Martinis – shaken, not stirred – Aston Martins and special gadgets, love interests with names containing double entendres, and a gun barrel sequence: these are just some of the many images and ideas that popular culture associates with James Bond. But what do these symbols actually represent and perpetuate in mass society? Aesthetically, the films simply serve to entertain American and British audiences, but literary theorists Rivkin and Ryan would argue that there is something more than meets the eye, asserting that “[o]ne sees the media, television, film, and the like as instruments of economic, ethnic, and gender domination…the media inevitably further attitudes and perceptions that assure its continuation” (1026). Although the 2006 Bond film, Casino Royale, uses action and romance to drive the plot, the film essentially tears down females and puts men on a pedestal, promoting a powerful, patriarchal concept of Western society, not only for the United Kingdom and America, but to international, Bond-loving audiences as well.
In his controversial portrayal of the legendary spy, Daniel Craig’s Bond strays away from the classical interpretation of the character, producing a mysterious, antihero persona. However, throughout the film, Bond upholds the White, Western idea of the heterosexual male. Explaining Marxist beliefs, Chris Barker states that “the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class” (56), suggesting that the majority of American and British Bond audiences in the 21st century still desire and advocate this type of dominating figure. Thus, in keeping with the film, masculinity requires being physically strong, mentally logical, and somewhat emotionless.
In fact, because of Bond’s debonair personality – “the man that men want to be and women want to be with” – it would seem that men are encouraged to strive for these Bond-like qualities. During the film, Craig’s Bond experiences a short instance of a lack of reasoning when he initially resigns from MI6 to settle down and live “happily ever after” with love interest Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green. By the end of the movie, however, he detaches himself from all emotion – this is in keeping with the film’s function as a precursor to the “Bond we all know and love,” who can go through women like a child goes through toys. This latter stage of the character allows men to desire sex without having to commit to a long-lasting relationship, where the ultimate goal would be marriage and children. Bond also has an earlier love interest with the enemy’s wife, Solange, which further perpetuates the promiscuous behavior of males as acceptable; sleeping around, in particular, even at the expense of and with no regard for other men. The movie may unconventionally reject the institution of marriage, but it calls forth a homogeneous construct of masculinity, which serves both the men already in power and the men who want to be power. By legitimating male domination within American and British societies, such domination is made to appear natural to audiences.
Moreover, the film upholds the notion of the woman as being “the other”. In The Second Sex de Beauvoir argues that “[man] thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it”. Women are regarded as a stumbling block for men; defective, cunning, and dangerous. Some may seem classy, sophisticated, and self-reliant, but many have skeletons in their closets. In one of the most famous and integral scenes from the movie, Bond and Vesper share an intimate moment in the shower after Bond carelessly kills several henchmen, illustrating just how easily a man can be seduced by the seeming-innocence of a woman.
Bond later confesses to Vesper that she has stripped his armor from him: “Whatever is left of me – whatever I am – I’m yours”. Nonetheless, Vesper is eventually shown to be a double-agent who has been able to play both sides until the very end of the movie. The appearance of an independent woman usually leads to no good, and Bond’s traumatic experience with Vesper serves as a warning for men to stay away from dominating women, who reel you in and wrap you around their finger before ever showing their true colors. Further, women are used as objects in the movie, endorsing an unspoken desire to put females below males. Bond seduces Solange to get to her husband Dimitrios, an early villain in the film, and later, Le Chiffre’s organization kidnaps Vesper and uses her to lure Bond into a trap. These subtle, distinct uses of women serve to strip females of any identity they may have and advance the idea of woman as “the other”, not belonging to any history nor having any sense of belonging at all, but simply living under the rule of males. de Beauvoir generalizes this notion by stating that woman is “a free and autonomous being like all human creatures – nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other.” Woman, then, is defined by her male counterparts: father, son, male co-workers and friends. Instead of having or forming her own identity, she is handed an identity by male-dominated society.
Radical in nature and treatment, Casino Royale breaks away from the traditional representation of James Bond, while repeatedly illustrating normative strands of love and maintaining powerful social and cultural ideologies of Western masculinity, successfully yet subtly oppressing women. Although women commend themselves for the amount of liberties they have gained in the West, the actual freedom has only been granted as a gift and prize, as opposed to a universal right and entitlement. Casino Royale seemingly presents the modern world as if no advances for women have actually been made. Indeed, the Bond franchise will forever be marketed as a simple spy-movie, but the ideologies that the movies actually endorse go beyond the mere façade of a suave, licensed-to-kill, clever assassin.
Craig, Daniel, and Eva Green, perf. Casino Royale. Dir. Martin Campbell. Columbia Pictures, 2006. Film.
de Beauvoir, Simone. "The Second Sex." marxists.org. Penguin, 2005. Web. 22 Aug. 2010.
Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan, eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 1025-27. Print.
