Lauren Graham as Lorelai Gilmore and Scott Patterson as Luke Danes in the upcoming Netflix revival of ‘Gilmore Girls’
Just for the record: I don’t care who ends up with whom, romantic-relationship-wise, on the four-episode Gilmore Girls revival, to be streamed by Netflix later this year. When the series originally ended in 2007, many fans were left hanging, wanting some resolution to the love lives of Lorelai and Rory, the titular mother-daughter duo. But as far as I’m concerned, Lorelai and longtime love interest Luke could never speak to each other again. Instead of ending up with any of her sequential boyfriends, Dean or Jess or Logan, Rory could finish the series romantically unattached for all I care. The show’s fascinating characters and scopious situations — ranging from the delightfully quirky to the uncomfortably authentic — are developed well enough to thrive beyond any romantic entanglements. (Actually, I ’ship Rory and Paris, but that’s never gonna go canon.) I just want to know how showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino originally envisioned Gilmore Girls to end and — in context, when the episode is broadcast, and not before — what the fabled “final four words” are.
The cut-loose kiss between Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel, left) and Paris Geller (Liza Weill) on spring break in the original series. I doubt their relationship will go beyond that.
Now, if you are queer, and a fan of any mainstream media property,
there are a few facts that practically run through your DNA: 1) You will
almost never see yourself represented in your fandom, 2) If you do, it
will be subtext only, and 3) On the off chance that a character is
canonically gay, he or she will likely be a) evil, b) crazy, or c)
killed off right after achieving happy coupledom. The latter seems to
happen most often to queer female characters. So much so that it has a
name “The Dead-Lesbian Trope.” Essentially, the message is, gay sex is
punishable by death, and queer couples can never be happy.
Sadly, all of us queer viewers are so happy to get any kind
of representation, we will watch anything with queer (or even
potentially queer) characters in it, even though we know we’re going to
see ourselves brutally killed onscreen sooner or later, and odds of our
character ever being happy are slim to none. But we watch anyway, hoping
that this time it will be different. This has a name too:
queerbaiting, a.k.a. luring a queer viewership to your show to make it seem
progressive, and hinting at a pairing that either never happens, or one
of the characters is killed.
However, The 100 was different. They had given us a queer
lead character in Clarke Griffin [played by Eliza Taylor] and did not appear to shy away from the
notoriety it got the show. Tiny snippets of footage from Season 3
appeared to confirm that because we saw Clarke in bed with someone
female, though apparently not Lexa as far as we could tell. Jason Rothenberg, the show runner, told us to trust him. He knew about the
Dead-Lesbian Trope and would not screw us over this time. Everything we
learned about Season 3 gave us hope. Excitement in the fandom grew to a
fever pitch, the more scenes that were released.
And the first episode was no disappointment. Clarke had a brief tryst
with Niylah [Jessica Harmon] while she was out wandering the woods trying to come to
terms with what she had to do to defeat Mt. Weather at the end of Season
2. Contrary to what some folks first believed would be the reaction, we
cheered her on even though it wasn’t Lexa. Here it was, our lead on a
mainstream series, fully, 100% confirmed to be decidedly,
unquestionably queer. This is it, we thought. Our day has come. Our
day has come when we get the lead relationship treatment reserved for a
hetero pairing 99.99% of the time. This is when everything changes.
And indeed, nothing indicated otherwise in the following episodes.
Clarke and Lexa have an explosive reunion, but we begin to see them work
their way back towards each other, both personally and politically. And
then came the Fealty Scene. Nothing had ever prepared us for the pure
romance that was that scene. Indeed, I think I even joked on this blog
that, “I have seen the entire L-Word series, and I have never seen anything that gay happen on television.” The writers GOT IT. There
was something pure in that scene, something that spoke of a complete
understanding of what it’s like to be in a female same-sex couple. I
personally identified with the level of devotion acted so perfectly by
[Alycia Debnam-Carey] as Lexa.
We rested easy after that. But we really shouldn’t have.
So here’s the nitty-gritty: The character
who died [on The 100], Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey), happened to be one of the few
well-developed and complex lesbians on TV, and it’s an unfortunate but
enduring TV cliche that lesbians rarely, if ever, live happily ever
after. In the March 3 [2016] episode, The 100, which had touted its
commitment to quality LGBTQ storytelling, invoked one of TV’s oldest gay
cliches by killing her off mere seconds after she consummated her
relationship with another woman, Clarke (Eliza Taylor).
