It’s hard to take the “Bond girls” of yesteryear seriously with suggestive names like Honey Ryder, Plenty O’Toole, Holly Goodhead, Pussy Galore or Octopussy – to name a few.
In the past female characters have been given lesser roles and the dreadful dialogue that they have had to spout and listen to – think Sean Connery’s remark to Claudine Auger in 1965’s Thunderball when Domino is in the pool and Bond says, “Most girls just paddle around. You swim like a man” – is enough to make the feminist inside you shout, “Come on!”
Ursula Andress played Honey Ryder.
The mainstream uprising against Bond’s misogynistic motifs have been lackadaisical, to say the least, but in more recent instalments the spy, who has an endless string of womanising one night stands, appears to have had a macho fantasy makeover.
Lana Wood played Plenty O’Toole in the 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever.
Traditionally Bond’s long list of lady friends have mostly served as good looking road kill in the spy’s action-packed (pun intended) narrative, but one woman who found a semi-permanent place in Bond’s universe was Dame Judi Dench’s character of M – the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service.
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Dame Judi Dench as M in 2012 Bond film, Skyfall.
While Bond’s boss is a sexless role, and has been portrayed by male actors in the past – including Bernard Lee, Robert Brown and Ralph Fiennes – women were able to cling to the Dame’s character as a female hero when she first brought M to life and quipped that Pierce Brosnan’s 1995 GoldenEye* spy was a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur”.
The thick veil of nostalgia that once disguised Bond’s appallingly chauvinistic attitudes looks like it may finally be lifting and perhaps the turn could have something to do with the man who currently plays him, Daniel Craig.
Craig, 46, seems to have a genuine interest in pushing women’s rights and in 2011 the British star donned drag for a two minute video discussing the disparity between rights, pay and opportunity between men and women in honour of International Women’s Day. Craig was also among a cast of male A-listers, including Benicio Del Toro, Steve Carell and Seth Meyers, who featured in a White House PSA on sexual assault and rape earlier this year.
And there is hope for Bond’s evolution to continue with Monica Bellucci, 50, to make history as the oldest woman to be cast as a “Bond girl” playing Lucia Sciarra – notice the lack of double entendre to her moniker?
Monica Bellucci, 50, will feature in the next James Bond installment.
The franchises’ 24th instalment will be directed by Kate Winstlet’s ex-husband, Sam Mendes, who has cast the Italian siren alongside fellow newbie, Léa Seydoux and Naomie Harris, who plays Eve Moneypenny – the legendary secretary who is seemingly the only woman in the Bond world who can withstand the ol’ shagger’s advances.
And the data shows there is a fiscal reward for a sexy Bond, sans sexism. Skyfall, released in 2012, was the most successful 007 film ever. The movie smashed more than $1 billion at the global box office despite waning in presenting an ultra-macho Bond – a Bond able to resist a bad-woman driver joke in the flick’s opening scene when Eve loses two side-mirrors while tearing around the streets of Istanbul, a put down that traditionally would have been too good to refuse for past Bonds.
While some might argue that a new and improved female-friendly Bond cannot absolve him from his misogynistic indiscretions of the past, there is something to be said for how interesting it would be to see the spy come full circle. The franchise – spanning more than 50 years – could provide an honest history of society’s changing attitudes toward women, especially if 007 can one day take his orders from a beautiful female – NOT old enough to be his mother – who he doesn’t bed and then bury.
