The press has been alive with reports this week that the forthcoming Bond film, Skyfall, will see our hero drink not the traditional dry martini, “shaken, not stirred”, but the Dutch lager Heineken. Outrageous! people have cried. Sell-out! traditionalists have wailed. You will know, dear readers, that the Sybarite takes a lively interest in all things Bondian. So what of Heineken?
Well. First, it would be disingenuous to say that I am not unsettled by the idea of the world’s most famous spy knocking back lager instead of a cocktail. Will the dinner jacket be exchanged for an untucked, short-sleeved shirt? Will Commander Bond ask for a packed of salt and vinegar with his pint? If it were not unacceptable to the health police, would the Morland Specials give way to Benson and Hedges, or Silk Cut? On the face of it, it seems A Bad Matter.
But one has to remember that Bond has been about product placement for a long, long time. As early as Goldfinger, prominence was given to the Aston Martin DB5, a matter which will have pleased the management at Newport Pagnell, and Bond has long flashed a succession of Omega watches. (I myself have an Omega Seamaster, and a very handsome timepiece it is, too.) Nor was the intrusion of brand names an invention of the filmic Bond. Ian Fleming was a terrible name-dropper when it came to brands, from Bond’s Bentley styled by Mulliner, through the Kina Lillet in Casino Royale’s vesper martini, to the Rolex Oyster Perpetual by which Bond told the time. The thread of champagne branding running through both the books and the films is legendary. So are we in a tizz about nothing? Is the Heineken deal merely the latest in a series of commercial agreements?
Yes and no. I think there is a fundamental difference in philosophy between Fleming’s name-dropping and the later celluloid product placement. For Fleming, using brand names like Rolex, Bentley and Dom Pérignon was a mark of luxury and high living, an important aspirational tone in 1950s Britain. Bond ate, drank, wore and drove the best because it made him a figure of glamour and exoticism, which brightened up the lives of Fleming’s readers. That is a different matter from hawking Bond’s image to the highest bidder. Importantly, Fleming attached brands to Bond because they were the best and the sort of things which a man of Bond’s station would consume, own and use. The films were not a complete abnegation of this philosophy: one can see that Bond might drive an Aston Martin, or wear an Omega if he tired of his Rolex. He might well be dressed by Brioni, as Pierce Brosnan was, though one cannot help think that it would have taken a great motive force to drive Bond into the arms of a foreign tailor.
Would Bond drink Heineken? It is a mistake to associate him solely with the vodka martini. The Commander is partial to a Negroni and an Old-Fashioned, will happily drink Dom Pérignon, Krug or Taittinger (especially with caviar), likes his vodka with pepper sprinkled through it, sometimes rounds off a meal with Hennessy Three Star, and has been known to knock back bourbon and raki (not together!). And, of course, in the very first book, Casino Royale, he creates the Vesper martini in honour of the woman with whom he is working. So Bond is a versatile drinker.
Somehow Heineken is tin-eared, though. I have no brief against the drink; it’s one of the more pleasant lagers, one of the relatively few which one can genuinely enjoy, and I have certainly, ahem, “enjoyed” it fulsomely myself on more than one occasion. Lager also has a respectable film history: think of the pints of Carlsberg in Ice Cold in Alex. But there is nothing of sophistication and glamour about it, even if Daniel Craig is to appear on the labels and Sam Mendes is to direct one of the advertisements. This, surely, brings us to an important point. We are all wise enough now to know that Bond is not realistic, nor gritty. He is not Jason Bourne, nor is he “Harry Palmer”. Bond exists for two purposes – action, and glamour. The “reboot” of the film franchise with Daniel Craig provided plenty of the former; the bone-crunching, dizzying chase at the beginning of Casino Royale was a thrilling example. But Bond must provide the latter as well.
It’s not the commercialism of the Heineken deal to which I object. It’s that the choice of drink is just wrong. You might as well take Red Bull’s shilling, and have Commander Bond keeping himself going with a foul, sweet-tasting energy drink. In fact, if you have no regard for the appropriateness of the marketing, make it Horlicks, or an Innocent smoothie. It simply lacks authenticity. I know that branding is important for Bond, especially in these straitened times (a substantial proportion of the new film’s budget comes from sponsorship and product placement). But is the best they could do?
Still, I will go to see the new film when it’s released, and I will probably enjoy it. But I will still come home afterwards and crave a martini before dinner. Over to Bond:
“I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that drink to be large and very strong and very cold and very well made.”
I differ on the number of drinks, but you just know he wasn’t talking about a pint of lager.
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