Many fans, regardless of sexual orientation, were left shaking their heads in disbelief.
On a story and thematic level, Lexa’s
death (despite being well-performed by the actors) had little resonance
and almost no meaning. But all things considered, the blithe
manipulation LGBTQ fans and the show’s willingness to deploy harmful
cliches about gay characters remain the things that rankle most.
Was my list of “10 Favorite Films” too art-housey for you?Okay, to make up for it, here is a list of twelve movies whose carefully honed, audience-tested appeal has won a place in the sprocket holes of my heart, oldest to youngest:
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
With crackling dialogue and a sure-footed storyline, the film that defined the romantic comedy.
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935) The Marx Brothers rein in their explosive anarchy to appeal to a wider audience, but the results are still sublime.
CASABLANCA (1943)
Made in 1942 but officially released in January 1943, it won the latter year’s Oscar for Best Picture. Hollywood’s studio-era apotheosis.
SEVEN SAMURAI (1954)
Epic. Action-packed. Awesome.
THE APARTMENT (1960)
Silver-screen Hollywood craftsmanship at its heartwarming best. (Listen to the DVD’s commentary by Bruce Block to realize just how much thought and care went into this film.)
FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965)
Shoot-’em-up excitement with an art-house edge.
THE WILD BUNCH (1969)
The Seven Samurai (or at least their cowboy counterparts) saunter south of the border.
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)
The funniest film I’ve ever seen. No joke.
MAD MAX 2 (a.k.a. The Road Warrior, 1981)
Casablanca with a case of road rage.
OUT OF SIGHT (1998) Steven Soderbergh rebounds from his mid-career doldrums to capture Elmore Leonard’s semi-cynical, semi-sentimental romantic roundelay between a U.S. marshal and an escaped con. Exhilarating and arresting.
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998)
Stop saying that Saving Private Ryan was robbed of its Oscar! Shakespeare in Love is a compelling, character-driven masterwork with lots of laughs and an air-tight story. Methinks its critics protest too much.
KING KONG (2005)
Peter Jackson’s Kong-sized do-over of the 1933 classic is going to give CGI-heavy remakes of pre-sold properties a good name. (However, the film’s brief portrayal of the Skull Island natives as barbaric savages is a big step backwards.)
I have a
female friend who’s a big Sean Connery fan.When we first met, she seemed to come up with an excuse to
bring up the movie star most associated with playing secret agent James Bond 007 in each of our conversations.Sean Connery this — Sean Connery that — Sean Connery the other
thing.She talks about him less
these days, but shortly after we first met, I’m sure the Scottish movie star’s
ears were ringing whenever my friend and I shot the breeze.One evening, she was hosting a James
Bond-themed event at a local restaurant.I ended up sitting at a table with my friend and some of her
companions.That night, one of my
friend’s friends asked me a question that my friend herself had never asked:
“Who’s your favorite Bond?”I
replied, “Timothy Dalton.”My
friend did a double take at the table: “Whuh?”She probably just assumed that Connery was everybody’s
favorite 007 and was thrown for a loop when I — her sounding board on all
things Connery — proved her assumption to be untrue.
At the
time, I was aware that my pro-Dalton opinion was in the distinct minority. I’m not the world’s biggest Bond fan,
but I did see most of the movies and follow the literature about the character
from time to time, so I know it wasn’t long after Dalton inherited the role
from Roger Moore in 1987’s The Living Daylights that many Bond aficionados
started grousing about the Welsh actor’s performance. Among ardent fans, the vituperation was especially venomous,
but it was never really clear to me exactly why these fans were so upset. I got the idea that these grumblers
merely thought that Dalton’s inadequacy in the role was self-evident and no
further explanation was needed.
Dalton made only one more film as Bond, Licence [sic] to Kill (1989), but the criticism
continued. As the years went by,
this opinion seemed to be set in stone: the fans liked Roger Moore; they liked
Pierce Brosnan; they loved Sean Connery, of course. You could even find a few to put in a good word for the
one-off George Lazenby. But they
hated Timothy Dalton. And I wasn’t given a straight answer as to why. It’s difficult to find any of the scathing anti-Dalton diatribes of the 1980s on the Web at the moment, but as one Internet poster puts it: “All I’ve ever heard from friends ... is that [The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill] are lesser Bond films and that Dalton sucks.”
