Is James Bond A Cunt?

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

In his book "Snobbery With Violence" Colin Watson states that James Bond isn't really a spy - he does very little actual spying. What he really is, rather less appetisingly, is a secret policeman. Presumably the Bond missions we don't get to see involve him blowing up Greenpeace boats, assassinating revolutionaries, and covering up the peccadilloes of establishment figures.
Is Bond a cunt?

[Jemble Fred]

Oh, unquestionably. By modern standards especially. Next!

Bond was Ian Fleming's hero. You only need to read up on Fleming for five minutes to see why his perfect hero would be an utter lump of poison. The only way to edge the character even vaguely towards likability to a modern audience is to completely ruin and ignore Fleming's vision.

You could argue that it's men like Bond which helped us to win WWII, admittedly. He is a product of the WWII intelligence services, and the priveleged cunts who ran it.

Would it be really cunty of me to request a thread-move to Picture Box? I think of Bond as a literary figure every bit as much as a movie one.

[CaledonianGonzo]

I must admit, I've struggled to reconcile a childhood lifelong love of Bond with my own personal politics.

Bond, at least in his literary incarnation, is a colonial-throwback and right-wing imperialist.  Depending on your political leanings that either makes him a hero or a ghastly, borderline-racist exemplar of a corrupt and decadent Western society.  During the 1950s and 60s he chums around with the CIA, whose real-life dealings at the time don't stand up to too much scrutiny.  He's a monarchist, a Tory and unquestionably on the side of the big business and the military.

But then aren't many movie action heros essentially motivated from a right-wing perspective?

There's a key passage in the Casino Royale novel where Bond's moral relativism is talked-down by Mathis, who convinces Bond of a black and white world of heroes and villains, right and wrong, good and evil.  In Quantum of Solace, Bond's words about 'not knowing who the bad guys are any more' are given to Mathis and Bond says nothing to dissuade him.  More right-wing Bond fans (i.e. the majority) see this as a (perhaps deliberate) move by renowned Hollywood leftie Paul Haggis to scuttle Fleming's (ahem) old-fashioned worldviews.

The realpolitick evidenced in QoS is pretty atypical -  the vast majority of Fleming's anti-left crusading is toned down by EON productions to make the movies more palatable - i.e. the transformation of SMERSH into the more cartoon-like SPECTRE.

Though interestingly - in one of the short stories, I forget which one - Bond is shown as being sympathetic to the cause of the Batista-era Cuban rebels.

Naturally, Bond is a sensualist as well, the depiction of which often borders on sexism.

[Blumf]

Would Harry Palmer be a more left-wing antidote to Bond?

[Ignatius_S]

Would Harry Palmer be a more left-wing antidote to Bond?

The character is a ex-black marketeer and money is a motive for his work, so I would say no.

[CaledonianGonzo]

He was certainly created to be a kind-of mirror-image to Bond - though, as you say, freeing the masses from the shackles of poverty doesn't really figure into his gameplan.

[Blumf]

The character is a ex-black marketeer and money is a motive for his work, so I would say no.

Couldn't that be seen as a rejection of the British state though. He may not be directly working for the good of the people or anything, but he is reacting against the social and political status-quo.

[Ignatius_S]

Couldn't that be seen as a rejection of the British state though. He may not be directly working for the good of the people or anything, but he is reacting against the social and political status-quo.

Rather as CaledonianGonzo was saying, Palmer was a kind of mirror image of Bond – and I would say a distorted one. Although he appreciated the finer things, like good food, Palmer and the world he exists is a little more down-at-heel and less glamorous than Bond.

Actually, I've only seen the films and have been meaning to read the books so my opinion might be flawed. However, one thing that struck me is although Palmer is motivated by money and is cynical about the circus (made all the worst by a deep-rooted distrust and dislike for authority), at his core, Palmer does still seem to be a patriot to me.

Complete tangent, but my dad used to know Deignton, who was a keen photographer -  my parents have a photo he took of me as a baby (and when I say that, I mean I was a baby, rather than just being dressed as one), where I look even more handsome than usual.

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

I guess if Bond existed in the real world, right now he'd probably be planting child porn on Julian Assange's laptop.

[Dead kate moss]

He's not a cunt, he's a bastard. The difference is bastards can sometimes be likeable.

