Nursing care delivery models and organizational structure Essay

Nursing care delivery models and organizational structure - Essay Example However, this paper tends to research how factors like organizational structure and care delivery models can influence nurse turnover rates. Introduction Health care sector across the world has been experiencing an unusual increase in nursing turnover for the past few decades. According to the NSI (2013) report, the hospital turnover rate increased to 14.7% and registered nurses is 13.1%. Nursing Solutions, Inc projects hospital turnover to be over 15.5% and RNturnover14% by2014. However, it is important to assess to what extent nursing care models and organizational structure can cause nurse turnover in modern hospital settings. This detailed analysis based on the available literature will suggest what advice Jamie Johns (in the given case context) as a Quality Improvement Leader can give to her Chief Nurse Officer on appropriate care delivery models. Impacts of Nurse Turnover Nurse Turnover is a major risk factor that affects the hospital’s functioning and effort for ensurin g quality patient care. Nursing turnover causes huge amount of financial loss to the hospital. Losing a single nurse can bring about the loss of twice the nurses’ annual salary. Therefore, loss of nurses adversely affects patient care thereby causing loss of patients, increased staffing cost, absenteeism, and accident rates. Poor communication with the management regarding their needs, low remuneration, and lack of career opportunities and career development in the hospital they work can also increase nurse turnover. Solutions for nurse turnover have been researched on a wider basis. According to Hunt (2009), the most important suggestion is to make the job attractive; and this process involves increasing job incentives, flexible scheduling and job sharing, adding career development activities. A major after effect of high turnover rate is that the existing staff is always forced to adjust with the newcomers. A study by Baernholdt and Mark (2009) showed that both rural and ur ban hospitals can improve nurse job satisfaction and turnover rates by changing unit characteristics, creating better support services and a work environment that supports autonomous nursing practice. According to the very findings, rural hospitals can also improve the work environment by providing nurses with more educational opportunities and thus career development. Scarcity of qualified nurses makes turnover so prevalent in the health care industry. The increase in job opportunities makes the existing nurses confident enough to leave their present organization and find a new one. Organizational Structure and Nurse Turnover Only by implementing key strategies, hospitals can put a curb on the turnover rate of nurses. Nursing is the largest occupation within the health care industry with 2.4 million people working. In recent reports by the International council of Nursing (Trust, 2006), one of the main reason for shortage of nurses relates to work environment. Studies have proven t hat a positive organisational climate plays a key role in job satisfaction and in lowering turnover rates. But the strength of organisational climate and job satisfaction is more compared to organisational climate and turnover rate. As Stone, Hughes, and Dailey (2008) point out, low job satisfaction leads to burnout, frequent leaves, higher rate of turnover, or loss of nursing profession. The work environment, especially the organizational structure has much to do with nursing turnover rate. A pleasant relationship with the hospital

Feedback after reading loss of the creature written by Walker Percy Essay

Feedback after reading loss of the creature written by Walker Percy - Essay Example In the education sector, the teachers created the intentions they intend on the students based on the kind of impression they create during the classroom learning. In essence, the value of any object is lost due to the subjectivity that people imparts on the creature. To start with, Percy (1) discusses the image of the Grand Canyon and the way people under different circumstances see it. He considers two different people and the way they perceive the Grand Canyon under the circumstances they see it; while the discoverer puts a lot of value on the feature, a sightseer today will have very little value for this Canyon. For the discoverer, the Canyon is a new image and a new encounter and this is the ground in which he makes judgment of the object. He has the privilege to make personal judgment on the Canyon and deduce the value of the object at that moment. However, the sightseer is a person who knows about the object and some preformed expectations of the object. Likely, people who paid the feature a visit influence the sightseer and hence they create some predefined expectations of the image. Therefore, they will go with this image and will expect the image to conform to this image. When a sightseer goes with very high expectations, they may judg e the feature harshly and find it rather below their expectation. The point that passes here is that the image created by people about something influence the way people see that thing. Percy idea on the beauty of a creature is comparable to the day-to-day experiences, and the definition of beauty in the society. Beauty is subjective and the way people will describe a person will influence how others see that person. For instance, if before the encounter of someone has the image that that person is ugly, they will have such an attitude and it is this image that they will use to judge the person during their initial encounter. Likely, the person

