Category: Entertainment

Sylvia Trench: Authentic Feminist

james_bondLast week, Sylvia Trench died.  She was 90 years old.  You’ve probably never heard of her, but she had a massive impact on popular culture that’s still ringing in our ears, today.  You see, before Honey Ryder (played by Ursula Andress) rose out of the surf like Venus in a white bikini, Sylvia Trench (played by Eunice Gayson) was the original Bond Girl in the original Bond movie, Dr. No.

Here in the ‘fraidy-cat days of contemporary feminism, there is a prevailing myth that “Bond Girl” is synonymous with bimbo.  Nope!  Guess again!  Ian Fleming didn’t write ‘em that way.  First of all, Fleming’s Bond Girls weren’t girls — they were women.  And secondly, the majority of his female characters (written between 1953 and 1965) were decidedly not typical women of that era.  Back in those days, the female ideal was June Cleaver (Leave it to Beaver) Margaret Anderson (Father Knows Best) and (let’s face it) the seriously ditzy Lucy Ricardo (I Love Lucy.)  Fleming’s women, on the other hand, were mainly independent, assertive professionals who were sexually active and made no bones about it.  (Ring any bells in 2018?)  Which brings us back to Ms. Trench.

Actually, Sylvia Trench was not in the novel Dr. No, but the movie version is the first time the world got a good look at James Bond, so she’s there to set the tone.   In fact, she appears before Bond does.  In the scene, we see a woman (not a girl) in an off-the-shoulder red dress.  She’s gambling at a high stakes Chemin de fer table.  She’s there by herself, and she’s clearly a regular player. (The house agrees to cover her marker when she loses.)  An off-camera voice says,

“I admire your courage, Miss…?”
She replies, “Trench, Sylvia Trench.  I admire your luck, Mr…?”
Cut to Sean Connery.  Cue the theme music:
“Bond, James Bond.”

And the 007 film franchise begins.

However, this isn’t where Sylvia Trench leaves her mark as the quintessential Bond Woman.  Three scenes later, Bond returns home and there’s Sylvia, out of the red dress and into one of Bond’s shirts, practicing her putt – with Bond’s golf clubs.  Bond (because he’s Bond) bursts into the room with a gun in his hand, but Sylvia doesn’t freak out, shrieking “OMG!  He’s got a gun!” — she flirts.  This is a confident woman.  This is an Ian Fleming Woman.  She’s come to Bond’s apartment (broken in, actually) to sleep with him.  She hasn’t been seduced.  She hasn’t been coerced.  She isn’t a victim of Bond’s raging sexism.  She’s a woman who makes her own decisions — and today she’s decided on James Bond.

So, as feminists from Maine to Malibu theorize and chatter about how many misogynists can dance on the head of a pin — Ms. Trench, I salute you!  You were a woman before it was fashionable and saw no reason to complain about it.

Stanley Cup — The Final Battle

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Yesterday, while most of the world slept, two ice hockey teams began the final conflict in this year’s NHL playoffs.  They’ve already been playing for a month and a half — every second night — back and forth across the continent with one objective in mind: Lord Stanley’s Cup.  This is the most grueling tournament in professional sports.  Yes, I know: World Cup is the Big Kahuna; more people (around the world) watch baseball; rugby is strength and stamina; and Aussie Rules Football  is nothing short of legalized assault and battery.  But, big wow!   Kilo for kilo, the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy on Earth to play for and the most difficult to win. The Cup is reserved for the mentally strong and the physically resilient; no others need apply.  If you can’t cut it, go home: this is a game for the brave.

The rules of the Stanley Cup Playoffs are simple: win 16 games – four against each opponent.  If you do that, the Cup is yours, and, unlike most professional trophies, for 24 hours you can do what you want with it.  Most players take it back to their hometowns to show the parents and their friends.  That’s the thing about the Stanley Cup: it has an old-time feel about it.  It’s small town puppies and lemonade, not big city glitz.  The teams might be located in New York and Los Angeles, Toronto and Montreal, but the players come from Pincourt, Grimsby, Livonia and Ornskoldsvik.  They are the boys of winter who learned the game after school.  They played on artificially frozen ponds, just like their grandfathers did on the real thing.  They understand the heritage of the game and the structure.  They know what it takes to win: straight-edged mental toughness that destroys your opponents’ will before he does that to you.  So again and again and again and again — for two months — young men lace up their skates and fly at each other in a series of full-contact ballets, choreographed at 35 MPH!

