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A Bond For All Seasons
The walking, talking microagression that is James Bond is getting a remake:
In a new book, however, James Bond will be getting a dose of modern morality, as author Anthony Horowitz reveals the tricks he used to drag the spy kicking and screaming into the era of political correctness.
Horowitz, the writer of new Bond novel Trigger Mortis, said he had worked carefully to preserve Ian Fleming’s original character and ensuring his 1950s attitudes remained in tact.
But he has introduced a cast of new characters to point out the error of his chauvinistic ways, including messages about smoking causing cancer, women who give him a run for his money, and an “outspoken” gay friend.
Because if there is anything James Bond needs it’s an “outspoken” gay friend. Apparently, a character who is gay but not “outspoken” would be unimaginable. The novel is set in 1957, so it would be interesting to imagine how many “outspoken” homosexuals were working for MI6 at the time. Since homosexual conduct was – in theory – a fireable offense in every intelligence and military organization in the world for years afterwards, I suspect that any outspokenness exists only in the author’s exquisitely sensitive imagination.
Please keep in mind that the above refers to the Bond novels, not the films which are in many ways an entirely separate enterprise. Something like half of all the people on earth have seen a Bond film, very few of those have read Ian Fleming’s original novels or the subsequent “tribute” stories that have been written in the half-century since his death. This is something of a pity. While I haven’t read — nor do I plan on reading — any of the pseudo-Flemings, I have read some of the originals. Ian Fleming was a master prose writer, as was his now largely forgotten brother, Peter.
Ian Fleming isn’t the only one to get the post-mortem ghost-writer treatment. The same has been done to Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy. Back in the early 1990s Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind was mated with a much hyped sequel, Scartlett. I think the two-time Bond actor Timothy Dalton was in the TV adaptation version. I’d look it up on IMDB, but I doubt anyone cares. These are examples of marketing going to war with art. A fair fight it is not.
Not being modern enough with an appropriately gay friend, James Bond has in this new novel also acquired a live-in girlfriend. In the early Connery films Bond was paired with a girlfriend named Sylvia Trench. You can see her at the very beginning of Dr No and From Russia With Love. The character was dropped from the later films. Since no one remembers Sylvia Trench, Bond is instead being paired with no less a Bond girl – sorry Bond woman – than Pussy Galore.
Now imagine living with a woman like Pussy Galore. Heck, imagine living with the actress who immortalized her, Honor Blackman. If you’re thinking action, adventure, and wild nights of passion … you’d be wrong:
Trigger Mortis sees the new couple living in 1957 Chelsea and irritating one another over their boiled eggs, with “an uneasy silence full of dark thoughts and words unsaid”.
Given the flaccid nature of what I’ve read so far, I’m certain the thoughts aren’t dark enough. The author explains himself with the brazenness you’d expect:
“My first duty, my first responsibility was to be true to the original feel of the book, to be true to Ian Fleming: his creation, his world and his ideas.
“What I was trying to do was wrap myself in his mantle and write a book that would be worthy of him.”
Ian Fleming was, for his time, an unusual enlightened and far sighted man. Perhaps if he was writing a Bond novel in 2015 there would be an outspoken gay friend. Fleming, however, didn’t live long enough to experience the New Jerusalem that has subsequently been built in England’s green and pleasant land. Instead this pseudo-Fleming is using the real article as a puppet for his personal views.
Perhaps if Mr Horowitz’s version of Fleming’s version of Bond was set in 2015, then adaptations could be justified. But it isn’t. The novel is set six decades in the past, but with modern sensibilities slipped in under the guise of a dead writer. The Bond of the novels was a man of his times. He smoked like a chimney and shagged anything that moved.
Trigger Mortis is the sort of sophomoric re-writing of literary history you’d expect from a militant feminist, the type that likes to re-imagine Queen Elizabeth I as a lesbian being oppressed by the Tudor patriarchy. An attempt at cleverness that becomes wearily predictable. Even the novel’s title, Trigger Mortis, has the feel of a failed attempt at mordant wit.
