Yes my statement was absolutely redundant but as I said, in order to clarify I thought it necessary to cross the t's and dot the i's in this one.
Yes it is cinema I was talking about.
The part that needs clarifying is why you think that cinema is supposed to do anything. Where do your rules come from? Why aren't people supposed to do things like portray a womanizer as a hero and reward him for seducing a woman without showing any negative consequences?
Allegory usually also abides by the same rules. Surrealism is an artistic movement by itself, with the express purpose of going beyond reality. It doesn't distort reality in the same way i.e. glorifying evil.
I don't know where to start with this one. For one thing it's a double standard, but there's so much wrong with your arguments on this topic that it being a double standard is pretty much moot and just par for the course. For another thing, there is nothing beyond reality. Reality encompasses everything. Anything that isn't a part of reality is not a thing, it doesn't exist. Fantasy is still real fantasy. James Bond is escapism, and that is a genre that you can't nullify. You have not made any argument for the case that escapism is not valid, that it doesn't have a place in cinema, or that it shouldn't be allowed. But you talk about James Bond as if it's supposed to be realism just because it's a movie, but then it doesn't necessarily apply to other movies that are other genres... Unless we make some progress I'm getting pretty close to my threshold for illogical arguments. I'm beginning to think you're committed to your position regardless of whether it's wrong.
Now to the point about escapism. I'm generally fine with it even though it is not my cup of tea. My qualms are not about escapism, because we have seen time and time again films that aim solely at entertainment without treading moral waters. MI, Indiana Jones, Star Wars etc. There is room for entertainment in cinema and some films exceed in that.
So then you have no grounds for saying James Bond should portray seducing a woman as wrong, or that he raped her. You predicated your own argument on what the medium should do, and now you've allowed it to do the very thing you were arguing against. So now it seems that your own issue is not fully understood and you're still seeking to discover what your own stance actually is. I myself can't quite tell, but it sounds like you're contradicting yourself. Maybe that Pussy Galore scene bothered you and you haven't quite been able to put your finger on it.
They can achieve this without conflating fun with immoral.
What if the goal
is to conflate fun with immorality? It's a movie full of glorified and glamourised sex and violence. And when did we reach a consensus on what is immoral? We only agree on superficial elements of morality. When it comes to digging deeper our world views are fundamentally extremely different in their perspectives on morality.
We have seen them work very well without going that route. Bond is in a category of its own. My problem is not that it's dump escapism, but that it uses themes like the ones discussed to achieve it. Add to that the fact that those films are meant to be viewed "with your brain turned off" and you got a very dangerous situation of people never second-guessing their decisions.
I agree with your sentiment that James Bond is dumbed down and brainwashing. The famous KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov, said that when he worked for the KGB they loved James Bond movies. Not that they loved watching them, but they loved that Americans loved watching them, because it meant that the American people would be totally clueless about what actually goes on in the spy realm. So yeah, they served in dumbing down the American public. But there is a big difference between having an issue with a particular movie just not being a good movie and saying that movies should be a certain way morally.
I think it's valid to say that James Bond movies are bad for the reasons you're giving, but not to imply that their creators were not allowed to make them that way.
I mean, I have my own personal philosophy of art. I think that for something to truly be art it must be creative, talented, and of excellent quality. Otherwise I don't really consider it art. But that isn't the full semantic range of the word art, and I would not feel justified in going around imposing my personal philosophy of art on other people. I often use the word art in a looser sense to refer to the broader medium which includes works that lack creativity, talent, and quality, but I wouldn't tell someone they shouldn't make whatever they're making because it doesn't fit my standards.
I have a problem with you arguing that James Bond had any obligation to portray anything a certain way other than in an escapist way since it is escapism. Then again, it is escapism because it portrays things that way. If someone sets out to make a movie, they can make it any way they want. That's freedom.
If you just have an issue with the movie being morally bad, we can mostly agree.
Just to put things in perspective, Those 88 seconds of a scene that you pay no more attention to, went through a process of having Fleming write them, two people adapt them to a screenplay, Hamilton direct them, two people act them and several others assist. Does that process sound like something that nobody really thought of deeply before it reached your screen for those 88 seconds?
You're the one who called it, "dump escapism."