With the
latest Bond adventure, Spectre, now in theatres, I was contemplating writing a defense
of Dalton-as-007 on this blog. But
as I read over some on-line articles in preparation, I learned that my
disquisition of Dalton was no longer necessary: Dalton-as-Bond now has quite a
few advocates on the Internet. It
appears that several fans have reconsidered Dalton’s two outings as Bond and
found more to championthan to criticize.
Timothy Dalton as James Bond 007 in ‘The Living Daylights’ (1987)
Looking for
an explanation of this reversal of popular opinion, I stumbled upon this
theory: Dalton inherited the role from Roger Moore, who played the secret agent
as a semi-comical figure. Moore’s
penchant for dryly raising an eyebrow each time he heard a double entendre became a signature of the film
series. The only Moore Bond that I
really liked — indeed, my favorite film in the series up to that time — was For Your Eyes Only
(1981), which had a more serious plot than usual and a more feral performance
by Moore than usual. But by the
time Moore retired from the role after A View to a Kill (1985), the Bond movies were
noted more for their camp than their cloak and dagger.
Behind
the scenes, it’s well known that Dalton was first offered the role of Bond in On
Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), but the actor, then in his twenties, felt himself
too young for the part and turned it down, whereupon it was later offered to
Lazenby. Also, after Moore’s
departure, the creators’ first choice as his replacement was Pierce Brosnan,
who by then had made a name for himself in the humorous detective TV series Remington
Steele (1982-87),
but at the last minute, the show activated an option on Brosnan’s contract,
making him unavailable to play Bond.
With Brosnan out of the picture, in both senses of the term, Dalton was
persuaded to accept the part he declined 18 years before.
Poster for ‘Licence to Kill’ (1989)
When
Dalton took over the role of Bond, he and the films’ creators wanted to return
to a more serious interpretation of the character:
[Dalton]
made two Bond films, both noteworthy more for his darker, brooding take on the
role than for the films themselves. Dalton sought to get away from Moore’s
jokey boulevardier and instead played Bond as a man with an edge, an
interpretation he felt was closer to how author Ian Fleming had depicted the
character in the books. Indeed, Dalton was often spotted on the sets of his 007
films paging through the original Fleming novels as a reference aid.
The
audience’s ill-preparedness for this darker view of James Bond, it’s been
hypothesized, alienated many Roger Moore-weaned fans from Dalton’s version of
the character. Only more recently,
with Daniel Craig’s similar approach to the part, has Dalton’s work been reappraised
and accepted by a large number of Bond fans. And many are now voicing the opinion that I have held for
quite some time: it’s unfortunate that Dalton — due to a legal dispute that
forced the series into a hiatus until his contract expired — didn’t do more than
two films as 007. As one writer says
of the fans’ new acceptance of Dalton as James Bond:
The
quiet, self-effacing actor … has always kept his private life away from the
tabloids, has always been loyal to the Bond franchise … without surrendering
himself to endless retrospective chat shows and conventions. And perhaps as a
result, people are finally beginning to appreciate his two Bond films for the
stylish, underrated thrillers they have always been.
Dalton
and the filmmakers didn’t only want to revise Bond’s character; they also
wanted to tweak other aspects of the franchise. The actor’s second entry, Licence to Kill, is a good case in point. Where most of James Bond’s previous
villains had been cartoonish characters with an eye toward world domination, Licence
to Kill put 007
up against a topical nemesis: a drug lord, Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi), who
already controls his own corner of the world and is bent on keeping it. This was a wise choice since the Cold
War was winding down in 1989, so Bond’s antagonists sympathetic to the Soviet
Union wouldn’t be as threatening as in years past. And in moving the milieu from a conflict losing its menace
to one ripped from the headlines, Licence to Kill made the story’s environment more
realistic and hardened the characters.
Robert Davi as drug lord Franz Sanchez in ‘Licence to Kill’
The film
diverged from the formula in other ways as well. Where Bond movies had previously tended to be set in at
least two different countries on two different continents, all of Licence to
Kill is set in
the same area: south Florida and northern Latin America. (In the movie’s biggest false note, it
gives its fictional Latin American banana republic the English name of
“Isthmus.”) Instead of Licence
to Kill having
Bond given his assignment by M, 007 goes rogue to avenge a friend, supplying
the agent with a more rebellious bite.