Directing a 3 inch rubber disc with a curved stick on glare ice takes the hands of a sculptor.  Delivering and absorbing punishing body checks in full battle dress takes the physique of a dancer.  Constantly remembering your place on the ice — at top speed — takes the concentration of a chess champion.  But to do all these things, night after night, can only be learned by the self-discipline of desire.  These boys want the Stanley Cup more than anything else in the world.  As children, they dreamed about it, played and practiced and skated until their stick and that puck became an extension of their body.  As adolescents, they left their families, missed holidays, forgot birthdays and lost the friends and the girlfriends they grew up with.  Now, as men, they are willing to tape up their injuries, stitch up the gashes, patch over the bruises and ignore the pain and nagging fatigue to take just one skated circle with the Cup in their hands.  Superstition has it that no hockey player may even touch the Cup until he wins it.

To the hockey tribes of North America, the game is more than bone-jarring collisions on YouTube, bare knuckle brawls and concussions.  It is chivalry on ice, played by contemporary cavaliers, with no quarter asked or given.  It is brutal finesse; the meeting of Hermes the Swift and Thor, the Thunder God.  But the Stanley Cup Playoffs are not just a war of attrition, nor is the Stanley Cup a trophy given only to the strong.  In the end, when one team steps forward to touch the Cup for the first time, it will be their mental tenacity that prevails; the strength of mind that has always carried the warrior spirit forward.  It is that indomitable voice that says to each player, night after arduous night — “Once more into the breach  … once more.”

Me?  I’ve never wanted anything that badly.

When Harry Met Meghan (II)

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Are you sick the British Royal Family, yet?  Yeah, me too, but I’m such a hopeless monarchist that I can’t help myself.  Here are a couple of things that may have just gotten lost in the ocean of wall-to-wall-to-wall -to-floor-to-ceiling Royal Wedding media coverage we’ve all been enduring.  If you haven’t heard these before, go to bed smarter than when you woke up.  If you have heard them, turn off the TV — you’re ODing on purple pageantry.

1 — Just because you marry a prince, you don’t automatically become a princess.  The Brits are very strict about this kind of thing.  For example, Diana (Harry’s mom) was Diana, Princess of Wales and her granddaughter (William’s daughter) is Princess Charlotte.  Notice the difference?  In the British Royal Family, the only way to be a real princess is to be born that way, so there’s a subtle difference in title if you merely marry into it.  Charlotte’s title comes before her name because she is a princess by birth; whereas, Diana’s title came after her name because it was only an honorific.  Meghan Markle isn’t even going to get that close.  After the wedding, she will become Her Royal Highness, Duchess of Something-or-other (probably Sussex) — not a princess, at all.  In fact, even the girl who will be queen, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge isn’t actually a princess.

2 — Meghan Markle might be marrying into one of the richest families in the world, but she’s never going to see any of that money.  In fact, by royal standards, Harry and Meghan will be living very low on the totem pole, indeed.  This was one of the chief complains that Sarah Ferguson (Fergie) had when she was married to Prince Andrew — champagne obligations on a beer budget.  It’s a popular misconception that all members of the Royal family are living large on the taxpayer’s shilling.  Not even close!  Since 2012, when Parliament abolished the Civil List, the Queen and Prince Philip are the only ones who get any government money.  All the other royals, from Prince Charles to Princess Alexandra (61st in line to the throne) may have some of their “official” expenses paid for, but generally they have to fend for themselves.  This puts Harry in a precarious position.  Since he doesn’t actually have a job, the Duchy of Cornwall (Prince Charles’ estate) picks up the tab for him — everything from paying the servants to the cost of a new tuxedo.  So essentially, if Harry wants any extra pocket money, he’s got to go ask daddy for it.  This has led to wild speculation that, given Ms. Markle’s acting career, she may actually have more walking-around money than her husband.

And finally, something silly:

3 — Everyone knows that the Queen loves corgis and her last one, Willow, died very recently.  However, most people don’t know that the Queen still has two dogs, Vulcan and Candy.  They’re dorgis, a mixed breed that came into the Royal household when one of the Queen’s corgis mated with one of her sister, Princess Margaret’s, dachshunds.