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Videology: Garbage’s ‘The World is Not Enough’ deconstructs the ‘Bond Sound’

Videology: Garbage’s ‘The World is Not Enough’ deconstructs the ‘Bond Sound’

the world is not enough

Waiting for the announcement on who or what musician(s) will next be privileged (or burdened) with the resume achievement “Sang the theme song to a James Bond film” is just a step below “played James Bond in a movie or seven”. On September 8th, the folks behind Bond announced that Grammy award winning soul singer Sam Smith (say that five times fast) had co-written and recorded the next Bond theme song called “Writing’s On the Wall” for the film SPECTRE.

He joins a long line of estimable folks, some of whom have recorded some of the most memorable tracks not only in the franchise’s history, but in the music industry’s history (Shirley Bassey, Tina Turner, Paul McCartney and Wings). And for Bond’s 50-plus year history, the music pretty much spoke for itself. It was certainly augmented by its marriage to stunning title sequences, often created by renowned designer Maurice Binder. These title designs for nearly twenty years served as the tracks’ music videos. It wasn’t until 1981, with Sheena Easton’s “For Your Eyes Only”, that the Bond Sound finally started to get its own stuff.

To be fair, Easton’s music video was the title design, but shortly after, with the gradual rise of the music video medium as a selling point for albums and a way to revive the single, Bond themes started getting their own music videos. Even Rita Coolidge’s pleasant, if forgettable, “All Time High” from Octopussy got a travelogue-ish video. But, from Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill” to Madonna’s weirdly meta “Die Another Day”, the most interesting music video to come out of a Bond theme is, ironically, the one from arguably one of the worst films of the franchise: Garbage’s “The World is Not Enough”.

The Bond Sound has been pretty malleable. It has even become a certain construct of critics and audiences that only exists in the films’ scores, most of which were composed by John Barry. The theme songs however never totally adhered to that idea, never mind bothered to experiment with that supposed formula, all except for Garbage’s track. The swell of strings that bleed unceremoniously and unapologetically from speakers is almost an ironic comment on the franchise’s self-congratulatory history of creating a cinematic sound.

The video, directed by Philipp Stölzl, is as much a wink at the constructs that have been created surrounding the Bond series: it’s not about Bond at all. It has nothing to do with 007. Instead, it’s an inversion, and a deep one at that. Ian Fleming’s novels have a bit in common with some of the pulp detective novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain, and while the cinematic iterations of Bond have basically perverted that vision, “The World is Not Enough” feels like a nod to that original tone. Indeed, it contains the stakes of a Bond film and the slickness of a sci-fi noir. Think Blade Runner.

Garbage’s lead vocalist, Shirley Manson, is a femme fatale, her weaponized femininity presented literally (her kisses are lethal). Designed to resemble an unnamed redhead siren and singer, a bomb is placed in her body, ready to destroy a theater full of well-to-do aristocrats.

garbage twine

Here, there’s a distinctive aesthetic: precise, immaculate, toxic. Not unlike Soderbergh and Fincher’s sharp eye for color and framing, an intentional anachronistic quality is present; at once, it’s a classical look, setting, and sound. But like the song itself, it tweaks these expectations just a bit enough to be post-modern.

Bond’s history of deadly women is long and labored and kind of uninteresting. Maybe save for Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) in GoldenEye, the women determined to defeat the world’s greatest secret agent were more like bland caricatures of their film noir counterparts. Partially due to the lack of three-dimensionality (I know, it sounds ridiculous that one would even ask that of these movies), only a character like Elektra King (Sophie Marceau) gives the impression of understanding how the archetype is supposed to function.

Considering the video as a deconstruction of – and maybe even feminist reclamation – the Bond woman is apt: consistently, Stölzl juxtaposes two versions of Manson: one elegant and tempting, donned in scarlet and presented as the feminine ideal, and the other literally segmented – her head, abdomen, etc. – and experimented upon and watched by men, soon for the pleasure and destruction of a mass audience.

Garbage’s video, in a tenth of the time it takes to watch a full Bond picture, concisely draws a compelling femme fatale, in addition to tinkering with Bond girl mythos. Certainly aided by the lyrics, arguably from the perspective of the power hungry King, the video is seductive, sexy, and dangerous, just like anything out of Bond should be.

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