Hm, even though everyone is lavishing praise on the new Bond, I have to agree with Colin -- I don't like him because he look too much like a thug, or like a lower end Bond villian (think meathead KGB henchman with a poison-tipped umbrella).

As for the meat of your post, I don't see danger in how we paint our heroes whether or not their are in a perfectly fitted and starched dress shirt or red tights (I don't think that most people walked away from the new Bond thinking that her Majesty's accountants have the fashion sense of Vesper Lynd). I think the bigger threat comes from how we portray "normal" people as size 0, botoxed blonds living in McMansions and driving SUVs. Middle class on TV is upper middle class in the real world.

The Bond movie rocked. I much prefer the Sean Connery model Bond as opposed to the Moore/Dalton/Bronson model Bond. Craig was pumped and he actually sweated and bled. He was snappy and romantic, and I thought he perfectly fit the mold of what Sean Connery's Bond would have been before he became "007". Dame Judy Dench was delightfully combative and amazing. Go see it.

As for your question, yes, good journalism and critical thinking are all we need for some realism. Then it's time for the movies.

I grew up, more or less, reading comic books, so it could be argued that I'm deeply warped. However, other than some possible obsessions with helping people, I'd say my number one psychosis is the lack of *absolute* certainty that I, or anyone else, can't acrobatically leap around from rooftop to ground and back.

So far I've survived this delusion, but you never know.

I don't think the issue is that some fantasies happen to reassure us in areas where we shouldn't be reassured.. It's that the whole POINT of fantasies is to reassure us when we're supposed to be worried.

I mean, we don't go around fantasizing about having food on my table every day. We fantasize about things we don't have, like fame, fortune, attractive partners, and happy families.

EC brought up the old complaint about how apts on TV are always way bigger than what the people could really afford, because everyone always wants more. Supermarket magazines are full of airbrushed women. Courtroom dramas tell us that our legal system works. Romantic comedies tell us that love is magic.

And yes, men want to be Bond, kill bad guys, save the world, and sleep with hot women. Medical shows are just part of fantasizing that we live in a wonderful place.

My point is that fantasizing is everywhere, and it's inherent in its nature that we fantasize about things that we're not doing so great in.

It's how we get on with our lives, but it can also slow change if we rely on it too much. I guess I just feel it's nothing new.

I just wanted to add that I think the degree of desire to fantasize vs think about reality is a key factor in how interested a person is in social change.

Some people tend to ignore the bad things and just live their own lives (regardless of the long term consequences), some people tend to focus a lot about the welfare of others (regardless of the short term consequences), and many are somewhere in between. There are probably a lot more of the first than the second, but probably a larger number of the second in the audience for this blog. :)

Gah, I don't think I was very clear. The point is not the direct impact these fantasies will have on our thinking---if we are conscious of how they are influencing our thinking about real world issues, we would immediately discount it. So the critical thinking has to be applied in extra dosages, b/c it's curing something hidden. And the point is also not the impact these fantasies have on our personal lives. The point is the side-effect these fantasies have on our sense of the realities of the world. EC, your example is simply an even more mundane extension of my already mundane extension of the original. Bond movies subtly make us think that the world state of spying is better than it is. Medical dramas make us think that healthcare out there in the world is better than it is. And lifestyle-based sitcoms make us think that average livelihood and weight is better than it is. They are all fantasies in our personal viewpoint, and we don't confuse the actual situations in them with reality, but indirectly they change our ability to think empirically and statistically about reality.

By actual situation, I meant specifics. Sure, people don't walk away from Bond movies thinking real spies are very fashionable. But they walk away thinking real spies are very competent. It's a general sense. People don't walk away from hospital dramas thinking real doctors are always hot. But they do walk away thinking they spend a lot more time on each patient than they actually do. They don't walk away from the sitcoms thinking a newspaper columnist actually routinely buys designer shoes. But they do think that it's reasonable to expect a working single woman to have an extremely active and time-consuming social life. They don't walk away from comic books thinking that people can fly, but they do walk away thinking that maybe people can be a little more agile in their leaping about. Okay, I'm stretching it there, but you get the picture.

People can be very agile in their jumping about. The guy at the beginning of Casino Royale really runs like that.

We do internalize fantasy worlds. If we internalize them as goals, that can be great. If we internalize them as representations of reality, that's a problem.

I know I was taken by the Bond fantasy for a long time. I have since met several former intelligence officers and am always shocked that they tend to be sort of dumpy, nervous, cautious people -- more like magazine editors than lounge lizards. I also met a couple of FBI gadget guys one day. They were much less debonaire than Q (who was the most disappointing absence in the new Bond movie), though they would have fit in fine in the movie The Conversation.

I realized recently that I have lived my life trying to become Tintin, boy reporter.

Funny, I've lived my life trying to be Captain Haddock.

Well one thing about this particular Bond movie is that Bond isn't very successful. The entire movie is about Bond fixing a grave mistake he commits in the beginning of the film. Further, a jibe is thrown towards the CIA and its methods of spending when a CIA spy says "do we look like we need the money?" The film is about Bond's evolution to the gentlemen spy act. To this Bond, it's an act that he fits into. He goes from egomaniacal thug to viewing the "bigger picture" and lost into unemotional, detatched gentlemen spy.

Seriously, though I understand your point, but I don't quite think it's made. The danger is not that the spy image is actually very different from the spy as an occupation. From all the analysts and technicians, one lone man with a walther PPK makes for great fiction, but a poor spy.