Tomorrow Never Dies: James Bond, Rupert Murdoch, and the Dominion Law Suit

 

By Steven Jonas

As it happens (in part because I have been on this Earth for such a long time), I have seen every James Bond film, in a movie theater, and for many of them, again on television re-runs. One of my most favorites is the 1997 film, “Tomorrow Never Dies,” starring Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh. (Yes, that Michelle Yeoh, who just won as Oscar for Best Actress.) As for Pierce Brosnan, while my favorite overall Bond was [The Saint’s] Roger Moore, who always played the role with a twinkle in his eye, Pierce Brosnan was the only one of the succession of other fine actors who played the role, who one could picture as a Royal Navy Commander [and after all, the character in the series was known as Commander Bond] standing on the bridge of a Royal Navy Frigate, in his Burberry London duffle coat, the frigate on convoy duty in the North Atlantic on a cold February morning in 1943.

“Tomorrow Never Dies” is one of the most directly political films of the series, for it concerns a plot by a major media magnet (mainly newspapers back in the 90s when it was made) to trick China and the United Kingdom in going to war with each other so that he could (somehow) get an exclusive to the coverage of the war, and thus expand his media empire. The villain, one Eliot Carver, is played brilliantly by Johnathan Pryce (one of the great character actors of our era). His totally evil character (getting tons of people killed and much property destroyed so that he could sell more papers) appeared to be roughly based on Rupert Murdoch. Indeed, at the time, there was much mention in various media about that happenstance.

The plot can be briefly summarized, with the help of Wikipedia, as follows.

Bond is sent by his supervisor “M” at MI6 (British Military Intelligence) to investigate an Asian terrorist arms bazaar. Through a convoluted series of events (aren’t they always convoluted in Bond films? — indeed half the fun), he discovers this plot of Carver’s. In the course of the back-and-forths (and there are always back-and-forths) Carver manages to sink a Royal Navy frigate (there they are again). Interestingly enough, it turns out that Carver had released news article of the event hours before MI6 became aware of it. There is much too-ing and fro-ing with “encoders,” beautiful women (in addition to Wai Lin, Michelle Yeoh’s character), communication to the Chinese government of the Carver plot, more too-ing and fro-ing, culminating in Bond and Wai Lin getting onto Carver’s ship (a stealth one as the plot would have it), killing Carver and disposing of his ship, and then of course sharing a moment (or two) of romance at the end.

So why did I deal with this piece of cinematic history, back then? Well of course it’s the real-life, really horrifying, parallels that are played out right now, before our very eyes (except that Murdoch is very much alive and I surely don’t wish him dead — “Succession” be damned). Murdoch and his media empire has filled a very real and very important (if evil) role in the history-as-it-is-developed of the United States and the role of the Republican Party (or what I call the “Republo-fascist Party“) in determining what that history shall be, from their support of Trump leading up the 2016 election to their role in promoting the post 2020-election “Big Lie,” even while, as discovery in the Dominion case has shown, they didn’t believe a word of it. (If somebody wrote this stuff, nobody would believe it. Murdoch is nothing if not imaginative.) And so, for now anyway, they have met their comeuppance with the “Dominion Law Suit” and its Settlement.

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Source: OpEdNews.com