Saving The Bond Girl

The word on the street is that the next James Bond film, No Time To Die, due for release in April 2020, has been given a “modern era” makeover so drastic that it's almost certain to leave the global fan base shaken and stirred.

Who, you ask, could possibly be responsible for such a shocking act of cultural vandalism?

Bond film honcho Barbara Broccoli, the daughter of Albert Broccoli, the man who famously brought 007 to cinematic life with his producing partner, Harry Saltzman, beginning in the early 1960s, is certainly not the root of the problem.

Ms. Broccoli earned her top seat at the franchise table on merit (the way it should be) and together with her stepbrother, Michael G. Wilson, the pair have guided the suave spy in all the right cinematic directions, for the most part, since taking over the Bond business in 1995.

So let's park political correctness in a ditch for a moment, and leave the engine running in the hope that the battery goes flat, and put a magnifying glass on the crux of the issue.

Enter actress and screenwriter Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Her name was made with TV hits including writing and starring in Fleabag and adapting the Luke Jennings Villanelle novel series into Killing Eve.

A native Londoner, Waller-Bridge, 34, lives part-time on the international awards show circuit and is currently riding high on the sink-the-Patriarchy wave sweeping over the film and TV biz at the moment.

Described gushingly by The Guardian, in a July 2017 interview, as a “forceful feminist” and “commandingly chic”, Waller-Bridge has become the de facto darling of the Leftist arts establishment, a status she is unlikely to lose anytime soon.

In 2006 she graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, a bastion of elitism, with a BA in Acting Degree, after attending private schools. Hailing from a family of titled nobility, her aristocratic roots sit somewhat at odds with the Left's war cry against the boogeyman of "white privilege". The irony is not expected to hold her back.

To her credit, the unashamedly posh Brit openly admitted in a July 2019 interview that “I’ve never pretended that I’m not from a privileged position, I really know that I am … I was perfectly set up to have success in the world."

She was, however, an odd choice to invite into a Bond script-writing room. It was like asking a devout vegan chef to join a red bloodied burger kitchen and letting them design the menu.

Ms. Waller-Bridge reportedly got involved with the script earlier this year, before the film started shooting, after several versions had already been worked on by other writers. Apparently, current 007 Daniel Craig suggested her for the rewrites.

It is believed her assignment to “polish” and “tweak” the script has resulted in Waller-Bridge emasculating 007 in every way possible, including chopping traditional Bond girls down so ruthlessly that it makes Oddjob's flat-crown bowler hat in Goldfinger look shamefully blunt by comparison.

"It's about making them feel like real people," Waller-Bridge told fashion magazine Harpers Bazaar in May 2019, when discussing if a feminist brush would fall across the curvy contours of the classic Bond girl.

But here's the thing - the key to Bond is actually the Bond girl. Without her, the iconic secret agent has no entry point to his heroism, his virility, his sense of purpose, his humanity.

Let's consider Diana Rigg's Tracy in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. She opened Bond up to his heart and tenderness. Far from reinforcing any notion of insensitive machismo, Tracy was the essential catalyst who liberated Bond's true spirit and capacity for love. Tracy saved Bond, not the other way around, remember?

If Barbara Broccoli can be faulted at all, it was in the hiring of a screenwriter whose worldview and ability to do justice to the material was incompatible with the task at hand.

“It has just got to evolve,” said Waller-Bridge about Bond, as reported by The Metro on November 8 2019. "And the important thing is that the film treats the women properly.”

The definition of “properly” was not elaborated on, neither was any diagnosis offered about what was wrong with Bond girls to begin with.

Judging by those comments, it appears that Waller-Bridge's creative toolkit lacks the understanding that the archetypal Bond girl is allegorical.

The Bond girl symbolizes something beyond her mere physical form, whether as the siren, the temptress, the crone or the damsel. These are all incarnations of the mythic Bond girl we've seen perfectly characterized over the course of Bond's glorious 50-year + cinematic legacy, with memorable performances from the likes of Ursula Andress, Halle Berry, Honor Blackman, Eva Green, Grace Jones and Lotte Lenya, to name but a few.

