Art Deco Poster of the Week: Navigation Paquet.

Art Deco Poster of the Week - The Chicago World's Fair.

Art Deco Poster of the Week - Sinclair Oils.

Art Deco Poster of the Week - Driving Greece.

Art Deco Poster of the Week - Japanese Propaganda Poster about China.

Not sure what this poster is saying but if it's a message of impending triumph for the Japanese it can also be read as a sinister and looming threat of a possible future for the Chinese.If anyone can read it I would be interested to know what the poster says.

Art Deco Poster of the Week - Heliopolis Aviation Expo 1910.

Dieselpunk Manifesto: Art Deco, Bond and the Cool Curve pt 5.

Bond, The First Dieselpunk.

This post is the fifth and final post in my (long) blog essay arguing Bond’s place as one of the first Dieselpunks.

Starting with post 1 I explained how the Art Deco period marked a change in cultural authority. Cultural authority started with the upper classes at the turn of the Century then gradually shifted to the middle classes as technology and consumer discretionary income rose. However, during the Depression of the 1930s an image of the ‘high life’ was conveyed to audiences, a high life that involved fancy suits, glamorous women, dancing, exotic locations and a host of other qualities sourced from the upper class culture of the Art Deco movement. The post War period saw the end of Art Deco and the rise of youth culture, but also the ‘problem’ of the Soviet Union. Both ‘problems’ found a cultural solution in the form of the spy – a jetsetting, dapper gent who rejected contemporary fashion trends for a classy suit, had more than his fair share of charm, travelled to exotic locations and took down enemies of the Free World. Bond was both the reason for the glut of spy storytelling during the 1960s as well as its leading light.

Bond would go on to become the most successful film series of all time, a title that wont change as new films are made into the indefinite future. And while other properties from the era get the occasional reboot, such as the Mission: Impossible and The Saint movies, Bond hasn’t rebooted for new audiences so much as updated and changed to suit current tastes. Over and over and over again, to the point that the longest stretch the world has gone without a new Bond has been the five year gap between License to Kill (1989) and Goldeneye (1995).

You could say this was the closest Bond got to being cancelled...

So why has the Bond series become the genre titan that it is today? Especially when the rest of the genre had ‘gone out of style’ by the mid 1970s. What is it about Mister Bond, James Bond that has made him one of the most successful stories of all time, reaching more human beings than nearly any other story being told today? And how does this tie into his Dieselpunk tendencies?

I think that Bond embodies a unique set of ideas, a set of ideas that sets him apart from the rest of his action hero peers and makes him more culturally valuable. This was a process that started in the 60s when Bond first appeared on our cinema screens, embodying a hero that looked back to the past in the way he dressed, acting as an argument against current trends in society. In doing so he saved the day from current threats. He embodied the argument for the value of the old way of doing things – the Diesel way of doing things – taking on new threats with old style. And it’s an argument that has been readdressed and remade every time the Bond franchise has added to its roster.

They never stood a chance...

This argument for Bond’s constantly updating retro focus has become more obvious the longer the series has continued, several new breeds of action hero coming and going during Bond’s illustrious reign. From the Western and cop heroes of the 70s, to the Hard Body heroes of the 80s, the martial arts heroes of the 90s and the superheroes of the Noughties Bond has held his own and outlived them all. But I think the unique qualities of Bond – the things that make him a unique idea that outlasts all those other heroes – can best be illustrated by revisiting one of the more famous sequences of the series, the opening scenes from what many consider the greatest Bond film of all time, Goldfinger (1964).

The opening sequence of Goldfinger has everything that sets Bond apart as a hero. The opening shot of Bond is of a seagull swimming towards a dock, a seagull that lifts out of the water to reveal that the bird is actually fake, tied to Bond’s head as camouflage while he scuba dives up to the dock. It’s an absurd opening shot for a hero but clearly illustrates that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. It’s a knowing sense of humour – a wink at the audience if you like – that is repeated later in the sequence when he is asked why he always carries a gun and he replies “Oh, it’s because I have an inferiority complex.”

