Skyfall and Fieldwork

I wrote this odd review last November with the intent to stick it up here. Now, here it is. The figure of the spy is a very peculiar one to imagine from the perspective of the anthropologist. The seamless mimic, versatile, adaptible, and charged with the exercise of public violence by the state. James Bond is back this fall and in a tale that responds to a recent tendency among film franchises to recast the sometimes vague and sometimes explicit and fundamental origins of the particular (super)hero-protagonist. In this film we see a somewhat sullen, aging Bond who, after being sacrificed by his mother, buried by the state, and then returning, Huck Finn-like, becomes nearly convinced of his own obsolescence in the face of the information revolution and its effects on the terrain of global threats vis a vis the UK. There is a corresponding shadow-bond villain (MI6 seems to have a hell of a time finding proper Bonds who don't explode under the tasks set for them, see Goldeneye), and some "Bond girls", but the meat of this movie, and the part that set my ears ringing is the argument over the necessity of Bond's very career, his role in the empire, the usefulness of what they term, again and again, fieldwork. Bond's body: old, experienced, knowledgeable, hardened, conditioned, does things in space and time that elude even the highest of technologies. No gadgets in this film. Just put ol' James in there with a gun and let him relate to the situation. Information technology and systems control alone can't get the results of a human, sure, we as anthropological fieldworkers can relate to such feelings, but what about the things James is actually doing? The film does a bit to suppose the psychological underpinnings that afford our nations these sorts of mercenaries. In Bond's case, early family tragedy and probable ptsd combined with an effective adoption by his older femle boss beget the kind of wanton devoton upon which empires rest their hopes. What does this film want me to think about its discussion and juxtaposition of the new and the old with respect to the strategies of the nation-state. What do characters like James Bond really mean for you and me and our imperial underpinnings? Is this some kind of pastiche wherein the contemporary world and its information hegemony bring on a desire a weird sort of nostalgia for less nebulous oppression of days gone by. Knives in the dark, viscerality, gore that runs hot and smooth before turning cold and sticky. Traumatized tools. This is what your government requires of you.