There have been no shortage of strong Bond women along the way. Russian agent Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me was no pushover. Thunderball assassin Fiona Volpe proved a fearsome foe. Bambi and Thumper handed Bond his butt in Diamonds Are Forever.

Moreover, Bond girls showcased different racial backgrounds in a way that compels today's social justice warriors to rethink their assumption that we didn't already have “representation” and “inclusion” a very long time ago.

Has Phoebe actually watched any Bond movies? If not, has she never been exposed to the iconic title songs, where "representation" was never absent? We can point to artists such as Shirley Bassey, Rita Coolidge, Gladys Knight, Carly Simon and Tina Turner having all put their names to a Bond song. More female artists than male have performed a 007 anthem.

How ironic that the Bond universe is now perceived by some as a brand which needs to “evolve” with regards to race and gender when, in actual fact, it has always been at the very forefront of "inclusion". How quickly some forget that Dame Judi Dench, no less, gave us a female "M".

But when it comes to the Bond girls, it's the “wrong kind” of representation, apparently, because these women were presumably too shallow, dependent and disposable, and do not represent the definition of what Waller-Bridge thinks women should be in the "real world".

Therein lies the crux of the issue. Bond does not operate in the real world. The symbolism of Bond fiction appears to be completely lost on Waller-Bridge.

Taking Bond girls literally, at face value, and then erasing or redesigning them to promote gender politics in the real world does nothing for womanhood and grossly misunderstands the feminine counterweight to 007's masculine musk.

James Bond never slapped a woman in a literal sense. He slapped characters who represented something dubious and nefarious. It was never about the gender involved, in a real world sense, it was always about what laid beneath the surface, what was being portrayed symbolically, not literally.

Bond was slapping the personification of something that embodied iniquities that we should all be slapping away. Look beyond the mere cosmetic appearance, into the subtle nuances underneath.

James Bond never bedded a woman in the real world context of it being a self-indulgent sexual conquest. His carnal encounters were symbolic of a fusion of opposite energies, essential to the vitality of the individual, male and female alike.

The romantic conquests seen in classical mythology are often metaphorical of the quest for mystical union and divine blessing, itself a challenge which is not always fulfilled. Indeed, many of the women Bond consorts with end up dead.

Reducing the mythical and psychological undertones of Bond's fictional bonking to mere chauvinistic gratification is lazy and ignorant. We could do a deep dive into Jungian psychology and esoteric literature, at this juncture, but I won't digress too far.

Audiences don't actually need any of this to be spelled out in explicit intellectual terms. The dynamics are sensed intuitively. As with all great mythic tales which have captivated Mankind from the dawn of history, we dance to a melody without always being able to name the tune.

Bond girls were perfect exactly as Ian Fleming wrote them. Bond girls are not political fodder to be misused to circulate real-world statements about contemporary gender politics. Bond fans want good Bond movies, not town hall lectures.

Waller-Bridge seems to have no understanding of the symbolism and archetypal dynamics involved. That's a critique, not an attack. She's clearly not without ability. But if you're exquisite playing the harmonica, it doesn't make you qualified to start conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Where story shamans once enchanted the tribe, telling folktales around a campfire, Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman proceeded to do exactly that with Bond's cinematic lore. They hired creators and performers who knew how to translate the mythic, symbolic beats of Fleming's work.

In the wrong hands, the campfire spell is easily broken, should a trendy bewitcher assume the seat of the storytelling throne without ample qualification.

Incidentally, if you're properly digesting this article, you will have already dismissed the notion that the term "Bond girl" is demeaning. If not, start again from the top and go slower.

Recruiting female talent and perspective to help shape a Bond outing is nothing new. What a pity it wasn't feasible to enlist the now very elderly Johanna Harwood, the female Irish screenwriter who co-wrote two of the best early Bond films, Dr. No and From Russia With Love. Here was a woman who knew how to stir the brew without diluting its alchemy.

