Notes Toward an Empiric Understanding of Escapism

I stumbled into from "From Russia with Love" (1964) on TV last night. 

The gadgets have not aged well (car phone, Poison-tipped, dagger-edged women's shoes? Seriously?). But I found myself craving Sean Connery's wardrobe: those impossibly clean-lined suits, a bespoke purple checked shirt with what appear to be steel buttons. 

Since this was my first night off in a while, I also found myself taking notes compulsively and then sorting through the index cards.

Allow me to share my preliminary findings:

Total number of Sex scenes, broadly defined for the purposes of a PG-rated movie: 14

Rate: one every 8.2 minutes on average

Of which:

Number of scenes of implicit, off-camera sex: 7 

Number of scenes of implicit, off-camera threesomes: 1

Number of times 007 is unwittingly filmed having sex, knowingly: 1

Number of "girl" fights: 2

Number of scenes involving belly-dancers: 2

Number of scenes involving egregious undressing by a female masseuse: 1

Total number of scenes involving Violence, excluding the playful slapping of women: 13

Rate: one every 8.8 minutes on average

Of which:

Number of Explosions: 4 (Turkish villa, Russian embassy, helicopter, barrels of fuel)

Number of shootouts involving a small army of swarthy extras posing as gypsies: 1

Number of murders: 7 (James Bond impersonator, Russian agent, Bulgarian assassin, SPECTRE's No. 3, chess Russian grandmaster, assassin who offends Bond by ordering red wine with fish)

Number of murders by Bond: 1, self defense

Number of scenes involving off-camera torture of a detainee: 1

Rate at which sexualized or violent content is featured on average: once every 4.25 minutes.

This is not a great or even a good movie. It's not even a good Bond movie.

But it is instructive to note the nearly 1:1 ratio of sex to violence, a ratio that tips more decidedly toward blood and mayhem in more recent Bond movies. 

Last year's "Casino Royale," for instance, involved a scene of implicit genital mutilation.

If we get the James Bond that we deserve, what has happened to us? Or, alternatively, how is it possible that 18 months after the Cuban missile crisis, the West's last best hope against chaos was still more lover than fighter?