Bond 25: No Time To Die

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, john said:

I suppose it wouldn’t be as problematic with a female character

Well, that took some time but it wasn't that hard to see in the end, was it?

[john]

3 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Well, that took some time but it wasn't that hard to see in the end, was it?

You mean the time between you posting and me replying?

I don’t see the fact that you enjoy the problematic aspects of Bond’s character as a particularly compelling reason for his gender not to be switched. Exactly the same but less problematic seems like a better alternative to me.

Not that that is my reason for wanting to see a female Bond. The toxic masculinity thing is entirely your thing, I promise.

[Ran]

6 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Well seems like they want to (rightfully) change one of those so-called key characteristics of Bond anyway by making him less of a chauvinistic misogynistic dinosaur, at least judging from Daniel Craig’s comments (its why he wanted PWB brought in). So Bond is ruined i guess, someone please fetch my fainting couch and pearls

Here is PWB on what she set out to do:

 

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“There’s been a lot of talk about whether or not [the Bond franchise] is relevant now because of who he is and the way he treats women. I think that’s bollocks. I think he’s absolutely relevant now. It has just got to grow. It has just got to evolve, and the important thing is that the film treats the women properly. He doesn’t have to. He needs to be true to this character.”

She seems pretty comfortable with the idea that Bond's misogyny are an indelible part of the character. They can be shaded and nuanced, but they're still part of what defines him to her.

[BigFatCoward]

This is a lot of discussion about a character that about 96% of their films have been shite. 

In my head their is a strong correlation between james bond fans and top gear fans. That is not a good thing. 

[mormont]

On 1/18/2020 at 10:45 AM, Ran said:

This feels like a distraction from the discussion. There are plenty of female spy series in novels and comics.

And we are all in agreement that they should be given the opportunity for adaptation. But as I say, that doesn't exclude and really isn't particularly relevant to the argument about gender-bending Bond, which does something entirely different than adapting any of these other properties would. Continuing to talk about these other properties as if it were relevant to the argument about Bond seems to me the actual distraction here.

No male- nor female-led spy franchise has, or will achieve within at the very minimum the next two decades, the cultural weight of Bond, and we all understand that, surely? Therefore gender- or race-bending Bond will achieve something that no alternative, 'new' property can.

On 1/18/2020 at 12:18 PM, Rippounet said:

I'm not sure you see the irony of having such a conversation about James Bond, a character whose core attribute is universally recognised as being toxic masculinity.

Not so much true any more. (And I should note for the record, that the principal person arguing on your side - HoI - last time we discussed this, denied that Bond's masculinity was in any way toxic.)

22 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Completely disregarding what a fictional character is to promote a specific vision shows a complete lack of respect for fiction itself.

I agree that this is all about what you want to show respect to.

22 hours ago, Rippounet said:

But since no one here seems to be a hardcore Bond fan, in this case the issue is that there may be far more to learn and show with a "bad" character or fiction than to "reinvent" it. Making a toxic character disappear is dangerously close to pretending that his toxicity never existed in the first place.

Is anyone arguing that the Connery films should be burned, or something? No? Then this is a silly argument.

18 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Fast and Furious,  of which Hobbes and Shaw is a part, is by now a spy franchise to be fair.  Like they're not literally spies but neither have Bond or MI been really for a while now.

They're not spies at all. They have elements in common with Bond but those are action movie trupes, not spy movie tropes. They're actually more like superheroes by this point than they are spies.

[polishgenius]

 

5 minutes ago, mormont said:

They're actually more like superheroes by this point than they are spies.

 

At this point so is Ethan Hunt. Bond a little less so but even then how often does he actually spy?

They're government agents (in the main FF series and the animated spinoff Spy Racers a made up secret one though not in Hobbes and Shaw explicitly) sent on secret missions to track people, infiltrate places, and stop the grand plans of megalomaniac villains bent on world domination. 'Spy movie' is a bit of a misnomer but it's a misnomer applied to a big part of the genre and based specifically on tropes Bond popularised, not an FF/H&S specific thing. Same shit applies to Kingsman and I don't think you'd argue that's not a spy movie, right?