James Bond isn’t real. Even by the standards of the novels – which were far more realistic than the films – he is a creature of fantasy. To imagine a politically correct Bond is to imagine Merlin as a research chemist or Prospero as a climatologist. Even in a world of pure fiction we cannot be left alone. Our imaginations must be made to conform to the dictates of our pedantic times.
Published in Culture, Literature
Did James Bond ever kill a woman? Maybe I forget. But I don’t think he would be above killing a gay male fellow agent who became compromised, even if that fellow became a friend. “Sorry chap. It’s for King and country.” That’s one reason I think the whole premise is so wrong. It supposes that James would necessarily have to value that person the same way gays are expected to be valued today. But that’s incorrect. A fellow agent, especially a male agent, who goes wrong or becomes compromised has to be stopped or terminated, because all agents are lethal weapons.
Forgive my apparent sexist statement above. Although women who worked with James Bond in the stories were deployed as assets and helpers, I don’t believe they were ever deployed as killers. That women were deployed as killers by the Soviet Union was one of the things that confirmed how evil and decrepit they were. It was an instance of propaganda in the stories, but I expect that even in Ian Fleming’s time it may have reflected the truth. Something I will look forward to in the book I have on his time in the Service. I might be wrong about that.
I like both of those – the Chinese islands could be built and there’s a rogue nation (read North Korea) that’s built their own fake island there (gotta sell to China too you know!) to use for mischief Bond has to stop.
But now we’re getting into Brosnan territory, and no one should Surf the Tsunami.
I have to disagree. His books, in general, were uneven in both plot and style. Character development could be wonderful or non existent. Thunderball was a book based on the movie character (rather than the other way around–which is a another story in itself) and was the better of them all for it.
Fleming’s writing is full of cliche and condensation. In one book, he gives his recipe for scramble eggs. Really. A master prose writer does need any of that.
The Spy Who Loved Me was the worst or one of the worst of his books. The movie never even comes close to the book–thankfully.
Go see Man From UNCLE for a truly good “Bond” experience. And hope the PC Bond dies not to see another day.
Yes, M from Uncle worked for me. The ladies sure got a treat with the leading men. And the men with the leading lady, too.
Speaking for men only–Hell Yeah!
In one book he sets up to snipe a woman in East Berlin from his West Berlin perch.
Pussy Galore was set to gas Fort Knox via airplanes, and not the good kind of gas that you wake up to.
The girl–er, woman–in Goldfinger was trying to kill Goldfinger with a rifle when Bond stops her.
Thunderball, the movie and the novel, sucks.
Casino Royale, the novel and the movie, FTW!
Hmmm? I liked all four. What problem did you have with Thunderball movie?
In the modern franchise Bond no longer smokes because, say the producers, of the impact it has on teenagers. No word yet on why Bond has been permitted to keep his license to kill.
Well, I agree that the best actor should play the part (and I’ve also heard great things about that particular actor), but what I don’t like is that it really is simply for the purpose of updating. It’s certainly not the first thing they’ve done to bring Bond (or other characters) more into keeping with popular social trends. My only problem with it is that, at some point, switching around genders and races and even personalities … at some point, why not just give us a different movie altogether? If you want to keep the franchise, then keep it. I’d be all over a good movie with a black spy, regardless of his race; I’m not watching it because he’s black, and I’m certainly not avoiding it because he’s black. I only care if it’s a good movie. But I just don’t like how forced it all seems. Leave Bond alone or just stop making the movies. Interestingly, I said something similar about the Daniel Craig Bond movies that seemed to move away from gadgets and cool unbelievable spy stuff. If you want to make another Bourne movie, just make another Bourne movie. Some of us like watching Bond because of how ridiculous it sometimes is.
Let’s not forget Bond wanted to settle down and get married. In the film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Lazenby) he did get married before (spoiler alert) Tracy was killed.
