Knock-knock. Who's there? Rape!

I was thinking about X-Files and Stargate: Atlantis recently. I was venturing that the writing on XF, at least initially, was better than SGA when I remembered that both shows, utterly independent of each other, had done a comedy rape episode.

X-Files had the one where a shape-shifter disguised himself as women's boyfriends or husbands to have sex with them. Atlantis had an episode in which Richard Kind played a mind-controller, Lucius, who could ensnare anyone with his Tek Jansenish stories of valor. The episode even made it explicit that he had used his power to build himself a harem and was thus (though no one commented on it) a serial rapist. He even attempted to "seduce" some of the heroines before he was stopped.

And then he was brought back as a straight-up comedic foil, subject to annoyance and irritation, but no one said "Hey, that's the guy who tried to rape me!" I think SGA was trying to create a Colonel Maybourne character out of Lucius. Here's why it didn't work.

The key to a comedic foil is that they're, as it goes, mostly harmless. They're hapless, loveable losers, call it what you will. Although they may cause trouble, they're not a real threat or danger the way the Alien Bounty Hunter of the Wraith are.

And that's where my problem is. By setting a date rapist up as a harmless character, TPTB is saying that rape is harmless. And it disturbs the hell out of me. Most of us would say that rape is an evil on par, or even worse than, trying to kill the Atlanteans or trying to suck their life-force. And yet Lucius gets away with a slap on the wrist. It's not just that the characters are treating him as an annoying but ultimately "misguided" rogue; although that would be bad enough. It's that the show is treating him that way too.

It just weirds me out that people could be so ignorant of the connotations of what they're producing. This is the 21st century, shouldn't we be aware of this by now?

Look, a fix-it for a fan-hated story angle! How fresh!

You know what would’ve been an interesting alternative to OMD, although pretty shamelessly derivative of both Doctor Who and the Clone Saga (yes, I know, you’re already getting chills)? Peter asks Dr. Strange for help saving Aunt May, and the good doctor says that the only one who can help him is in an alternate universe. It’s basically the exact same universe as 616, except for one changed decision… Peter Parker didn’t marry Mary-Jane Watson. Peter goes to that universe with Mary-Jane (who insists on coming along; due to Strange’s brand of magical interdimensional travel, they have to swap places with their mirror selves). Peter and Mary-Jane get the comatose Aunt May to a hospital, then find the healer. It’s Ezekiel, just to put a cap on all that spider-totem stuff. Alt!Ezekiel explains that because of mumblemumblemumble, Peter and Mary-Jane have to stay in the alternate universe to save Aunt May. They talk it over with their doppelgangers, who reluctantly agreed.

Thus, 616-Peter/MJ get a happy ending (at least until the storyline gets old and they come back), and we pick up with the Alt!Peter, Alt!Mary-Jane, and Alt!Aunt May (who, let’s say, doesn’t know that Peter is Spider-Man). We’ll use the Scarlet Spiders excuse from The Initiative to say that the public just thinks that Peter Parker was A Spider-Man or whatever. The switcheroo fools everyone into thinking that Peter Parker as Spidey was a big fat hoax due to their differing quantum signatures or whatever (616!Peter is scanned as Spider-Man, then disappears into the altverse. Alt!Peter gets scanned… lo and behold, different signature!).

While this is happening, we learn that Alt!Harry (who is alive and well because of mumblemumble) is on the verge of financial ruin and about to be arrested, or in similarly dire straits. He takes the opportunity to escape to the 616 universe. Cue sinister music.

It’s not perfect, but it gives plenty of storyline material: Alt!Peter and Alt!Mary-Jane have to fake a divorce, Alt!Peter gets hard knocks for having punk’d the whole world, and what’s the deal with Alt!Harry? Plus, if it doesn’t go over, there’s an easy fix… just bring back 616!Peter and Mary-Jane from the alternate dimension.

And it’d be a great jumping-on point. You could tell the hypothetical new reader anything they wanted to know by requiring it to be explained to Alt!Peter, who is of course unfamiliar with the 616 universe.

The New Bond

I watched Casino Royale recently. It’s one of those films you can’t just leave on as background noise; by the third act I have to drop my notepad and just watch the acting. Smart writing, good performers playing off each other, some spectacular and innovative action sequences, it’s great.

But it’s the first act, really the first half of the movie, that makes its mark. Casino Royale isn’t just a reboot of the James Bond series… it’s a goodbye to the old one (and a considerably better send-off than Die Another Day, at that). The entire ellipsis plot is basically the Bond formula in a microcosm (consider it as a riff on Thunderball, if that helps). Bond gets the girl, foils the villainous mastermind, and stops the evil scheme. He’s as cocksure and experienced as ever, if a little stingy with the one-liners. It’s not until Solange dies that the cracks start to show in the armor, the armor that’s been up since Sean Connery played the character. The real deconstruction starts, not the cheap and easy kind of deconstruction that has been destroying American comics of late, but the kind that asks necessary questions and reinvents characters before (or well after, in Bond's case) they get stale.

The entire scene with M at Dimitrios' house... that isn’t how it’s supposed to work. Bond’s supposed to have a love scene with Solange in PG-13 kinda way, make a cheeky double entrende at Q or M, then fade out… James Bond will return in…

Instead, death is dwelled upon. Whether it’s the “made you feel it, did he?” of the first kill, the brief flash of the second kill’s family photo, or the smirk Bond displays when the bomber reaps what he sowed, none of the henchmen are disposed of as cavalierly as in the past movies… not until the climax, when Bond is well on his way to blending the old playboy super-spy with the new, anguished, Jack Bauer protagonist of the 21st century. That climaxes in the biggest death of all, and the one that’s dwelled on the most… Vesper’s.

There's a note of subversion in the way Bond's theme isn't played at his most triumphant moment... it's debatable whether the end of Casino Royale can be considered a triumph at all, especially as regards Bond himself... but after a grieving, traumatized Bond has just maimed a man he intends to torture or at least interrogate. It's an ironic commentary picking up where Martin Campbell's last Bond film, Goldeneye, left off. That started taking risks with the material, started picking at the fantasy of the James Bond image. There, Bond was condemned to some degree as a relic of sixties playboyism and even chauvinism. Here, he’s reinvented as both crueler and more sensitive, more vulnerable and yet still fantastical. The Brosnan films were largely content to leave Bond as a vehicle for escapism, with even the daring TWINE shoving in the much-maligned Christmas Jones as “consolation prize” for the loss of Elektra. Under the franchise’s new helm, it looks as if Bond is finally going to be fleshed out as a character, finally fulfill the promise to the audience made by films like License To Kill and Die Another Day (which always tried to explore Bond’s life outside of the tuxedo-armored Don Juan, but always hit the reset button at the end. No growth, no change).

Casino Royale isn’t about how an agent becomes the Bond of Connery, Dalton, and Brosnan. It’s about forging a new kind of Bond out of the ashes of the old. And that, to me, is a lot more interesting.