Refugees and Biopolitics

Refugees and Biopolitics Refugee: The Victim of Biopolitics While we acknowledged as citizens of our country are enjoying our basic rights as a human as well as a citizen, have turned a blind eye to those millions of people around the world who are forced to live on the margins of social, political, economical and geographical borders. These people are known as the refugees; people in search of a refuge. They can also be called immigrants or asylum seekers. Victims of their nation’s political functioning these people are forced to find haven on an alien land. At times, these people (called the ‘Others’) are constructed as a danger to ‘Us’. â€Å"Fear of the Other is produced, circulated and capitalized on to achieve political and economic purposes† (Robin). The questions that arise here are as many as why are these refugees treated as the ‘Others’? Aren’t they humans like ‘Us’? Weren’t they born as Man and, as a result, are entitled to be acknowledged with the basic human and citizenship rights? And most importantly, why and how do these people become the victims of biopolitics? This paper is an attempt to find the answers to such questions. In his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has devoted an entire section titled ‘Biopolitics and the Rights of Man’ to describe the suffering of these refugees who are denied even the basic human rights in a new country. Becoming a victim of his fate â€Å"the very figure who should have embodied the rights of man par excellence the refugee signals instead the concept’s radical crisis† (Agamben 126). The crux of Agamben’s essay is based on Hannah Arendt’s claim that the fates of human rights and the nation-state are linked together, which means that the decline of one also implies the end of the other. This means, that by altering the rights of these people who later become refugees, the nation is leading towards its own decline. â€Å"The paradox from which Arendt departs is that the very figure who should have embodied the rights of man par excellence the refugee signals instead the concep t’s radical crisis† (Agamben 126). Agamben completely understands the refugees’ condition as it is and that’s why he has titled his book as Homo Sacer. To understand the meaning behind this we need to go back to the Roman antiquity, where the cancellation of a citizen’s rights by the sovereign produced the threshold figure of homo sacer, the sacred man who can be killed by anyone as he has no rights but can’t be sacrificed because the act of sacrifice can only be done within the legal context of the city from which homo sacer has been banished, as can be seen in the case of refugees from Rwanda (Agamben 133). â€Å"He is an outlawed citizen, the exception to the law, and yet he is still subject to the penalty of death and therefore still included, in the very act of exclusion, within the law† (Downey). Homo sacer blurs the line between an outlaw and a citizen and, hence aptly portrays the figure of Agamben’s refugees. In his essay ‘Biopolitics and the Rights of Man’, Agamben has talked about the devastating impact of biopolitics on the refugees. The word ‘biopolitics’ has been formed out of two words: bio (the life) and politics, and means the â€Å"regulation of the life of populations† by politics (Zembylas). When Agamben says â€Å"Biopolitics† or â€Å"Biopower†, he refers to the social and political power that the nation-state has over human life. In order to protect the population’s biological well-being, the state acts preventively and thus it goes against the ‘Other’: â€Å"If you want to live, the other must die† (Foucault 255). And in this way, the killing is justified in the name of security. Biopolitics â€Å"establishes a binary categorization between ‘us’ and ‘them’, or between the ‘normal’ (legitimate citizens) and the ‘abnormal’ (illegal immigrants, un-qual ified refugees or bogus asylum seekers). The former deserve to live, while the latter are expendable† (Zembylas). Agamben talks about the first move of classical western politics: the separation of the biological and the political. This can be seen in Aristotle’s separation between life in the polis. Bios is the political life and zoÄâ€Å" is the bare life. â€Å"The entry of zoÄâ€Å" into the