Globalti
Legendary Member
Have you ever watched a James Bond film and been struck by the thought that this was the cultural icon, which shaped your parents’ lives? James Bond films were shot in locations like Switzerland, the South of France, the West Indies, all places which have done well out of the aura of wealth and glamour left by the films. Our parents were born in the 30s, lived through the second world war then grew up and married in the fifties and sixties when life was still pretty austere. People were a lot less worldly and more impressionable than they are today; a James Bond movie would have been incredibly exciting and for many, their first ever exposure to the glamorous world beyond the English Channel. I remember my parents going out to see a James Bond film and coming home terribly excited, my Mum describing breathlessly how the spy killed the baddie with a poisoned cigarette, the Aston Martins, the cocktails, the mini skirts, the ski chases, private jets, casinos, cigarettes, swish hotels, ostentatious watches, all the stuff they continue to view as glamorous. Cubby Broccoli paid to get the revolving restaurant on the Schilthorn finished in time to film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and I’d be willing to bet that places like that owe half of their commercial success to the James Bond connection. We went and skied off it for that very reason last February but I thought it was pretty over-rated as a ski run!
I know one couple in their late fifties who are Mr and Mrs Bond personified – she has the seventies blonde pageboy hairstyle, chunky jewellery, mini skirts and blue eye makeup and he dresses like an English country squire. They own an elderly Rolls Royce and even go on holiday in Switzerland and Monte Carlo. Their house is furnished like a flouncy sixties hotel room, they eat sixties food like lobster thermidor and prawn cocktails, drink Martinis and are generally stuck in a time warp. So much of today's really awful, ghastly food and décor is sixties and seventies derived and I reckon it was Mr Bond who was responsible for most of it.
Which begs the question – what influences today’s generations? How much of the widely different films, music and cultural crazes of the 70s, 80s and 90s will be visible in us as we age?
I know one couple in their late fifties who are Mr and Mrs Bond personified – she has the seventies blonde pageboy hairstyle, chunky jewellery, mini skirts and blue eye makeup and he dresses like an English country squire. They own an elderly Rolls Royce and even go on holiday in Switzerland and Monte Carlo. Their house is furnished like a flouncy sixties hotel room, they eat sixties food like lobster thermidor and prawn cocktails, drink Martinis and are generally stuck in a time warp. So much of today's really awful, ghastly food and décor is sixties and seventies derived and I reckon it was Mr Bond who was responsible for most of it.
Which begs the question – what influences today’s generations? How much of the widely different films, music and cultural crazes of the 70s, 80s and 90s will be visible in us as we age?