This ‘knowing’ humour illustrates how Bond is completely self aware concerning his more bombastic and cheeky aspects... and he doesn’t care. In fact he revels in them and invites the audience to do so as well. When combined with his ability to shrug in the face of over-the-top insanity we get a character that wanders into a giant secret underground villain lair, shrugs his shoulders at the absurdity and continues onwards, just to see where it all leads. Bond’s knowing-ness allows his villains to be as absurd as they are (or for the situation to get as absurd as it does) without destroying the audience’s suspension of disbelief because, like us, he wants it to continue.

The second aspect that sets Bond apart is revealed after he has emerged from the water, infiltrated the secret drug lab and rigged it to blow in twenty minutes. He then leaves the facility and removes his full body wetsuit... to reveal that he is wearing a white dinner jacket and bow tie. It is yet another absurd gag played for laughs but it also sums up Bond’s attitude to fashion – he adores wearing suits and will go out of his way to make it happen. The fact that he then walks into an establishment where half the people aren’t even dressed up is irrelevant. Bond is the most over dressed man in the place and he’s quite okay with that. He chooses to dress in a classy way, superseding all other suit wearers around him, he chooses to make a big deal about his cocktails, his watches and his cars (which don’t exactly blend in during his espionage missions) and he chooses to behave in a way that is different to those around him. He’s making a stand, a stand that harkens back to an earlier age of well-tailored suits, fast cars and cocktails and it’s a stand that has become synonymous with the hero ever since. A DIESELPUNK stand.

Overdressed or just making a decent effort?

The scene ends in typical Bond style. He takes a completely unnecessary detour – both in terms of plot and mission – in order to visit his lady friend, the dancer at the bar. While there she waits until he is disarmed then has him ambushed by a random goon. Bond evades the initial attack before knocking the goon into a bathtub full of water, then throws a fan in to electrocute his ambusher. The finishing quip by Bond? “Shocking. Positively shocking.” It’s a joke that is humorous both because it releases the tension at the end of the action scene but also because what happened really wasn’t surprising at all. In the face of a warning not to, Bond went on an unnecessary aside to his mission and found trouble. Exactly where he knew it could be. 

But that’s Bond. He jetsets off to locations full of danger and then extricates himself, all with a style that harkens back to the Diesel era which was the high point for his choice of fashion. All with a wry humour that audiences across the world adore. He doesn’t do it dressed in camo and lugging military hardware around, he’s not a cop out to rescue his family, a martial artist out to avenge his slain master, or a superpowered hero with rage issues or a deep psychological need to scare bad guys into obeying the law. Bond saves the world by dressing in the classiest way possible, jetting off to an exotic location to meet up with a classy dame where he enjoys taking down a bad guy with humour in the face of absurdity. A classy method of heroism that can be thin on the ground these days.

Except when people are quoting Bond.

Style + guns. They must be spies.

The further we get from the era where Bond’s style was formed, the more jarring his style choices can be. Now they’re often parodied in cliché or in the movies reserved for those special casino scenes Bond always seems to find himself in. But Bond’s lifestyle choices and sense of fashion still take their cues from a completely different set of cultural products from a completely different era. He hasn’t been retroactively rewritten into a working class bruiser or a government funded superhero experiment, he’s just doing the same thing he’s always done with the same style, but renewing it in the face of more recent trends. He doesn’t wear retro clothing but he still wears modern takes on the suit and tie fashion staple. He rarely drives retro cars for any length of time but he is often driving their newest descendent. He’s still making sure his drinks are mixed a little differently and inventing cocktails like the ‘Vesper’ ala Casino Royale. And he’s still taking down bad guys with an old-school kind of style. A Diesel era kind of style.

And what could be more ‘punk then that?

Ladies and Gentlemen... the first Dieselpunk.