sphere of the polis the politicization of bare life as such constitutes the decisive event of modernity and signals a radical transformation of the political-philosophical categories of classical thought† (Agamben). For Agamben, at the political level, biopower means that what’s at stake is the life of the citizen itself; not only his existence but also his life. Agamben also examines the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 1789 and concludes that the bare natural life (birth) is the source and bearer of rights as mentioned in the first article of the Declaration, which says that â€Å"Men are born and remain free and equal in rights†. This should mean that despite leaving their country, the refugees deserve equal rights. But at the same time, he reminds us that the very natural life vanishes into the figure of the citizen, in whom rights are â€Å"preserved†. This means, that although a man is born free and has equal rights, these rights are valid only as long as he is a citizen. So, when he leaves his country and becomes a refugee, he is devoid of any citizenship rights. And, since the Declaration can attribute sovereignty to the â€Å"nation†, Agamben says, â€Å"the nation closes the open circle of man’s birth† (Agamben). Now, that the sovereignty lies with the nation, this is where the biopolitics enters the scene. Now, when biopolitics enters the scene, what we can see is the discrimination it does. A format of this discrimination can be seen in the real life accounts of Mexican-American writer, Luis Alberto Urrea, who in his book Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border, talks about his experience in Tijuana (a city in Mexico adjacent to the Mexican-American border) where thousands of immigrants/refugees from different parts of Central America arrive every day, with the hope that they might be able to cross the Mexican-American border and make it to The United States. He provides an account of the struggles of these refugees, who after spending all their money, leaving their homeland behind and facing all sorts of violence do make it to Tijuana but only to face more violation. Reaching Tijuana isn’t the most painful hurdle for them, the real struggle begins after they reach there and begin the journey of crossing the highly-guarded Mexican-American border. The border, strengthened by Border Patrol, makes the idea of reaching the other side of the fence (USA) a ‘dream’ for these refugees. The biopolitics comes here in the form of both nations’ Border Patrols who stop these immigrants from entering North America. The danger is present not only in the form of the ‘foreign’ Border Patrols but also in the form of the ‘local’ coyotes (guides) who at times turn on these refugees and take all their money away from them. If the coyotes don’t attack them, there are rateros (thieves), if the rateros don’t, there are pandilleros (gangs) who will. If the refugees are lucky enough (or rather, smart enough) to avoid these thugs, they will eventually collide with the authoritative Border Patrols who catch them and transport them back to Tijuana, forcing these desperate refugees to start their struggle from scratch. When these refugees return back unsuccessfully to Tijuana they are without a place to live, without any money to fulfill their basic needs, sometimes they are even without clothes and shoes. In many cases they are even â€Å"bloodied from a beating by pandilleros, or an â€Å"accident† in the Immigration and Naturalization Service compound. They can’t get proper medical attention. They can’t eat, or afford to feed their family. Some of their compatriots have been separated from their wives or their children. Now their loved ones are in the hands of strangers, in the vast and unknown United States† (Urrea 17-18). It is clear that North America doesn’t want these Central American refugees, and after a time even these refugees’ spirit starts to break. They start ‘living’ in Tijuana where they sell chewing gum, their children sing in traffic and at every stoplight they wash the car windshields. â€Å"If North America does not want them, Tijuana wants them even less. They become the outcasts of an outcast region† (Urrea 19). All these circumstances are a result of biopolitics which stops these ‘Others’ from mixing with the ‘Us’. These refugees are not welcomed in Tijuana, which is a place that itself isn’t welcome in Mexico. Tijuana is Mexico’s cast-off child. Although, she brings money and attracts foreigners, no one would dare claim her. Some people there don’t count Tijuana as a part of Mexico. For them the border is nowhere. But, in reality a border does exist there. That borer is ‘invisible’. Here, we can refer to Etienne Balibar’s concept of ‘inner borders’ which are â€Å"invisible borders, situated everywhere and nowhere† (Balibar 78). While talking about Europe’s Schengen Convention, Balibar says that â€Å"one of the major implications of the Schengen Convention [†¦] is that from now on, on ‘its’ border [†¦] each member state is becoming the representative of the others† (Balibar 78). By this, he is referring to the exploitation a refugee/immigrant/asylum seeker faces when more than one (Schengen) nations come together to exploit these refugees by prohibiting them entry (to asylums, etc.) in nearly every European nation (who have signed the Schengen Agreement). The border of these Schengen nations is biopolitically constructed, and â€Å"is indeed the only aspect of ‘the construction of Europe’ that is currently moving forward, not in the area of citizenship, but in that of anti-citizenship , by way of coordination between police forces and also of more or less simultaneous legislative and constitutional changes regarding the right of asylum and immigration regulations, family reunion, the granting of nationality, and so on† (Balibar 78). Although, the Declaration of Rights, (based on the birth-nation link and leading to national sovereignty) was expected to succeed the collapse of the ancien rà ©gime (where the concept of national citizenship was absent), Agamben clearly says that after World War I â€Å"the birth-nation link has no longer been capable of performing its legitimating function inside the nation-state, and the two terms have begun to show themselves to be irreparably loosened from each other† (Agamben 132). This leads him to talk about the immense increase of refugees and stateless persons in Europe. He lists several Europeans (1,500,000 White Russians, 700,000 Armenians, etc.) who were displaced from their countries in the first half of 20th century. Then, he talks about the mass denaturalization and denationalization of their own populations committed by France in 1915 with respect to naturalized citizens of â€Å"enemy† origin and by Belgium in 1922 who revoked the naturalization of citizens who have committed â€Å"anti national† acts during the war. He then mentions the â€Å"most extreme point† of this process when the Nuremberg laws on â€Å"citizenship in the Reich† and the â€Å"protection of German blood and honor† introduced â€Å"the principle according to which citizenship was something of which one had to prove oneself worthy and which could therefore always be called into question† (Agamben 132). This highlights the fact that by u sing the biopolitical weapons of Fascism and Nazism, countries stripped their own citizens off of their citizenship and human rights and ultimately pushed them towards their death. Agamben claims that, â€Å"Today it is not the city but rather the camp that is the fundamental biopolitical paradigm of the West† (Agamben 181). The two resulting phenomenons: 1) The massive increase in the number of refugees and stateless persons in Europe, and 2) European states allowing the mass denaturalization and denationalization of their own populations, â€Å"show that the birth-nation link, on which the Declaration of 1789 had founded national sovereignty, had already lost its mechanical force and power of self-regulation by the time of the First World War† (Agamben 132). What actually happens is that the governments suspend civil rights during social crisis and decide who is to be excluded and who is to be included. The refugees are the ones who are excluded. The camp signifies a state of exception in which â€Å"the originary relation of law to life is not application but Abandonment† (Agamben). The one who is banned is not simply set outside the law but rather abandoned by it. This highlights the fact that the nations and their biopolitics truly lack the humanitarian aspect. Agamben sees a separation of humanitarian concerns from politics. Instead, what’s visible to him is a solidarity between humanitarianism and the political powers it should fight. This contradiction is a primary reason for the failure of several committees and organisations (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, for example) who work for the problem of refugees and the protection of human rights. They simply refuse to comment on the actions of political regimes. â€Å"This distinction is also seen in the general populace of many nation-states in which great compassion is demonstrated by donating millions of dollars to fund humanitarian aid, while showing great hostility to those same suffering faces when they are more proximate strangers† (qtd. in Zembylas). Although, these organizations function for the right of these refugees, they fail to resolve their problems in any way. These humanitarian organizations â€Å"maintain a secret solidarity with the very powe rs they ought to fight† â€Å"The separation between humanitarianism and politics that we are experiencing today is the extreme phase of the separation of the rights of man from the rights of the citizen† (Agamben 133). Now, the big question is how to stop the exploitation of these refugees at the hands of nations’ biopolitics? Some might suggest that since the concept of ‘refugees’ is a result of ‘borders’, a ‘borderless world’ would aptly solve the