[Heartofice]

43 minutes ago, mormont said:

No male- nor female-led spy franchise has, or will achieve within at the very minimum the next two decades, the cultural weight of Bond, and we all understand that, surely? Therefore gender- or race-bending Bond will achieve something that no alternative, 'new' property can.

What will it achieve though? What would be the goal? What is the problem that gender bending Bond would address? I keep having to ask this question and I’m not getting a good answer here.

 

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Not so much true any more. (And I should note for the record, that the principal person arguing on your side - HoI - last time we discussed this, denied that Bond's masculinity was in any way toxic.)

In 2020 some of his behaviour would be deemed inappropriate. No I’m not a fan of the term , though I would concede some of the things Bond did in the past would make me cringe these days. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a strong masculine bond who is desired by and sleeps with numerous attractive women. As mentioned he’s a Male fantasy figure. Doesn’t mean I’m ok with him beating women up or treating them like set dressing.
 

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They're not spies at all. They have elements in common with Bond but those are action movie trupes, not spy movie tropes. They're actually more like superheroes by this point than they are spies

Bond has also been closer to a superhero at times and there isn’t really all that much distinction these days.
 

Plus James Bond does the least spying of any Spy going. He doesn’t fit his own job description.

Either way I’m not sure it matters.

[Rippounet]

32 minutes ago, mormont said:

Is anyone arguing that the Connery films should be burned, or something? No? Then this is a silly argument.

And yours is fallacious. For all intents and purposes, recent films are what people watch, only die-hard cinema fans will take the time to watch old movie adaptations of an -overall- low-quality franchise.

32 minutes ago, mormont said:

Not so much true any more.

That's kind of a circular argument, saying that because adaptations have strayed far from the source material said source material can be almost completely disregarded in the future. You're basically presenting the evolution you agree with as a fait accompli, which is a way of preventing any discussion about said evolution.

32 minutes ago, mormont said:

I agree that this is all about what you want to show respect to.

Yes. And let's stop tiptoeing around the issue, shall we? We're discussing how far more inclusive representation in fiction should go. Gender or race-switching is one thing when it doesn't change the core characteristics of a fictional character (like changing Hermione Granger's race), and another when it does change the very nature of a character or of the fictional work as a whole.

Showing no respect for fictional works because something about them isn't "appropriate" anymore is all fine and dandy when you agree with what society as a whole sees as appropriate. But that's short-sighted. In the long-run, chances are that sooner or later you will find yourself disagreeing with what most people view as appropriate.
The idea that fiction can be rewritten to suit society's current goals/needs is a rather dangerous one, quite "illiberal" at its core. You have no control over how far such a principle can go, and who will decide what society's goals or needs are in the future. Basically, once such a principle has been established it can be used by any "dominant" group or ideology.
In fact, historically speaking, such a principle has generally been used in the name of ideologies we find despicable today.

James Bond is certainly not the hill I would choose to die on. But I'm bored enough with my work to say that your (or John's or Raja's) disregard for fiction makes me uncomfortable to say the least. I may think your perspective on James Bond is right, but I personally have no guarantee that tomorrow you won't be advocating for the rewriting of a fictional work I actually care about, or that others will not seek to rewrite fictional works for a purpose you and I disagree with.

 

[john]

8 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

This is a lot of discussion about a character that about 96% of their films have been shite. 

In my head their is a strong correlation between james bond fans and top gear fans. That is not a good thing. 

Female James Bond would be great on Top Gear. I mean, she apparently wouldn’t be able to explore the ingrained toxic masculinity of the show because she’s only a woman. But she would crush the track in the reasonably priced car.

[kuenjato]

There's a Black Widow and a Wonder Woman film being released in the next few months. As already noted, Star Wars has already seen "diversity" come front and center in the franchise, with mixed results, and the climatic film of the MCU (so far) featured a scene at the climatic battle where all the powerful ladies formed a line as a massive middle finger to the toxic baddie. Mewling about "representation" by this point is a pretty hollow argument. 

