post) and a Man on a White Horse
comes to the aid of the good guys (usually "good capitalists,"
especially local ranchers wanting to grow big 'honestly'). That hero,
then, sounds very much like the various Fascist heroes  as presented in
Ezra Pound's _Cantos_. Here we have rogue Bureaucrats instead of a rogue
banker, and we have an ex-rogue gunman (Bourne) -- in this it resembles
_Shane_.

Just as the good guys cannot by themselves (in Shane and a 1000 other
films) beat off the evil element but must have a Strong Man (a reformed
rogue) do it for them, so the good guys carrying on the good fight in
the CIA can't do it by themselves without a reformed rogue applying
rogue tactics to do it for them. You've even got the Church Committee
scenario at the end with the woman testifying to the Senate -- now
everything is going to be just fine."

Does this mean hollywood isn't left-wing? No Gramscian strategy for  
cultural counter-hegemony? Too bad.

You make some good points but I disagree with your portrait of Bourne  
as the archetypal reformist hero.

Look at the key flashback scene where Bourne recovers his memory.  
Doesn't the breaking and reconstruction of his identity through  
torture techniques paint the entire agency in a bad light?  After  
all, the CIA assassination squad did not begin as a rogue operation.  
It was a standard black op that went bad and had to be contained when  
Bourne botched the hit on the boat and went awol. Then it was put on  
the shelf and resurrected as a rogue operation in the most current  
sequel. But it wasn't really rogue, was it? It was compartmentalized.  
I don't think most Bourne fans distinguish between good guys gone bad  
in the agency and already bad guys. The whole bureaucracy was painted  
as dysfunctional and evil. The woman you pick for the hero is  
constantly being made fun of by Bourne when he catches her off guard  
with the cell calls and comments on how she needs to catch up on her  
sleep. And in the chase scenes the CIA is likened to the keystone  
cops on crack. Excessive force in public places creates a PR  
nightmare, and everything spins out of control. Bourne's victory lay  
in turning the tables on the manipulators so that they become the  
manipulated.  Bourne becomes the ultimate urban guerrilla, using the  
agency's own techniques against them. And he's not the lone cowboy.  
He always gets some help from someone when he's in a tight spot.   
It's the sense of  his vulnerability which leads us to identify with  
him. The movie's popularity lies in the audience's identification  
with Bourne as the underdog antihero, not as some Ezra Pound fascist  
knock-off.

Ezra Pound? At least stick to the same genre when making comparisons,  
or someone may accuse you of using post-modernist pastiche. BTW, I  
don't think we've seen the last of Bourne.  Too big of a hit to just  
let him run off like that.

Greg


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