JOIN USFor His Eyes Only
Lisa Funnell
Wallflower Press
2016, pp 309, Rs. 1,775
The sensuous secret agent is past 50, and is not done yet. With its all 24 releases under Eon productions, Ian Fleming’s iconic James Bond (with a pre-script 007) has continued to seduce women as if there is no tomorrow.
Providing a visual guarantee of the maleness of the secret agent, from Dr No to Spectre, the female characters have been treated with disdain by James Bond. No wonder, Bond has been personified as a guilt-free voyeur with a licence to seduce and bed women, and if need be, kill them as well. The legacy of the most-wanted secret service agent has been built at the expense of women of all hues.
How has the character, accused of sexism, endeared itself on the silver screen for five decades? Having studied the James Bond franchise for over a decade, Lisa Funnell, in her book For His Eyes Only, has come up with a nuanced understanding of gender, sexuality and female representation in the series. Pulling contributions from over two dozen established and emerging scholars, the compilation provides breadth and depth that go beyond the assumption that the masculine genre of action is created by and for men. In reality, however, Bond has been scripted both as a figure who is desired and a figure who desires. More than mere beautiful objects, the Bond girls, from Ursula Andress to Monica Balucci, have given momentum to the story with their underrated skills in armed combat and espionage knowledge.
Funnell, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, has often been asked how, being a woman and feminist, she has followed aggressive heterosexual masculinity and consequent suppression of women by James Bond. Positioning herself in the complex space defined by the patriarchal nature of film, she discounts the problematic nature of the films in favour of consumption of male culture that defines female fandom. Why should gendering of consumptive practices work to delimit pleasure?
In the Bond fantasy world, both good and bad women have a pivotal role to play in furthering the narrative. These characters can easily be viewed as symbols rather than individuals, their position being a reflection of their disposable physical attributes as mere functions of the narrative. No surprise, therefore, that the Bond girl is usually characterised as being independent and wilful.
Does it mean the Bond stories reflect a progressive view of women’s sexuality? On the contrary, the manner in which James Bond ends up possessing the girl(s) reflects a traditional, and culturally problematic, male fantasy of women’s sexuality. Sample the iconic scene of rising Ursula Andress out of the surf in a white bikini in Dr No. “What are you doing here? Looking for shells?” she asks. Without missing the gaze, Bond replies, “No, I’m just looking.”
Sigmund Freud would view such a ‘gaze’ from the notion of scopophilia, which creates a voyeuristic viewing situation in the darkness of the theatre. In drawing greater sexual freedom for women, Ian Fleming extracted greater sexual opportunities for men. And, it has paid dividends at the box office. The social consequences of the perpetuation of gender stereotypes are far from being understood.
There is an interesting twist to the tale, though. The first Bond novel was published in the same year as the launch of Playboy, lending credence to the assumption that the story emerged in the context of mass-market pornography. It captured the emerging consumptive characteristic of post-war Western Europe and North America. And, there hasn’t been any looking back since then. If graphic account of sex wasn’t enough, the Bond girls were given sexually suggestive names — the most risqué being Pussy Galore, played by Honor Blackman in Goldfinger (1964). Plenty O’Toole and Octopussy were other suggestive names.
Ever since the iconic character was created, socio-political developments have shaped the depiction of women in the franchise. The book captures the influence of feministic undercurrents on the franchise through the decades. The most significant change being the transformation of Playboy in recent months. With the magazine having started covering its girls, so has James Bond responded by bedding fewer women than his predecessors. Spectre, the latest Bond film, has Daniel Craig in a more serious romantic relationship.