Bond is interesting in 2020 as a man out of time, a conservative power fantasy struggling (and fitfully adapting) to the creed of a different era. Changing the sex of the character, after 60+ years, smacks of shallow pandering. Personally, before the Craig-era when it could be argued that "Bond" was just a government-assigned entity to a revolving door of agents, then assigning a new character as "Jane Bond" or whatever would work. Skyfall closed the door on that possibility, unless you want to make a flat-out reboot of the series and either resurrect this old fan theory or go somewhere completely different. But, the argument goes, why bother? Why not reboot La Femme Nikita again? Or push Black Widow into becoming a serial (probably what Marvel intends, crossing their fingers it'll be successful)? The only real honest answer I've seen in the past 10 pages is that changing Bond will "Trigger the Cons", which is a pretty bullshit reason, as there's lots of better ways to do so if that's your thing.

I like what they're doing here -- having an apparently powerful agent, 005, as an ally/foil to challenge what Bond represents. Similar to Fury Road, which was explicit in its condemnation of toxic masculinity (much moreso than most franchise films floundering about trying this, like Last Jedi), and the negative response from the regressives was fairly muted, because Fury Road was a slam dunk of a film and didn't have to demasculate Max to establish and articulate its kick-ass female protagonist. The 005 inclusion has the potential for nuance, for conflict, for thematic development up and beyond the Craig era.

Flipping the sex just 'cause it's fashionable in 2020 -- as a reaction to the reactionary strain we've seen in politics these past 5 years -- is really shaky ground to try and shake up a formula. Worse, the results of such performative virtue-signaling rarely work because, as we've seen amply argued on this thread, those who wish to perform such an act usually have little in-depth idea of how to push inclusion; when it's just to trigger the cons, rather than craft a decent narrative and substantial critique regarding inclusion, the result nearly always smacks of pandering and, as we've seen, mainstream audiences (which fuel blockbusters) don't tend to respond to unsubtle ideology in their escapism.

[HexMachina]

“In 2020 some of his behaviour would be inappropriate...”

An understatement if ever i saw one. 

And it was also ‘inappropriate’ (or, in a lot of cases, downright abhorrent not to mention illegal) behaviour when the films were made. People just had less of a voice with which to express this.

[Conflicting Thought]

1 hour ago, kuenjato said:

There's a Black Widow and a Wonder Woman film being released in the next few months. As already noted, Star Wars has already seen "diversity" come front and center in the franchise, with mixed results, and the climatic film of the MCU (so far) featured a scene at the climatic battle where all the powerful ladies formed a line as a massive middle finger to the toxic baddie. Mewling about "representation" by this point is a pretty hollow argument. 

Oh?, do expand on that if you can. Are you really saying that we have representation now, and we should just leve it cuz we now have it? (wich, to be honest, i think we arent even close to achieve). 

[Zorral]

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@Rippounet So I'm curious to know how you imagine this kind of theme with a female character. Should your female Bond worry that she won't be able to get wet after being reeaptedly kicked in the vagina? Or should her femininity be affected by being disfigured perhaps? Should she express contempt for the men she always has to take care of? Or imagine luck as a man with an erect penis to jump on?
Do tell us how you would represent this story of toxic masculinity with a female lead...

You answered your own question.  Everything you listed as proof that men and women are fundamentally different is HUMAN, not gendered.  Unless, of course, since you seem these things re concerns of only a female body and thus don't have effect because female body? Unless you really believe that a woman's incapacity to be aroused would never feel a loss and profound anxiety about that, especially if her sexual allure is part of her arsenal -- as it is Bond's, and for both then, playing that with conviction when not feeling it ? How is any of this different from Bond's concerns? 

Additionally, you're going to have a very difficult time convincing me that a Bond male isn't obsessed with his good looks being disfigured.  Sheesh, how many hours a day do you think the bedbug devotes to his hair? Sheesh, how many hours did Caesar spend concealing as best he could with his wreath his hair loss?

You have come off as much more perceptive thinker than this shows you to be.

[Conflicting Thought]

4 hours ago, Rippounet said:

And yours is fallacious. For all intents and purposes, recent films are what people watch, only die-hard cinema fans will take the time to watch old movie adaptations of an -overall- low-quality franchise.

That's kind of a circular argument, saying that because adaptations have strayed far from the source material said source material can be almost completely disregarded in the future. You're basically presenting the evolution you agree with as a fait accompli, which is a way of preventing any discussion about said evolution.