Fleming showed this melodramatic Bond wanted normalcy, a lifestyle tortured souls rarely achieve.
Alright now you’ve got me going. What Craig also got away from was Bond’s playboy streak, his love of women (look at the top photo of Sean Connery – for Pete’s sake he actually has a smile on his face – I am not sure Craig can even smile at all), and his general playfulness. Craig is as stiff as a board around women. That’s it, Craig is stiff, Connery was supple.
Basically, Craig Stinks as Bond.
Back to the original point of the post—
Ridiculous to have an “outspoken” gay character if the story is still supposed to take place in 1957. But a gay character per se is not unprecedented.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I’m a fan of British detective fiction of the Dorothy Sayers/Ngaio Marsh/Josephine Tey variety, haven’t I? Well, both Sayers and Marsh have gay or lesbian characters in their novels, sometimes explicitly named as such, though sometimes it’s merely strongly implied. I know that it’s fashionable to assume that everyone was homophobic (literally as well as literarily) in those days, but the reality was more nuanced. Bond could have simply been kind and protective to someone whose inclinations he suspected but who, for obvious reasons, was not “outspoken” let alone “sassy.” (Blech.)
Bond is no longer an original artwork anyway, it’s more like a formula in which certain elements must remain constant (the martini, the gesture of straightening a neck-tie, “M”) for all of us to gleefully recognize, while variables are introduced to help keep the thing fresh. Since Elba is British and has both the accent, and considerable magnetism and believability as a man of action, I’m looking forward to his Bond.
For some that may be true.
I think the low point of the Bond franchise is when Bond contacts MI6 and they get the U.S. to scramble the ready Space Shuttle so the space marines (or airmen or soldiers – it really isn’t clear) can do orbital battle with Drax’s own eeeevil laser armed guards.
Followed closely by Bond surfing on a Tsunami in Iceland caused by a diamond powered secret satellite somehow constructed without anyone finding out except the guy who just spent 2 years in a North Korean prison that has a death ray attached.
Or the moon buggy escape to stop the other satellite somehow secretly constructed that was also a diamond powered death ray.
Or the slide whistle sound effect during the car barrel roll stunt in Thailand.
Man, there were a lot of terrible Bond movie moments; what were we arguing about again?
So we will chalk you up as a fan, I think.
Too much of one really.
hahaha – yes.
And to David’s point above, the more modern Bond movies seem to move too far in the opposite direction for my tastes. But then, it’s all about tastes. I hate to sound stereotypical, but Connery actually is my favorite Bond, and those are the best movies. Not that the others don’t have their place. I used to hate Dalton, but damn, his 2nd movie would have been the perfect follow up to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Bond needed a really good revenge flick for the killing of Tracy, who was maybe my favorite Bond girl ever. (don’t get me started on the final Brosnan movie – perhaps because I absolutely loathe Halle Barry, or maybe because the bond-girl villain in that movie may actually be the hottest bond girl in the history of the franchise, so her being evil – and subsequently dying – while the horrid Barry lived as the heroin just made me lose my lunch)
Hey, George Lazenby *IS* James Bond.
Vile calumny.
I’m bored with the book already and I haven’t even picked it up yet.
Mr. Horowitz should roll his own.
Because post-modernism is not about creation, beauty, or provision. It is about destruction, revulsion, and deprivation. These are explicit goals of the movement, because the former are bourgeois and illegitimate, etc. and we must be jolted from our petty and mawkish blindness.
Rewriting history to depict an out-of-the-closet gay man in 1957 does the gay movement no favors. It’s far more worthy to show real history and show how lucky they are to live in modern times, and how far we’ve come. This descent into silliness and anti-intellectualism is why the left lost me so many years ago.
Why not just go all the way and turn him gay?
Ridiculous.
but i like my petty and mawkish blindness
Too bad.
“He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.“
Like, Like, Like, Like, ….Where’s that dang “Genius” button?
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And he has to cry.
The really frightening part is, Michelle said all that thinking it was a positive statement.