So that's the end of my VERY long blog series/essay on  the Dieselpunkitude of Bond, James Bond. I didn't intend to make it so long but there you go... it's finally finished. If you have any thoughts on the topic feel free to leave your opinion, whether for or against. I'd be happy to chat to anyone who'd like to talk about Bond or Dieselpunk :)

Art Deco Poster of the Week - Port of Marseille

Dieselpunk Manifesto: Art Deco, Bond and the Cool Curve pt 4.

Send in the Spies...

In previous posts I’ve argued that the Art Deco movement was part of a process that saw the cultural authority of the upper classes shift to middle class producers. These middle class producers would dictate taste for the vast majority of society in the Post-War middle class consumer-nirvana. In this way the Art Deco movement not only illustrates the changing of the guard but, for many, embodies a set of ideals and qualities associated with a completely different era and way of thinking. An era with its own symbols and cultural practises that provoke this very different ideology.

To frame it in a controversial light – the previous era was the last era of elitist culture. To frame it in another ‘less provocative’ light – the previous era was the last era of meaningful class and style.

A previous era of cool...

So in the face of this new rise of middle class cultural practise – complete with its new youth-driven cultural movements – there were many who resisted what was happening across society. Although the changes were new and exciting they were also troublesome and potentially dangerous. In the face of this cultural chaos, people needed a new breed of heroes to make sense of it all.

One of those new heroes arrived in 1962. Mister Bond, James Bond...

James Bond wasn’t the first spy to make it to screen. Far from it. The spy genre had been percolating away in the background of Hollywood for decades with plenty of World War 2 war films and Detective pulp stories segueing neatly into and out of the genre. This was often built on a healthy diet of popular pulp characters, especially in Britain where characters like The Saint and Bond himself proliferated. But none of these had the cultural clout of the film version of the MI6 agent with an obsession for mixing his martinis just so.

The Saint in New York, a 1938 film and series that proceeded Bond.

The genesis of the Bond series was however boosted by the British penchant for spy television series. Being an English-speaking market located so close to the Cold War hub of central Europe probably helped, and saw the creation of several series that while successful, weren’t break out hits in a global sense, lacking the market clout of an American audience. Two of the most famous were The Avengers and Danger Man, two series that while attracting a decent local audience and slowly filtering out to become cult classics across Europe and other markets, didn’t really take off because they didn’t attract enough American attention. They were, however, good examples of the unique British spin on the gentleman spy that would provide the unique pattern by which Bond would capture the world.

The Real Avengers.

But in 1962 James Bond swaggered onto cinema screens in the break out hit Dr No and the spy genre would never be the same again. A dashing gentleman spy like those who had gone before him, Bond also added a wry sense of humour and more than a few lashings of adventure, sex appeal and cheeky bombast to create what would become the archetypal spy movie.

The character quickly grew into a phenomena, not only spawning an endless run of sequels but also its own genre as film, television and pulp producers started churning out spy fare for the hungry masses who couldn’t get enough. By the mid 1960s not only did Bond have several sequels but television shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E, The Saint and Mission: Impossible were springing up everywhere while shows like The Avengers and Danger Man were called back for encores. A mark of the health of the genre was that not only did these new shows gain their own rabid mainstream fan bases but other characters and stories sprung up to try and refute the stereotypes put forward by the Bond films, examples such as the Flint series of films. Flattery doesn’t always come in the form of a copycat, a jealous backlash often works just as well.

And like vampire/werewolf stories today, the stories kept proliferating.

Popular genres often have a half life by which writers use up every possible scrap of storytelling available to a genre, exhaust the supply, then move on to the ‘next big thing’ in a storm of parody. The appearance of these parody versions often marks the end of a genres ‘Golden Age’ as writers no longer take the genre seriously. The few genres that escape this process become meta-genres that become so vast and portable that they often show up across a range of other genre stories whenever they can be useful, watering down the genre tropes to their bare essence. A good example of this would be the action or adventure ‘genres’ which are so broad you usually need another adjective to define a movie, such as ‘it’s a sci-fi action/adventure movie’ or ‘it’s a spy action/adventure movie’.