[CaledonianGonzo]

"Oh come now Mr Bond, you enjoy being a cunt as much as I do"

Gah - beaten to it!

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

Well he's obviously a bastard - even his defenders would admit that.

I was suggesting that he's a cunt as well.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

This is why we see Bond foiling the evil plots of warped social engineers from Holland, Belgium and Switzerland.

This is why we don't see Bond in a TV series with him sat in a drawing room with his mates talking about women's tits and how socialists are ruining the country.

[kidsick5000]

In his book "Snobbery With Violence" Colin Watson states that James Bond isn't really a spy - he does very little actual spying. What he really is, rather less appetisingly, is a secret policeman. Presumably the Bond missions we don't get to see involve him blowing up Greenpeace boats, assassinating revolutionaries, and covering up the peccadilloes of establishment figures.
Is Bond a cunt?

He's on a higher pay scale than the greenpeace bombers, though I guess it's not too much of a leap to suggest he had to graduate through the less morally upright tasks.
Bond isn't a spy, he is an assassin. Only in Casino Royale does he do any real working out. Otherwise he just lucks into being in the right place/right time.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

I saw the interview with John Le Carre today, the one just broadcast by Channel 4.  He says that George Smiley's last appearance at the end of the cold war has him declaring that Communism has been defeated, and that the secret service now needed to turn its attention to the excesses of capitalism.

Ah well...

Mind you if that'd been Bond, he would probably have gone to work for Halliburton or something.  He'd fucking love the Tories.

[Ignatius_S]

...Mind you if that'd been Bond, he would probably have gone to work for Halliburton or something.  He'd fucking love the Tories.

Nope, that's not Bond style - he would much prefer being a government thug; far too snobbish to be a hired thug.

[gigolo aunts aren't gentlemen]

I don't think he's a snob really - in one of the books (OHMSS?) he's disguised as a baronet and hates it - eventually ditching all the accoutrements (replacing his copy of the Times with a tabloid, etc). Also the main food he goes on about is eggs. Constantly longing for coffee and eggs, ol' Bond. The main charge I'd level against him would be sex pervert, rather than the spurious imperialist/racist/snob stuff. There's a bit where he talks about fucking someone as having the 'sweet tang of rape'.

It sort of annoyed me in whichever League of Extraordinary Gentlemen features Bond that he's shown in this knee-jerk light. Makes you suspect that Alan Moore may not have bothered himself unduly with the source material (which is a feeling I get quite often - I doubt he's read any Thomas Nashe, for example, which is a shame because he'd probably love it).

[alcoholic messiah]

It sort of annoyed me in whichever League of Extraordinary Gentlemen features Bond that he's shown in this knee-jerk light. Makes you suspect that Alan Moore may not have bothered himself unduly with the source material (which is a feeling I get quite often - I doubt he's read any Thomas Nashe, for example, which is a shame because he'd probably love it).

Heh. The first thing this thread made me think of was the introduction that Alan Moore wrote for the hardback edition of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns:

As our political and social consciousness continues to evolve, Alan Quartermain stands revealed as just another white imperialist out to exploit the natives and we begin to see that the overriding factor in James Bond's psychological makeup is his utter hatred and contempt for women. Whether most of us would prefer to enjoy the above-mentioned gentleman's adventures without spoiling things by considering the social implications is beside the point. The fact remains that we have changed, along with our society, and that were such characters created today they would be subject to the most extreme suspicion and criticism.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

If I had inched my way for hours up a red-hot pipe to avoid an island full of blood-thirsty murderous giant crabs I'd quite want to chill with a martini then fuck every woman in sight.

GO BOND

[Ignatius_S]

I don't think he's a snob really - in one of the books (OHMSS?) he's disguised as a baronet and hates it - eventually ditching all the accoutrements (replacing his copy of the Times with a tabloid, etc). Also the main food he goes on about is eggs. Constantly longing for coffee and eggs, ol' Bond. The main charge I'd level against him would be sex pervert, rather than the spurious imperialist/racist/snob stuff. There's a bit where he talks about fucking someone as having the 'sweet tang of rape'...

One of the lines that most stuck in my head was something along the lines of Bond instantly distrusting someone because they had tied their tie with a Windsor Knot, something that 'no true gentleman would do.' It's times like this that, for me, saw the inner snob come through.

