The Meaning of Baccarat in the Identity of James Bond

The modern term of art for the rejuvenation of a franchise is “reboot” and the art of rebooting a beloved property of another generation is full of subtlety as well as peril. A false step can not only damage a franchise for years to come, it can cause the property to deviate from its true nature, and once it walks down the dark path, forever is its destiny affected, at least until the next reboot. It is the management of these properties and their long term development that is one of the most important responsibilities that a studio or producer takes upon themselves.   Like a publisher or curator at a museum, their decisions will quite literally affect our culture, or at least our popular culture.   And with a solemn understanding of their responsibility they approach the problem of adaptation of a franchise with the sensitivity and deliberative nature not unlike a professional castrator of pigs at a slaughterhouse.

As a good producer or studio executive knows, no change is too shallow, inappropriate or ill-advised if it may result in more money in the short run.   In this, they express the highest morality and integrity that our society has to offer.

When the owners of the Bond licenses began development of a new series of Bond films, they had to choose whether to leave Bond in the cold war, and thus make a film set in that era, or bring Bond into our century. They chose to do the latter, updating the character with actor Daniel Craig, and changing Bond's background in a variety of ways both subtle and not so subtle.

One of the changes, at the time unmentioned by any but the most hardcore students of Bond, was to change the preferred card game from a variant of baccarat to a variant of poker, the far-too-trendy “Texas Hold Em” variety. This was either a fundamental mistake or a very bold move on the part of the filmmakers. Did they fully understand the significance of baccarat to the character and identify of James Bond?   Perhaps they merely thought to themselves that the general movie-going audience will not have heard of baccarat in any form and are even less likely to have played it themselves.  Yes, that is correct, and that is part of the point, baccarat is an elitist game of an upper class of society in Europe.

In Dr. No, Ms Sylvia Trench, a guest at the club, plays chermin de fer against a mysterious stranger. 

Joshua Pines, a semi-professional poker player, suggests that poker is a suitable game for James Bond as it is a game of skill, not of chance.  I have no doubt that poker is indeed a game that requires great skill. I would go further and say that poker requires much more skill than even the most skill-oriented form of baccarat, the chemin de fer, which is the variant that Bond plays. But demonstrating skill is only a small part of what baccarat means to the entity we think of as James Bond.

She makes arrangements to raise the limit on the table.  The mysterious stranger introduces himself as "Bond, James Bond" 

When we examine the backstory of James Bond and his relationship with British foreign intelligence, SIS, that is, where Bond came from and what services he can bring to that organization, one aspect of this background is that James Bond is a member of a minor branch of Scottish nobility. He is, as they say, “of station” in the eyes of both British and European nobility. This means that he can go to many places in the world where the rest of us are not welcome, except perhaps as a guest of a member. And even then, we would not be recognized as a peer. But Bond is a peer, a member of the inherited nobility of Europe, a more elite form of society than exists in our country. And this nobility has a long history of being very conscious of who is and who is not a member, and of the social conventions that come with it. In a sense, it is also part of his cover, as in intelligence as well as crime, a good cover is by definition mostly true.

Cmdr. Bond is called away on a secret mission, but he makes arrangements to meet Ms. Trench in a more private setting. 

The game of baccarat also has a long history among the games of chance of European society. It comes in three variations. One variation requires no skill and is a pure game of chance. One variation requires some skill, and the third variation, the chemin de fer, requires the most skill, about as much as the game of blackjack. But demonstrating skill is not the point, and has never been the point of the society of the upper classes. One is there because one was born entitled to be there, not because one was good at anything. That Bond chooses to only play the chemin de fer is revealing about him, he may have something to prove.

Ms Trench arrives early at Bond's apartment, and takes the liberty of getting ready for bed.  Baccarat is clearly value added in terms of improving or enhancing Bond's social life.

When the producers of the Bond movies chose Casino Royale for the reboot, it was the fulfillment of a long-term Bond anomaly. Casino Royale was the only Bond property they could not get the rights due to their being previously licensed to make the Bond spoof of the same name. Thus returning to the Casino Royale was in a way back to basics for Bond. The plot of the novel and of this 2006 motion picture testifies to the cooperation between the US and UK intelligence communities (the CIA backs Bond's game at a critical moment and allows it to continue), and to issues of “fifth columnists” as the antagonist, Le Chiffre, is the chief financier of a French worker's union as well as a paid agent of the Soviet Union in the original text.

Bond was SIS's best gambler, and as a member of the Scottish nobility, would not be out of place at this elite casino.He could legitimately be there and play this European game of chance and skill and work for the destruction of the French traitor. The high stakes game at a casino of this type is unlikely to be poker but could very well be baccarat.