problem of refugees. But, â€Å"such a ‘world’ would run the risk of being a mere arena for the unfettered domination of the private centers of power which monopolize capital, communications and, perhaps also, arms† (Balibar 85). By saying this, Balibar is pointing towards the omnipresence of biopolitics which makes the fact clear that a world without borders and biopolitics can only exist in a state of utopia. First of all, what Agamben suggests is that the concept of the refugee must be separated from the concept of the human rights because refugees are devoid of any of those rights. It should be clearly visible to everyone where they stand. Secondly, the refugees are born in a nation and they should belong to it but they aren’t allowed to, and since they are born as Man they should be considered citizens but they aren’t. This is why the refugees must call into question the existing fundamental concepts of the nation-state: the birth-nation and the man-citizen links. Refugees should make nations and humanist organizations see how much they are lacking in their humanitarian approach. Lastly, refugees have got the power to ask the nations to renew their existing political categories where â€Å"bare life is no longer separated either in the state order or in the figure of human rights† (Agamben 134). If there would be no separation of bare life, then there wouldnâ€℠¢t be any discrimination against the refugees. This way they will be recognized as humans and citizens just like any other person and their discrimination at the hands of biopolitics will eventually see a decline. Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995.  126, 132, 133, 134, 181. Print. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace World,  1966. N. pag. Print. Balibar, Etienne. Politics and the Other Scene. London: Verso, 2002. 78. Print.  Downey, Anthony. Zones of Indistinction. http://www.sothebysinstitute.com/files/research/zones.pdf. Sothebys Institute of Art, 26  Apr. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2014. Foucault, Michel, and Mauro Bertani. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collà ¨ge De  France, 1975-1976. New York: Picador, 2003. 255. Print. Robin, Corey. Fear: The History of a Political Idea. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. N. pag. Print. Urrea, Luis Alberto. Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border. New York:  Anchor, 1993. 17, 18, 19. Print. Zembylas, Michalinos. Agambens Theory of Biopower and Immigrants/Refugees/AsylumSeekers. Journal.jctonline.org/index.php/jct/article/viewFile/195/83. Journal of  Curriculum Theorizing, 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

Fear Factor :: essays research papers

Fear Factor Journal   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  H. P. Lovecraft once said â€Å"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.† Everybody has or has dealt with some sort of fear in their life. For some, fear only manifests itself in some form of mild discomfort, but for others it can be so great that it creates an emotional vice-grip and holds it victim captive. I have my share of fears in life. One of these fears, which I have had since childhood, is my fear of supernatural and evil spirits. I am Christian and I believe in God, therefore I must also believe that there is a devil. As a Christian I am also aware of the contest between good and evil, so I am no doubt afraid of Satan and the infections of evil that he has brought to this earth. In the Bible it says that God allows Satan and his fallen angels a limited amount of power on earth. When I was younger I began hearing stories of people practicing witchcraft and worshipping Satan in a nearby town called Cassadaga, Florida. I was frightened at the thought of people that would deny God and follow Satan. This fear is commonly known by many as satanophobia. To confront this fear I must be prepared to possibly be in the presence of people that worship the dark prince and possibly demons or spirits.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One September day I decided to go out to Cassadaga and confront my fears of the stories that I had heard. I told myself that there should be no place where I may go that God will not be with me to protect me. With that in mind, I found the directions to this town of only 55 residences. I began driving and soon enough saw a sign that said â€Å"Cassadaga 1 mile†. Once I entered the city limits I realized that my surroundings looked like the setting of a modern day horror film. There were tall trees that were dead with no leaves, rundown houses, broken fences, dirt roads, and rotted wooden signs. The main road was paved and as I drove through the town I saw signs everywhere out front of houses that read â€Å"Spiritual Readings, Psychic Readings.† This didn’t really bother me, because I kept thinking of funny old people like Miss Cleo from paid programming on T.V. I decided to drive down some of the narrow dirt roads.