You don't hear much about the fact that a woman was shaping awesome Bond scripts way back in the early 1960s. Pointing out this fact inconveniently interferes with the modern day narrative that women have forever been held back by a misogynistic Patriarchy.

Indeed, we're encouraged these days to be as fixated as possible on issues of race and gender, as though it's still the 1800s or early 1900s. The progress we've made over the centuries in terms of equal opportunity and multiculturalism has been phenomenal. Think Thatcher, Obama, Oprah's billions. The examples are literally endless.

But you wouldn't think so judging by the way so many film and TV franchises are being systematically shredded and refashioned in the name of "social justice" when, in actual fact, social justice is already well established in our western society. Nothing is ever perfect, but if you have talent and determination you will succeed no matter what your race or gender.

Yet we hear the opposite from some quarters, with many in the film and TV world submitting to the alarmist ideology with cult-like obedience. This has seen the outbreak of a virulent strain of ultra-political correctness for which a course of antibiotics has yet to be identified. Indeed, special mentions go to those with the spine to satirize the nonsense.

British comedic actor Steve Coogan recently landed a few soft blows on Phoebe, while accepting an award at the 2019 British Academy Britannia Awards, in an edgy monologue which also poked fun at the left-wing intelligentsia's obsession with vilifying white males.

Coogan was, in fact, openly shocked that he was getting an award in the first place. Waller-Bridge was part of an audience that leaned so far left that they made Jane Fonda look like a Trump hugging Republican by comparison, so it was refreshing to see Mr Coogan risking his scalp by not bending the knee in a room stacked with diehard lefties. I have no idea how many bodyguards he needed to safely get out of the place, but I would guess at least six.

It was hilarious, during Coogan's speech, to watch the reaction shots of the audience, locked in indecision over whether to laugh or look outraged. No doubt terrified of jeopardizing their next showbiz gig, many of them played safe and adopted the vacate facial expressions typically seen on a row of department store mannequins.

If Coogan was brave enough to attend the after-show party, it would certainly have been in disguise, complete with a Che Guevara beret cap and a Greenpeace T-shirt, after being dropped off in an electrically powered limo stocked with cute vegan snacks.

When you start handling mythical characters like 007 and the Bond girls in literal terms, instead of symbolic terms, you fail entirely. The story cauldron loses heat, the once entranced crowd thins out, the moon above will hang heavy in grief and, in the solemn light beneath, the unqualified storyteller will likely abdicate all responsibility and insist that the audience must somehow be at fault, not them. Think again.

If there's a fan backlash against Bond 25, you can be certain all criticism will get deflected back onto the disillusioned audience, as though the fans have issues with race and gender. No. Fans just want to see authentic Bond films that respect the source material.

Updating our mythologies doesn't mean throwing out their key ingredients. But I fear this is what we are about to see with the next James Bond film, just like we've seen with so many other once-great film and TV franchises over the past few years, such as Star Wars, Doctor Who, The Terminator and numerous others.

Diversity and gender equality obviously matters. But when virtue signalling overtakes story craft, the creators have only themselves to blame for the exodus of the audience.

I won't even get into the speculation that we're seeing the end of 007 himself, with reports also rife that Bond is being replaced with a female 00-something. We'll see.

Maybe we have it wrong and Waller-Bridge is a secret double agent who is actually going to celebrate and reinforce the Bond mythos rather than neuter it. The film has yet to come out, after all, and it may be prudent to reserve final judgment. But the omens are ominous.

For the time being, I pay tribute to all the Bond goddesses who came before, whose archetypal aura can still warm the soul through fond remembrance.

Ironically, with the death of the Bond girl in the MeToo era, it is now more than ever that the Bond girl needs saving. If not by 007 himself, it falls to those who mourn her passing. The vital blood of the Bond girl may run cold, but it's no time to die.

Copyright Marc John 2019

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