32 replies to this topic

[ACE]

If I may add this without fear of lowering the tone again , Craig's cries (in the movie version) of pain do have an orgasmic tone (I was going to say ring) to them... Pleasure from pain, that kind of thing.

Really? You feel CraigBond is enjoying the torture on a sexual level?

Like I said, I think these things are what we read into it. I guess it all falls on our individual interpretation.

[David Schofield]

If I may add this without fear of lowering the tone again , Craig's cries (in the movie version) of pain do have an orgasmic tone (I was going to say ring) to them... Pleasure from pain, that kind of thing.

Really? You feel CraigBond is enjoying the torture on a sexual level?

Like I said, I think these things are what we read into it. I guess it all falls on our individual interpretation.

Personally, I don't think CraigBond is enjoying the pain. Or rather, I'd prefer to think he isn't.

Just as, I suppose, my original point: however likely it might be that Bond did indeed have homosexual experiences as an English public school boy boarding in the 1930s, we'd rather not think he has, beacuse he is Bond, our hero, and we are all, the few ladies here excepted, real men, flesh and blood hetrosexuals with healthy appetities for the female form, aren't we?

But that goes back to your point about individual interpretation and my very point about a continuation writer hinting at Bond's teenage homosexuality for us to interpret how we feel.

Enid Blyton wrote that Noddy slept with Big Ears in the 1950s. It is only recently that we have interpreted that in anyway other than as an act of slumber.

I thank you.

[Trident]

Is there?

I don't think the scene is equivalent to rape, at all. Unless one views rape as an assertion of power and not a sexual act. While Bond is naked and has his genitals beaten, there is no overt sexualization in this scene.

The only sexual element is ascribed to Bond's reminiscences of victims at the hand of Nazi torturers. Bond hopes to get to that stage so he can endure the pain.

However, there is no reference or inference that this is how Le Chiffre feels. I don't think Le Chiffre gets off on the torture. Far from it, he seems drained from the experience.

Certainly, in the film, there is a deliberate inference but it is kept subtle. But Le Chiffre does not appear to enjoy "scratching [Bond's] balls" in the movie.

I think these things are what we read into it. I guess it all falls on our individual interpretation.

If I may add this without fear of lowering the tone again , Craig's cries (in the movie version) of pain do have an orgasmic tone (I was going to say ring) to them... Pleasure from pain, that kind of thing.

Ok, speaking strictly about sexuality Casino Royale's torture doesn't equal a sexual act in the common sense. But rape in itself uses sexuality not for its own sake but as a means to enforce one's will upon others. Sexuality and violence are vital parts of this behaviour but the driving force in this field usually is a sadistic need for abusing others in the most degrading ways (which usually are sexually related). There are many different kinds of abuse, not all of them necessarily in an explicitly sexual context. The reason why LeChiffre doesn't seem to get off by nearly torturing Bond to death is, IMHO at least, because Bond doesn't give him the ultimate satisfaction of breaking down. That lack of satisfaction together with the growing uneasiness (and rightfully so) of fearing Smersh's killers on his trail is responsible for LeChiffre's frustration during his last minutes.

But then of course I may be entirely wrong about that and read much too much into these scenes.