But that is not the only role for baccarat in the novels and movies of James Bond.  Another very notable occasion is at the beginning of Dr. No (1962), the first Bond film with Sean Connery, which opens in Jamaica where a murder takes place, and then switches to Les Ambassadeurs / Le Cercle, a famously elite club of diplomats and aristocracy in London.

It is at this club that the lovely Ms. Sylvia Trench engages in a fierce game of baccarat / chermin de fer with a mysterious stranger.   This stranger introduces himself as "Bond, James Bond," timing his words to match the upbeat of the music track that begins, also mysteriously, in the background. Thus, not only is chermin de fer Bond's game, it is the game that leads inevitably to his first successful romantic liason on film.  Who is to say what would have happened had he been playing poker?  He certainly would not have been at Le Cercle that evening and thus is unlikely to have met Ms Trench.

Certainly CDR Bond knows how to play poker, and plays it well, but it is not a game of the European elite.  (1) Far from it. Poker is the quintessential American card game, a game of skill, a game that probably originated on the riverboat casinos of the Mississippi and then spread West with the frontier. You could hardly get more American than that.

In conclusion, when you change baccarat to poker, which I have no doubt they did without much thought, you actually change a fundamental aspect of Bond's public identity.   Was a reference to a currently trendy American card game really worth such a price?

________________________________________

1. In reviewing the games of Les Ambassadeurs, see URL below, I notice that three-card poker is currently a game there.  No doubt this is a sign of creeping Americanism and other degrading trends in European society.

Baccarat on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccarat_%28card_game%29

Dr. No (1962) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055928/

Casino Royale (2006) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381061/

The club where Bond met Ms Trench
http://www.lesambassadeurs.com/

Selected Items of Interest from Computer Games of Recent Vintage Part 1

As previously mentioned, I did a survey of PC games a few years ago in order to form a more modern impression of the state of that industry, what games were being made, what I liked about them and what I didn't.   

As you would expect, it was a mixed bag.   But out of the 50 or so games I reviewed, there were about 30 or 40 things that did impress me.  Here is a list, more or less at random, of 10 of those things.

See this post for a discussion of what I was looking for:

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/11/some-criteria-for-excellence-in.html

1. An idea so good you wish you had thought of it: Sissy Fight 2000

A turn-based game based on a playground in which young girls compete to become the most popular, or alternatively, do the best job of lowering the self esteem of the other girls by saying nasty things about them.

Although the server for Sissyfight 2000 is no longer operational, this high point in western culture will not be quickly forgotten.

www.sissyfight.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sissyfight_2000

2. A great user-interface idea: Grand Theft Auto III

In GTA III, you are given tasks to accomplish for the local criminals. They want you to drive their car somewhere, say to pick up their girlfriend. But the user interface is rigged so that it overreacts making it nearly impossible to actually drive the car without bashing into other cars, or people, or streetlamps. The car is rigged with all sorts of great breakaway parts that get destroyed colorfully. So you pick up the girlfriend, and she pretends not to notice that the hood is bashed in and the door is hanging loosely off its hinges.

3. A great story point / gag: Grand Theft Auto III

You are given an assignment, pick up the boss's girlfriend, there is a map, but the city and the map are perverse. You pull into a parking lot to turn around, in what is probably a stolen car, and discover that the parking lot is actually the lot for the local police station. You try to turn around to get out of there but as with the point above, the car is impossible to drive so you end up playing demolition derby with a bunch of parked police cars. These guys are very funny.

4. Something happens that makes you think that it is actually thinking: SimCity IV

I set up a toll booth to try and collect revenue from an interstate (e.g. only collect money from people passing through, not locals). But I do not realize that I leave a back street open that people could use, if they were clever or persistent enough to find it, to avoid the toll booth.   Trust me, this route was not obvious, it required going around through a bunch of back streets and then back onto the main highway.

So I put in the toll booth and, after a while, a local neighborhood group complains about too much traffic from cars passing through. The game is obviously simulating some of the crazy things people do to save money, in this case, having them drive all over the place to find the cheapest path. It greatly added to the sense that the game was actually paying attention and that there was something actually going on in there.

5. A game that results in learning something about the world: SimCity IV

Maxis says that SimCity is not doing real urban simulation, it is just faking it.  That may be true, but even so, it is an excellent learning tool for people interested in such topics as urban design and management and it is the only such tool that I am aware of that is available to the general public.   

6. A game that is useful in thinking through a strategic issue: Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars

Tiberium Wars is an amusing real-time strategy game, one of the few I enjoy playing.  There is nothing about it that is intended to be realistic nor is that its purpose in any way.

