James Bond

I was all about the click-bait titles for a while. I'm overworked and all about sleep at the moment. Something I've found works well for a quick post is talking about a book I've read recently, so here goes.

There's been enough written on how well the early Bond movies with Sean Connery have aged (they haven't). But as I've started to listen to more audiobooks, it's allowed me to branch out in my interests, and I decided to try a few Flemming novels. I read Casino Royale and Moonraker, and it's a testament to my curiosity that I bothered with the second because Casino Royale was a mess. There's the innocent way that it doesn't age well, and there's the less innocent way, as I'm sure you can guess.

First, it's nice to know why the villain clichés exist in fiction. Bond seems to always follow the same pattern of foiling the villain's plot, then trailing them in a high speed car chase. His car crashes, he's kidnapped and tortured, and then the villain starts waxing poetic about their great plan instead of killing him. He escapes and they all live happily ever after. There's a beautiful girl of course, who is conveniently removed from Bond's life at the end of the story so that he can carry on with someone else in the next instalment. I finally understand Austin Powers.

The beautiful woman, mind you, is the more obvious problem. There's some amount of chauvenism I'll excuse in a 50's plot. I can read Bond drone on and on about how women can't be focused on a mission and are nothing but a distraction (a distraction he clearly enjoys, for the record, with long and explicit monologues that attest to it). It's sexist, sure, but I knew what I was getting in to. It's when she disagrees with him and he develops a strong urge to give her a good, firm spanking, or, unbelievably when he describes the sex as being wonderful because she had a sexual maturity matched with an intimate privacy that gave sex the "sweet tang of rape". That's when your mouth falls open mid commute and you rewind because you're convinced you misheard the recording.

Why is Daniel Craig still entertaining us with Casino Royale remakes in the 21st century. There's a lot of nuance in the Me Too conversation about what should and shouldn't be verboten, when someone goes beyond the pale with a come on at work or a pushy date. That said, I would have no problem with retiring the Bond character at this point. I haven't come close to watching the whole list of movies, so I don't know when they stopped being as rapey as the books, but it wasn't soon enough. I'll watch a new Jason Bourne or Mission Impossible. Make as many Fast and Furious movies as you want. But the last problem we have is a need for a more diverse James Bond. No, I think it's just time to wave goodbye.