And instead of the villain’s palatial lair exploding in a massive
fireball at the story’s climax, what detonates is a gas tanker after a
high-speed chase.
But Licence
to Kill subverts
still more. As the most casual
observer of the film canon knows, an obligatory moment of each movie is when
007 announces himself to someone as “Bond — James Bond.” In the previous Bond
films, the scene consistently comes across as a moment of confident coolness,
an eagerly awaited announcement that our unflappable, invincible hero has
arrived. The moment in the series isn’t so much the character introducing
himself as it is a moment of dauntless self-declaration. (Do I really need to
say anything about how entrenched these three words of film dialogue have
become in our popular culture?)
But when Dalton says this ultra-important line in License to Kill, it’s during an anomalous moment:
when he extends his hand in introduction to Sanchez. In Licence to Kill, Bond isn't so much announcing the arrival of the hero to
the audience as he is merely making the bad guy’s acquaintance. And then,
Sanchez blows off Bond by refusing to shake his hand.
In the
other movies, “Bond — James Bond” are strong words of self-assertion. In Licence
to Kill, they’re
convivial words preceding a snub. I think that the Bond fans in 1989 were
looking forward to this line in the film, but they didn’t get the moment that
they had expected. These sorts of
small deviations from the previous Bond films may have put off the
contemporaneous fans even more from Dalton’s interpretation of the secret
agent.
But I’m
glad to hear that many Bond fans are now revising their harsh opinions of
Dalton’s work in the film series, so any further inarticulate advocacy from me
is unnecessary. Although Dalton
only appeared in two movies as James Bond, those offerings, The Living
Daylights and Licence
to Kill, remain
among the best in the series, despite the latter’s underperformance at the box
office. However, Daniel Craig’s
newer rendition of Bond has taken the venerated cinema cycle to a whole new
level. Craig’s films as Bond — Casino
Royale (2006), Quantum
of Solace (2008),
Skyfall
(2012), and now Spectre (2015) — have dazzlingly ratcheted up the action, the spectacle,
the humanity, and the overall impact of what is on the screen. Craig’s 007 efforts will be the new
measure for future films in the franchise. Still, we should spare a thought for the Bond actor who
tried to do what Daniel Craig is now doing, but who was at first pilloried by
the fans for it: Timothy Dalton.
Coda: When I first saw Licence to Kill, I couldn’t get past it as a First World-Third World allegory, Latin American politics in microcosm. The country of Isthmus seemed to be a struggling South American republic trying to find its own footing economically, leaving a vacuum for a drug baron like Sanchez to fill and to come into power. The teaming up of a group of white people — Bond, his thrown-together partner in stealth Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell, one of that film’s “Bond girls”), and gadget-master Q (Desmond Llewelyn) — to defeat a mostly Latin American organization played out as white imperial domination over people of color in a way that was hard for me to ignore. It took a couple more viewings for me to get past its racial politics and appreciate Licence to Kill as an action movie. I suppose that giving Sanchez the first name “Franz” was the film’s way of saying the character was partially white, so that the audience didn’t have to view the conflict as between a white man and an exclusively brown man (albeit while playing on Britain’s skepticism of Germany since World War II). As an actioner, Licence to Kill is thrilling and visceral in a way few pre-Craig Bond films are, but the movie never completely sheds a pungent air of Western superiority that one can imagine comforting to an adherent of white exceptionalism.
On a less serious note, I never really bought Carey Lowell’s performance as the street-smart, weapon-wielding Pam Bouvier. She comes across as a smooth-skinned resident of the suburbs plopped into a rough-and-tumble setting. It would have been more believable if Licence to Kill had cast a performer with more of a seen-it-all edge to her, someone you could believe knew how to handle a gun and how to get herself out of tight situations. And Wayne Newton’s appearance as a tacky TV preacher who helps Sanchez sell his narcotics burdens the story with an out-of-left-field campiness that doesn’t really fit with the rest of the film. Otherwise, Licence to Kill satisfies as a serious-minded, punch-packing action movie that seems worlds away from the jauntiness of Roger Moore’s 007.