Yes. And let's stop tiptoeing around the issue, shall we? We're discussing how far more inclusive representation in fiction should go. Gender or race-switching is one thing when it doesn't change the core characteristics of a fictional character (like changing Hermione Granger's race), and another when it does change the very nature of a character or of the fictional work as a whole.

Showing no respect for fictional works because something about them isn't "appropriate" anymore is all fine and dandy when you agree with what society as a whole sees as appropriate. But that's short-sighted. In the long-run, chances are that sooner or later you will find yourself disagreeing with what most people view as appropriate.
The idea that fiction can be rewritten to suit society's current goals/needs is a rather dangerous one, quite "illiberal" at its core. You have no control over how far such a principle can go, and who will decide what society's goals or needs are in the future. Basically, once such a principle has been established it can be used by any "dominant" group or ideology.
In fact, historically speaking, such a principle has generally been used in the name of ideologies we find despicable today.

James Bond is certainly not the hill I would choose to die on. But I'm bored enough with my work to say that your (or John's or Raja's) disregard for fiction makes me uncomfortable to say the least. I may think your perspective on James Bond is right, but I personally have no guarantee that tomorrow you won't be advocating for the rewriting of a fictional work I actually care about, or that others will not seek to rewrite fictional works for a purpose you and I disagree with.

 

You know, maybe i dont agree with everything you are saying, but i wanted to tell you that i really appreciate that you took your time to put forward a thought out argument. You have given me allot to think about.  Love to have my ideas challenged by well constructed arguments. 

[kuenjato]

8 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Oh?, do expand on that if you can. Are you really saying that we have representation now, and we should just leve it cuz we now have it? (wich, to be honest, i think we arent even close to achieve). 

If you'd bothered to read or respond to the rest of my post, I already answered this question.

There is "representation", in that, Hollywood blockbusters sometimes slather on a thin veneer, or, in rare occasions, actually create nuanced statements between explosions and terse dialogue ~ Fury Road is such an example. 

What is the level of "achievement," in this case? One has to consider the economics of film-making (expensive), as opposed to wish fulfillment bromides on the internet (extremely cheap). 

Personally, I find stuff like the girl line-up in End Game or the lesbian kiss in Rise of the Skywalker the dullest sort of tokenism, so obviously there's a long way to go. Often enough, it comes down to the artistic ability of the creators and the willingness to take risks on the part of studios. Bond, with its conservative origins and various manifestations across decades, is rich for risk-taking, as I stated above. Changing the sex to make a statement risks the worst (i.e., shallow, trite) form of virtue signaling, doing something for the ego of it, rather than something substantial to say.

 

[Zorral]

Have any of you watched or read the Modesty Blaise series -- which is also British and roughly the same era, though Bond starts earlier -- Modesty is a child of the 60's.   The movies were a blast!

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/modesty-blaise-caitlin-flanagan/550916/

As for women being central figures, not the secondary ones, in action films, this is very very VERY new -- otherwise why in hell did all these men scream through their pearls about Ghost Busters being all ladies? and etc. etc. etc.

One does wonder why Ripponet is so invested in this Bond can only be male.  I'd never have thought this of him, especially these days of Killing Eve, post La Femme Nikita, etc. that he thinks there cannot be a female bond as toxic as Bond and that the audiences would love just as much as they're getting all the same fixes they got from boy bond (almost typed boy band!) from a girl -- see again: Killing Eve, for just a single example. Eve dressing in flouncy gowns with Doc Martins on her feet doesn't make her any less toxic than a bond, and audiences, particularly male audiences, adore her, as they really like Nikita.

I am not saying I'm interested or even invested in seeing yet another female character like this myself -- unless if they did show conflicts within.  But Bond doesn't have conflicts.

In reality the kind of female action hero behaving against type is what is interesting, such as the middle-aged mother and much older but o so bossy grandmother in the current new Netflix original, Giri / Haji, who take on the Yakuza strong men to rescue grandson and nephew.  And get away. As one of them says, men like that don't see women like us, old and middle-aged.  So we'll just march in." And they do, with their mops and cleaning supplies. There are so many ways for anyone to be bad ass that doesn't involve being a bond boy.  Another reason we still remain so invested in John Le Carre's Smiley.