Not really taking the spy genre seriously...

It could be argued that the spy genre well and truly reached this phase with the popular spoof series Get Smart, which parodied the genre mercilessly as the genre died down at the end of the 60s. In its brief but influential heyday the spy genre had held audiences in thrall on both sides of the Atlantic, providing a hero that audiences wanted to see over and over again in many different guises. This new hero saved the (Western) world from vast government-based conspiracies launched by foreign powers, while enjoying the thrills and spills of action and adventure that went with the urbane and global jetsetting of the ‘spy lifestyle’. It was classy, it was cool, and it provoked a Euro-centric style that refuted current youth lifestyle trends for the upper class refinement and sensibility that was once the height of fashion. But the rise of Get Smart signalled that the spy genre was becoming just another television genre and much of the steam had been used up, the genre drifting back into obscurity or blending with other genres, such as the spy/heist combination of the long running Mission: Impossible. The genre was there in the background but not the dominant force of storytelling it once was.

With one exception: Bond himself.

Still going strong.

In a world where Hollywood and the television industry would move on to different headlining heroes and different genres of action/adventure storytelling the Bond series would go on to be the most successful (inflation adjusted) and longest running movie franchise of all time. And with the current box office success of the latest Bond film Skyfall, that run doesn’t appear to be stopping any time soon.

So why has the Bond series not only outlasted its contemporaries but gone on to be a phenomenal cultural success? Why is Bond a staple of Hollywood action/adventure storytelling, a British gentleman spy in amongst a sea of American military hardware toting gunslingers and revenge-seeking policeman or gangsters?

The heroic competition...

Stay tuned for the final episode of Bond, Art Deco and the Cool Curve...

Art Deco Poster of the Week - Monaco Grand Prix, 1933.

Dieselpunk Manifesto: Art Deco, Bond and the Cool Curve pt 3.

Depression era aspirations – the beginning of a habit.

One of the most enduring images of Depression era film is the rise of the musical, a somewhat bizarre cultural artifact trend for such a horrendous time if you only take it on face value. Musicals, in general, are considered a celebration of life. That’s what they do – take life and give it song and dance, no matter how mundane the topic actually is. So why were they so popular in the years of the Great Depression?

The easy answer is escapism and the ability to teleport into another world for a few hours. Moviegoers, through the lens of the musical, could experience the decadence and splendor of a lifestyle none in the crowd could actually attain, all for the price of admission. There they could sing and dance and indulge themselves, projecting their ideas of the high life and what it would be like up onto the silver screen. The creators of these films therefore became accomplices in shaping what it was that people aspired to.

There were many culprits responsible for the glamour-in-the-midst-of-hardship escapism of the film musical during the 1930s but perhaps the most culpable was a bloke by the name of Fred Astaire. One of the most enduring images of the era, not to mention Art Deco itself, is this bloke gliding around on the screen in top hat and coat tails, an image that was burnt into the consciousness of movie goers in the 1935 smash hit Top Hat. It wasn’t the first time Astaire would inhabit that famous persona, and certainly not the last, but the film established Astaire and his dance partner Ginger Rogers as top billing performers and created an archetype that still resonates with movie lovers today. He would glide around the screen effortlessly, she would appear to be having a ball wearing those stylish gowns, and together they not only saved RKO with some of the biggest box office hits of the decade but also helped define the era, the genre and set the bar for elegance and style.

All this deep in the Depression.