But it has a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) feature and there are several amusing things about it, I noticed.  It is implemented in a way that you always know who did it, you are warned they are going to do it, they can only use it intermittently, and it is very destructive in a limited region but you will probably survive the first blow.

What was interesting was that without thinking about it, I found myself implementing these counter-strategies: (a) distribution of industries in different regions, (b) duplication of key technologies in different regions, (c) attempting surgical strikes to knock out their WMD before they can use it (or use it again), and (d) developing my own WMD in response.   I did not think about it at the time, but in retrospect the strategies that evolved to manage the threat of WMD are some of the same strategies used in the real world to deal with this threat.

7. A game that did a good job of creating a mood or feeling: Bioshock

One of the few games I have found that did a good job at creating some sort of feeling or sense of place, this time of a strange underwater world. The equivalent of a good, bad horror film.

8. A game with a weird funny idea: Portal

Portal is a pretty weird idea, and well implemented. Whether or not it is a good game or not, I could not tell you, its not the sort of game I enjoy. But it is fun to look at, and it is actully somewhat original in concept.

9. A game with some whimsical humor: Command and Conquer Red Alert

Very few games have anything I would see as charming, or whimsical. You may feel differently about it, but that is my impression. But in this version of the C&C franchise, there are some very funny bits. My favorite is the type of Russian soldier, the great Russian bear. The bear can be delivered to a place (a battle, an island, etc) by shooting it out of a cannon. When you do that, it is very cute in how it flies, how it parachutes down, and how it lands. Its really charming in the great wasteland of not-charming of most games.

This bear is fierce looking.  The bear(s) in the game itself are adorable.

Tim Curry as Premier Cherdenko.  He probably got this part because of his role in Hunt for Red October.

10. A game with a great use of some technology: the Total War series

The game separates out the strategy from the battle. During the battle you are given a user interface to attempt to control behaviorally generated troops of soldiers. A Roman Legion for example, made up of the different specialities that existed within the legion. A lot of work has gone into making it possible to give direction to these groups of simulated people as they try to kill each other. And the behavioral is very good and works in real time with dozens of groups interacting with each other and thousands of individual foot soldiers being animated.   A very good job, overall.

A view from the Rome: Total War series.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen !

I will probably post another list of equal length sometime soon of other things I thought were well done.

Then I will tell you what I really think about the games I reviewed.

Some Criteria for Excellence in Computer-Based Entertainment

Several years ago I did a survey of certain genres of computer game to better understand where they had come since my involvement in that industry, before it was an industry, years ago. I was looking for notable examples of the following sorts of things:

1. The illusion of intelligence

Either the game itself had some function or response that made one think that it was actually paying attention to what was going on, or the computer generated entities within the game, either opponents or allies, exhibited behavior that seemed to indicate that they were aware and responding rationally to the events.

2. A strong subjective impression of a different world or period

A good book or film will often take us to another world, real or fictional, and make us feel a part of it to some degree. So I was looking for that same sort of feeling or impression from a game.

3. Something is learned from the experience

By playing the game in a certain scenario, something is learned that is applicable to real life or to understanding a historical situation. Historically, the armed services of a nation will run "war games" or simulations because they can be so useful in learning about the sorts of things that are hard to imagine in advance. Although the popular press and imagination makes fun of these "games", thinking them frivolous, experience has shown they can be very valuable tools for planning and training.

4. Something surprising (and interesting) happens

Events and policies often have "unexpected consequences". A classic example is the question / issue of whether a minimum wage increases unemployment for certain kinds of workers. If it does, that would be an unexpected consequence. Suprising, interesting and plausible in retrospect.

5. An excellent use of an advanced technology

A game that uses a technology in an unexpected or particularly skilled manner.

6. A particularly humorous or ironic situation is created

The game has some situation or appropriate use of technology that is particular funny, or ironic, or sarcastic and indicates that someone actually thought about the game, its characters and its situations.

7. An excellent user interface.

A user interface which is beyond what you normally find, or which demonstrates some creative or appealing approach to the problem of what we see of the game and how we interact with it.

8. A fabulous concept.

A game with an idea that is so great you wish you had thought of it yourself.

9. A strong personal vision.

A game that in some way demonstrates the values or ideas of an individual or group of people who are collaborating, in a way that indicates some style or aesthetic that is clearly their own.   A writer such as Hemingway or Faulkner falls into this category and people can have a lot of fun trying to recreate or satirize their world view.  

A game that has even one of the above to some degree is an exceptional game.

In a future post, I will go over some examples I found of these (most of these) in recent games.