Helen Mirren has stated that there isn’t any earthly level in getting a girl to play James Bond as a result of the world’s most well-known fictional spy was “born out of profound sexism”.
The very first thing to say is that in fact she is correct. After all Bond was born of reactionary attitudes and solely a bore would level out what the DBE stands for in Mirren’s title. For those who doubt the reality of what she says, watch the cringeworthy second in Goldfinger when Sean Connery’s Bond dismisses his poolside masseuse Dink (performed by Margaret Nolan) as a result of he wants to debate vital stuff with Felix Leiter, and as Dink obediently leaves he slaps her behind and says: “Man speak …” Obnoxious.
Maybe an additional and much more uncomfortable level is that the Andrew Tate/JD Vance contingent would broadly agree with Dame Helen: sure, the wokery of casting a girl as 007 is unthinkable for exactly the explanations she says however on which they’ve completely different views – and, by the way, the female-casting subject is a clickbait talking-point by no means severely thought of by anybody in any related place of authority at any time. Jeff Bezos (himself a stereotypical Bond villain) could countenance all kinds of product variations, even perhaps persevering with to have a feminine agent with the notional “007” score. However James Bond might be a separate bloke.
Helen Mirren’s denunciation of Bond is a part of a long-standing exasperation which started with Paul Johnson who in 1958 famously denounced the Ian Fleming books during which 007 displayed “the sadism of a schoolboy bully, the mechanical, two-dimensional sex-longings of a pissed off adolescent, and the crude snob cravings of a suburban grownup”. Because the film franchise has developed, it’s in fact the second of those three qualities which has taken over; the film Bond has not been sadist or a snob for a lot of many years – however his sex-obsession and his standing as an object of sex-obsession, has grown and metastasised. All the pieces round him is attractive: automobiles, luxurious watches, weapons, explosions, girls. And as Nigel Tufnel says in This Is Spinal Faucet: what’s incorrect with being attractive?
However there’s something else to be seen in what Dame Helen says: she makes use of the vintage time period “sexism” and never “misogyny” which has lengthy since supplanted “sexism” within the discourse. Perhaps it’s a generational factor. However in reality Helen Mirren is utilizing her phrases accurately: “sexism” and “misogyny” usually are not interchangeable: nevertheless antediluvian most have been of their attitudes, the Bond movies don’t encourage hatred of ladies, not less than partly due to the comedy and absurdity, and the case has been made for a sex-positive reassessment.
And naturally now the Bond franchise has advanced away (a little bit) from the quaint ladmag archetypes. For some time, M was a girl, within the type of Dame Judi Dench. In No Time to Die, Lashana Lynch performed the separate “007” agent — robust, succesful and derisive of the ageing Bond, in a movie co-written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
However what the Bond movies want is probably the most progressive innovation of all: not a feminine Bond however a feminine Bond villain. We’ve got had figures reminiscent of Elektra King performed by Sophie Marceau in The World Is Not Sufficient – however they’ve by no means actually had the clear standing of alpha-villain. For the subsequent Bond movie we’d like a lethally highly effective and charismatic lady with a prestigious performing pedigree to play the antagonist, somebody who has, say, performed the MI6 murderer Vicky Winslow within the macho motion comedy Purple, and the prison matriarch Queenie Shaw within the (equally macho) Quick and Livid franchise spinoff Hobbs & Shaw. The following 007 movie might be a success if they will persuade Mirren to be the villain. And the brand new Bond will surely have to boost his recreation.
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