Narrative essay on African American people

The issue on African-American exemplifies the problem on racism / racial discrimination. Among the whites, the African-American class comprises the minority group in United States of America. In history, the Civil War was caused by disagreement of Confederates States of America to free African-American slaves. The fear to African-Americans excluded them in military. After the Civil War, the slavery of African-American people was still prevalent. African-American people were still treated as slaves, they do not have equal right as the whites, and abused by the larger groups in almost all American societies. (Until today) Although laws pertaining for equal rights to all citizens of America were instigated, racial discrimination is implied / seen in United States (Franklin, J. H. and A. A. Moss, Jr., http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375406713). Education The effect of racial discrimination causes separation / segregation in schools in the south and in the north of America. In United States, two worlds were created between the white society and black community. The culture, customs, practices, beliefs between the two races can not meet / come across. The American-Africans were excluded in the mainstream of American societies. Conversely, there were cases where African-Americans were not allowed to be educated. Bylaws of the society issue a criminal case to any educating African-American (before). Unequal education between the whites and American-Africans arises. The public schools issue racial discrimination over American-Africans. In any cases, American-Africans were given little attention when it comes to consultation (between black students and teachers), resources (books and school supplies), and concerns of teachers. Despite of the separation between the whites and American-Africans education, American-Africans focus on the church as center in their educational and political living. Today, the bilingual education helps American-Africans to respect their own culture, tradition, beliefs, and customs. American-Africans do have equal rights to the system they wanted to be educated. The bilingual education enhances the student’s capability in studying since American-Africans can educate in their own languages / lingo. Community The community easily identifies slaves with regards to the appearance, color, and language of African-Americans. Early in the history, African-Americans were castigated since they were in greater supply. Specifically, women were abused, they were treated as animals, and sex slavery was abundant in United States. The African-Americans children were automatically become slaves. The whites implemented laws prohibiting African-Americans to owned guns, create business, and possess equal rights to the community. The African-Americans comprises a portion in the community. These people are inapt in American societies. The whites feel superior, dominance, authority to the black community. In a particular community in United States, the whites prefer to favor the whites instead of an African-American. A whites tend to gives more importance to a white person rather than help a poor African-American. In any community, a dominant class would be authoritative, racist, abused the minority. It is actually natural / normal to any community / nation / society. In a white’s perspective, they hated blacks. They think that blacks were criminals, without education, and belong to lower classes of the society. The white community discriminates those blacks. In any situations, the hospital gives first priority to a white patient, a (white) employer gives favor to a white applicant, and the white community would only hear a white’s complaint. Family Slavery causes division / separation of African-American families. Because the blacks were given a monetary value, they were forced to work as slaves. Unfair employment was given to the African-Americans. The society looks at an African-American family inferior to the social order of United States. Society The society directs to how its environment will works. Through the globe, slave trade is seen between two (strong) nations. Muslims were able to exchange African slaves. In the societal scheme of the whites, they enslaved African-Americans. The whites were able to utilized African-Americans in their farms, and other business works (Franklin, J. H. and A. A. Moss, Jr., http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375406713). Nevertheless, the whites gave the African-Americans low degree of employment (blue-collar job). The whites worry to the destabilization in their economic expansion and hierarchy. African-Americans were the ones involved in harvesting crops, security, peon, and soiled works. The slave trade in United States produced tobacco, cotton, and sugar. In the last 100 years, the high mortality rate and abused of African-Americans open an