 

 

 

[Ran]

49 minutes ago, Zorral said:

As for women being central figures, not the secondary ones, in action films, this is very very VERY new

It's been 40 years since Ripley became a female action icon in Alien. La Femme Nikita is 30 years old. Underworld is approaching 20. There are others.

But if you mean that it's becoming much more common only recently, that is true enough.

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-- otherwise why in hell did all these men scream through their pearls about Ghost Busters being all ladies? and etc. etc. etc.

None (or at least very few) of those men were screaming when Quentin Tarantino decided to devote two films to a female action lead in Kill Bill. No one that I'm aware of complained that Sarah Connors went from damsel in distress to kick-ass fighter in Terminator 2.

The response to Ghostbusters was mostly driven by the idea that it was genuinely just a gimmick than something integral and that it looked like, at best, a mediocre film (it bombed at the box office and had mostly lukewarm reviews even from critics). But it wasn't as if this was based on some sort of animus towards the actors, as such (though the racist, misogynist attacks from trolls on Leslie Jones in particular was horrifying), since audiences really responded to director Paul Feig's prior films with Melissa McCarthy, Spy and Bridesmaids. And to look at another film from a popular franchise where a follow-up had an all-female cast after previous films had had male recurring characters, the Ocean series, Ocean's 8 was a box office success. 

 

ETA: A female Bond is not going to be a Bond concerned with masculinity. I call it male power fantasy, others call it toxic masculinity, but either way, as people like Barbara Brocoli, Rachel Weisz, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge indicate, the character's masculinity is at the core of the character, just as his being a hero, his being British, and his being a spy (I'll ignore the nonsense about him not being a spy, because spies do all sorts of things beyond gather intelligence, like counter-espionage...). You can't remove any of these four pillars of the character and still have him be ... well, him. (Though Alan Moore in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen does a fine job of giving us the brutish "blunt instrument" character from the Fleming novels, who rather does come off as a villain when juxtaposed with our motley band of heroes, and that too could be interesting, to see Bond as the villain of someone else's story... but then I guess they've sort of done that before a couple of times, but not very convincingly so long as Bond is the lead character.)

The right approach for doing a Bond-inflected film with a female 00 is just to take a page from Marvel and create Bond Cinematic Universe with a spin-off character, like Lashana Lynch's 005 (is she really 005? I had assumed she was taking over the 007 number). I'd possibly even pay to see it (though I admit I haven't seen a Bond film in a movie theatre since Goldeneye) if it looked good. 

ETA x2: In fact, the perfect spin-off would have a female 00 get set up to look like a traitor, and have an implacable,   uncompromisingly merciless James Bond chasing after her until matters resolve in some climactic turn which emphasizes both Bond's deep flaws and also exhibiting those virtues fans usually adore, but making them even more problematic when he is used to do bad things rather than good things. But I feel like this film has been done before, just not with Bond... oh, Haywire I guess is kind of close, with Michael Fassbender basically playing a James Bond type...

[Raja]

Edit: Never mind

[polishgenius]

13 minutes ago, Ran said:

But if you mean that it's becoming much more common only recently, that is true enough.

Also there was a weird period in the 00s and early 10s where there was almost nothing (pretty much just Salt which made money but no cultural splash at all) and it was after they started making them again after that that the whining started becoming a prominent thing. Like I'm sure the HoI's of the world still existed but I don't believe there was massive whine in the discourse around Terminator 2 or Buffy or even when Xenia became more successful than Hercules. Maybe it's just the internet has made reading their drone more unavoidable.

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Also there was a weird period in the 00s and early 10s where there was almost nothing (pretty much just Salt which made money but no cultural splash at all) and it was after they started making them again after that that the whining started becoming a prominent thing. Like I'm sure the HoI's of the world still existed but I don't believe there was massive whine in the discourse around Terminator 2 or Buffy or even when Xenia became more successful than Hercules. Maybe it's just the internet has made reading their drone more unavoidable.

Pffft..I doubt anyone ever complained about Terminator 2 or Buffy or Aliens or Xena.. and maybe there is a good reason for that.