My argument in this series of posts is that the Astaire/Rogers films and others of a similar ilk created in the minds of cinema goers an idea of ‘living the high life’ that took on an aspirational life of its own. In a world where people were starting to reach for and adopt Art Deco style for themselves, it was brutishly ripped from their grasp by the stock market collapse, leaving a longing that turned into an oft sought Art Deco wonderland in the minds of cinema viewers everywhere. A world of fancy suits, ritzy places to hang out in exotic locations, glamorous women of a sparkly dress-wearing persuasion, all set to an Art Deco design palette. The sort of world the upper crust apparently existed in. And it was a set of ideas that spent the better part of two decades simmering and seeping into the collective cinema vocabulary.

But with the easing of the Depression and the rebuilding of the middle class in the late 1930s (neither projects being completed before the outbreak of World War 2) the early adopter cycle restarted with a vengeance. The march of Art Deco continued but now people weren’t content to simply add decoration to their Modernism. Technology had continued to develop in that lost half decade of consumer stasis and the most Modern thing you could do now was streamline things, a natural progression of the ever-present ‘speed lines’ of Art Deco. This streamlining craze thus marked the ‘late phase’ of the descent of Modernism from the elitist pursuit of academics just as the rise of the middle class was changing the face of consumerism for the next fifty years. Passing via the rich and fashionable young decodents, Modernism had morphed down to the upper middle class via an aspirational technology-based consumption that then reached its final stage with people streamlining everything they possibly could, including toasters, radios and other middle class objects adopted by an enthusiastic new middle class after the War.

The humble radio: an object that (technically speaking) does not require an aerodynamic profile.

 By the 1940s Art Deco was finally starting to reach middle adopters, now that it had been synthesised down into something palatable for wholesale mass consumption, but it is was also in the 1940s that Art Deco would cease to be a force in design.

By the late 1940s America and the rest of the world had changed. What had started as a gradual process of the rising middle-class became a veritable stampede with the post-War boom in America and the new popular culture it began to produce. Cultural products were no longer being produced from the top down. In a remarkable historic shift, culture was now being set by the middle class and a previously invisible cadre of leisure-lifestyle beings, the ‘teenager’. Where the upper classes previously dictated fashion, now the middle class with their casual wear and popular music were setting the cultural zeitgeist. It was new world, the affects of which cannot be understated.

Paris had little influence on the fashion choices of these gents.

 So the Diesel era was a transitional period which marked a remarkable shift in power from the upper class taste that dictated the cultural vanguard at the start of the century, only to lose their cultural authority to the middle class who from the 1940s took on the mantle of trend setters for the rest of the nation and the world. By the 1950s music no longer came from the music hall, now it came from young guitar-wielding fiends ceaselessly playing a four beat bar. Fashion innovation was no longer solely from Milan or Paris, now it was funny boy band haircuts from England or bell bottom jeans from America. Academic disciplines were now dominated by enthusiastic middle class kids pouring into these once exclusive institutions, bringing with them ideas that originated in their own lifestyle and class. Now everyone had an automobile and no one went to the opera because they could stay home and watch Gunsmoke or The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Soaking in some culture.

 But ideas don’t die, they just get reused. Although the mantle of cultural authority shifted to the middle class in the 1950s it didn’t kill off the ideas formed in the 1930s. In fact, in a world dominated by casual wear and popular music, the past with its upwardly-focussed aspirations could be quite appealing for those who were not completely sold on the idea of rock music or t-shirts worn without a shirt. Some people preferred ‘Easy Listening’ music and a well dressed man with class. In a world beset by all sorts of problems, both at home and abroad, some people were looking for a different sort of hero, one that not only embodied the old-school values that rejected all this crass nonsense that immature, ignorant people were indulging in at the time but a hero who would focus on the real dangers facing society, namely those pesky Soviets. What they wanted... was someone who drank dirty Martinis, not someone who smoked pot.

Hard to believe, but many people in the 60s didn't think people like this ^ were taking the 'Soviet problem' seriously enough.

 Did the people get what they want? Did someone step up to save the nation from both the Russians and a descent into casual wear hell? Stay tuned next post as our hero is revealed... and it might not be who you think it is...