opportunity for a social change. Although there are free African-Americans, they were controlled in the society. In history, slaves purchased their own freedom. In the political system of the United States, African-Americans could vote. They were not given the right to take part in the election since they were included in the lower classes. Threats exist to exclude African-African from voting. As much as they couldn’t do businesses, they also prohibited to own any property. The whites wanted to contain and continue supremacy over African-Americans. No African-Americans can complaint to any crimes done by the whites. In the movie Crash, there was an incident where an African-American woman was molested by a cop (white), her husband wasn’t able to charge a court case since he was an African-American. Miscegenation (interracial marriage) was not allowed by the society. Such cases would issue a lawsuit and incarceration of any African-American. The society enforced segregation on hotels, buses (transportation), theaters, and restaurants between the whites and African-Americans. The society does not recognize talents, music, intelligence, and capability of blacks. Summary In any develop nation, two races creates a chaotic situation of education, community, culture, customs, and beliefs. Abused and mistreatment of the minority groups is prevalent in these societies. African-Americans suffer from racial discrimination; unemployment, inability to take part in the elections, isolation of education, and abused on the rights of African-Americans as a citizen of the United States. Until today, African-Americans were given the right to vote, fair employment, inclusion in military forces, and given important position in the government. People can’t do away with the differences in appearances, culture, and beliefs, but, people can meet halfway in order to attain equality. Work Cited Franklin, J. H. and A. A. Moss, Jr. From Slavery to Freedom A History of African Americans (8th Edition). Random House, Inc. 2004. URL http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375406713. Retrieved October 4, 2007.

James Bond: Standing the Test of Time Essay

My fellow film enthusiasts, just like the contemporary version of this iconic drink, the core formula of any Bond film can be seen as a ‘shaken not stirred’ concoction of girls, guns, gadgets and villains all revolving around the essential main character, James Bond. Like the classic martini it is this formula which has been, when necessary, enhanced and refined to represent changing societal values, attitudes and beliefs from 1962 to present. This ability to sustain the longevity of the franchise by appealing to contemporary audiences is why Bond can be seen to stand the test of time. The evolution of films throughout the franchise can best be illustrated when examining two Bond movies which are more than four decades apart; Sean Connery’s 1964 Goldfinger, and Daniel Craig’s 2006 Casino Royale. These films specifically highlight two main elements of the Bond formula; the character portrayal of James Bond and the depiction of women in society and how they have evolved to suit the taste buds of the particular time. The most obvious, yet fundamentally important aspect of the Bond franchise is the construction of 007 himself, James Bond. The construction of Bond is a complex fabric, sewn with puns and audaciously graceful remarks, then taken and intricately fused with his uncompromising skills as an ‘MI6 assassin’. These traits portray him as a hero who provides a level of escapism, while still being implicitly understood by contemporary audiences. In Goldfinger, Connery’s handsome, resourceful and collected Bond flagrantly dismisses women when he has to attend to ‘man talk’. He must also ironically resort to physically restraining himself from indulging in any sexual temptations. This era of film strongly appealed to viewers who were looking for a respite from the pseudo-American toughness which was obligatory to male protagonist films of the 1960s, characterised by such movies as Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry and Paul Newman’s Cool Hand Luke. We again see Bond’s tongue-in-cheek humour when he retorts â€Å"I must be dreaming† after being introduced to Goldfinger’s personal pilot Pussy Galore. This inability to refrain from speaking a man’s ‘inner monologue’ and his failure to accept Galore is unaffected by his charm, is characteristic of a man who is a product of a pre-feminist society. Bond is a man who audiences are willing to accept can engage the problems of the world, can seduce any woman along the way, and win. Turn the clock forward to Casino Royale in 2006 and we find the birth of a new sophisticated, masculine yet emotionally vulnerable Bond. Craig transforms Bond into a man who has lost none of the wit, pithy comebacks or refined repertoire found in the Connery Bond. He is however no longer the emotionally detached killer depicted in Goldfinger. By 2006 he is a man who wears the burdens of his actions. Bond is repeatedly subjected to the strict, almost dictatorial command of females such as M.  