I generally think I'm pretty good with words, so I was surprised to realise today that I didn't know what 'quantum' meant. It's a word you hear a fair bit - Quantum Leap, quantum physics, and the in-no-way-pretentious title of the new Bond film: Quantum of Solace. A BBC article politely enquired whether I knew what it actually meant, and to be honest, I didn't (it sounds a bit like a Googlewhack) and was happy enough not knowing, as being able to understand lame titles like Never Say Never Again and The World Is Not Enough only ever led to teeth-clenching annoyance - for me anyway. I'm not a Bond fan, I've tried, I just think they're rubbish films, but I do appreciate that there are differences in quality, and while I'm not sure who was the best Bond, I know who the worst was - stand up, Brosnan, you smug bronzed twat.
Brosnan brings the odour of cheese and cheap cologne wafting onto the screen whenever he pops up (see The Thomas Crown Affair) but some of his Bond films veer towards parody - the crap accents, the worse CGI and the unforgivable one-liners; I remember when he guffawed to poor Denise Richards in one of the films (they all merge into one really) that "I thought Christmas only came once a yuhr". Her character was called Christmas you see. And clearly, she'd just come. I could barely keep my popcorn down. Anyway, I was mildly excited about Daniel Craig stepping in as a new, slicker, subtler Bond in Casino Royale, but sadly, that was a bag of old cock too, with Bond moving from the sleazy to the deeply sinister - they upped the violence but didn't change Bond's reaction to it; thus I witnessed the blond Bond literally beat a hotel porter to death before coolly muttering something along the lines of "I didn't order room service" with a wry smile. Genuinely unsettling. The follow-up, which will doubtless lull me into believing it might be half-decent, before being as rotten as that hotel porter by the time the last film finally finished, is entitled 'Quantum of Solace'. And so the BBC website was asking in mocking times, what does quantum mean? Well, it means this:
The word 'quantum' means a quantity or amount, a specified portion, or anything that can be counted and measured. It is also used in physics to describe a unit of energy, and also the smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently.
The phrase 'Quantum of Solace' is derived from an Ian Fleming short story (not sure if the film is too), and apparently is equivalent to saying 'a crumb of comfort'. For example, "I went to see another dire James Bond film, and the only quantum of solace was that we went to Nando's afterwards". Interestingly, a 'quantum leap', as in the TV series, is actually the smallest movement possible, involving tiny particles moving tiny distances. For example, Pierce Brosnan becoming sexually aroused.
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