Re: food - there is the argument that for those in pre-War Britain living on rationed food found it appealing that Fleming was so descriptive about food and booze that wouldn't have been available to them. On the other side of the coin, when it comes to something like marmalade, if I remember rightly, he could be seen to be overly fussy in a snobby kind of way. That said, the character is clearly knowledgeable about culinary matters, but the way he speaks in the films about it is a snobby know-it-all, which I don't think is the case in the books.

[gigolo aunts aren't gentlemen]

Not liking a Windsor tie is the opposite of snobbery, surely - it's disliking someone wearing a poncey, overly fancy knot. So he's more like a boorish inverted snob in that case, although in a strange context.

[Ignatius_S]

Not liking a Windsor tie is the opposite of snobbery, surely - it's disliking someone wearing a poncey, overly fancy knot. So he's more like a boorish inverted snob in that case, although in a strange context.

That's an interesting take - and it all boils down to interpretation, doesn't it!

With me it was more the belief that 'no true gentleman' aspect that zoomed in and took to be a sign a snobbery. Although one an acquaintance who was very into his Bond books said bits like that projected Fleming's own little quirks - personally, I don't know enough about that but have heard that some acquaintances, even those on excellent terms, did find the author to be a snob.

[CaledonianGonzo]

"Red wine with fish.  Well that should have told me something."

I don't think he's a snob really - in one of the books (OHMSS?) he's disguised as a baronet and hates it - eventually ditching all the accoutrements (replacing his copy of the Times with a tabloid, etc).

He also turns down a knighthood at the end of (IIRC) The Man With The Golden Gun as he's just a Scottish peasant. 

The imperialist take on Bond is far from spurious, though.  Jamaica gained independence from the UK in August 1962.  Dr No - in which Bond travels to Jamaica to clear up a mess that the Jamaicans can't take care of themselves - was released a mere 6 weeks later.  Coincidence?  I think NOT!

As for the LOEG, Bond is shown as a sexual sadist foremost, which seems to tie in with your own take.

[Doomy Dwyer]

There's a chapter comparing Fleming, Deighton and le Carre and their (or their characters) attitudes to Empire, class and all that funky shit in 'Never Had It So Good' by Dominic Sandbrook. He sees Bond as a transitional figure, a remnant of past Imperial glories and, simultaneously, a thoroughly modern man adapting to the new society. I think that's the gist of it. I skimmed it a bit because I've always had Bond down as a monumental cunt. An establishment lickspittle, an Imperialist running dog and a fascist, sexist, bully boy. I did like the one with the voodoo speedboats though. That was good.

[CaledonianGonzo]

He may be a cunt, but he seems to be collating a hell of a cast for Bond #23.

Naomie Harris as Miss Moneypenny, with Ralph Fiennes and Javier Bardem as the bad guys. 

I can dig it.

[kidsick5000]

He may be a cunt, but he seems to be collating a hell of a cast for Bond #23.

Naomie Harris as Miss Moneypenny, with Ralph Fiennes and Javier Bardem as the bad guys. 

I can dig it.

And rumours that Moneypenny will be more active, though the characters inclusion is a gateway to the return of the pre-Craig silly names era.

I'm really hoping for a true sequel to Casino Royale

[Famous Mortimer]

There's an interesting review of the latest James Bond book in Private Eye, and it gives brief details of how Fleming got bored / hateful of his creation towards the end and started making him deliberately ridiculous.

[Incandenza]

Used to love Bond as a kid - fond memories of watching half of a Bond film then being told to go to bed by my Grandparents when the break for the news came on, which means I've no idea how half of them end.

Now I really cannot stand him at all, particularly Connery, who's own women-beating tendencies marr the character even more. My favourite was always Dalton, who seemed to have a bit of a moral compass, but even then the attitude to women in those films is absolutely appalling, and the constant double entendres about his cock and ladies fannies and things...

I still haven't seen Casino Royale, and my opinion of old Bond coupled with Daniel Craig being a complete bell end means I doubt I'll ever see it.

[madhair60]

Daniel Craig being a complete bell end

Huh?

[Incandenza]

Just has a smarmy demeanour and I've found him completely unpalatable in nearly everything I've seen him in. A friend of mine is a scouser and utterly hates him for a few comments he made about the Wirral, having been brought up there.