Threatened to have his status of ‘00’ revoked and plainly exposed by M, where she states â€Å"utter one more syllable I’ll have you killed† Bond is displayed as almost a ‘liability’ to the British secret service. He is portrayed as a man who is driven to play by his own rules, yet still cautiously walks the line of bureaucracy; arguably a modern day J. Edgar Hoover. Upon meeting Vesper Lynd, the leading Bond girl of the film, Bond immediately engages her in hyper-critical verbal parry where each person attempts to uncover emotional experiences from the other’s past. Their critical conversation reaches its climax when Bond replies â€Å"you’re not my type† to which Vespa retorts â€Å"smart† â€Å"single†¦Ã¢â‚¬  illustrating Bond is able to finish a conversation with no sexual resolve, depicting a man who is more interested in a mental challenge rather than a sexual resolution. A man who now could arguably live up to the elevated social expectations of women such as Germaine Greer. This new Bond reflects the changes in societal attitudes when men are expected to be in touch with their inner selfs and their emotions, a trait which is mirrored in other contemporary films such as Bruce Willis’s Die Hard 4. . Although glamorous women are an essential part of the core formula, their portrayal has evolved over time in accordance with changing societal attitudes and beliefs displayed by contemporary audiences. Connery’s Bond in Goldfinger would be viewed today as nothing more than a misogynistic dinosaur who uses and objectifies women for no greater purpose than sexual pleasure. This is deliberately obvious within the first scene of Goldfinger where Bond seduces, and then uses a woman as a human shield whilst defending himself against his enemies; portraying her life as having less value and being more dispensable than his. This objectification of women is again depicted by Goldfinger’s inauspiciously named pilot and commander of his female aerial squadron, blonde bombshell and judo expert Pussy Galore. She is a female who could be depicted more accurately as a coordinator of a burlesque troop rather than covert military operatives. Galore is blatantly explicit with Bond when she states â€Å"you can turn off your charm, I’m immune. † Bond takes this sexual fend as a challenge rather than a rejection, as he continues to force himself upon her, highlighted by their fight and subsequent sexual interaction. If this encounter was to be emulated in a modern film, today’s society would view this as unacceptable conduct, both verbally and physically, as it is blatantly offensive towards women’s rights. Whatever happened to no means no? This segment of Goldfinger however would have appealed to the contemporary era of a 1960s audience, as behaviour such as this was viewed as politically and socially correct, however not necessarily accepted, at that time. This objectification and stereotyping of women has been challenged in social and feminist movements from the late 1960s through to the present day. Speakers such as Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi have inspired and enlightened women to demand equal rights and illustrated how they have previously been socially and physically dominated by men. Women are now well educated, self sufficient, authoritative and independent; exemplified by M’s statement in Casino Royale, â€Å"I report to the Prime Minister and even he’s smart enough not to ask me what we do. Have you ever seen such a bunch of self-righteous, ass-covering pricks? † This obliterates the ideals that women need to be chaperoned by men in order to make executive decisions. This new image of capable and headstrong women, symbolised by M and Vepser Lynd, is the defining statement from a post-feminist society. Portrayed not as a ‘disposable’ Bond girl, Vesper can be seen to reach a level of emotional attachment to Bond whereby she exposes a mutual vulnerability previously not depicted in earlier films. It is this human connection that a contemporary educated audience now expects. This mix of powerful yet emotionally susceptible women is also clearly paralleled in other contemporary movies such as the women of Sex and the City. The adaptation, modification and the overall evolution of the James Bond franchise has always been in pursuit of the same goal; depicting a current, contemporary and desirable Bond for a modern audience. Just like the classic martini it is this core formula which has been enhanced and refined from 1962 to present. This ability to sustain the longevity of the franchise by appealing to the tastes of contemporary audiences is why Bond, the man of all the right words, the man with the ‘golden gun’ will continue to inspire and captivate audiences until the end of time.