With one of cinema’s most popular and successful franchises looking set to reach its 7th decade, one cannot help but wonder what keeps James Bond relevant in a very different world to the one Ian Fleming created him in during the 1950’s.
When Fleming first launched 007 on readers with the novel Casino Royale, the United Kingdom was recovering from the Second World War. Many cities and towns were bombsites, the economy was in ruins and rationing was still in place. Here came this hero who travelled the world, visiting casinos, dining at exclusive restaurants and driving fast cars.
For a nation unable to travel by air, drink champagne or eat soft-shell crabs, there was an air of escapism about these books, a chance for the post-war British to dream.
Fleming undoubtedly understood this, along with the intrigue and danger in his stories, to be a key component and gladly included extensive passages about Bond’s gastronomical exploits. To the point that one might be forgiven for thinking one had happened upon a culinary travel guide rather than a literary thriller.
One can only dread to think of what 007’s expenses looked like. Shortly after introducing Vesper to the cocktail he has devised and will eventually name after her in Casino Royale, he orders the following for dinner:
“I myself will accompany mademoiselle with the caviar but then I would like a very small tournedos underdone, with “sauce Bearnaise” and a “coeur d’artichaut”…half an avocado pear with a little French dressing”.
This is washed down with, naturally, champagne.
In Goldfinger he sips double bourbons in a Miami departure lounge before being diverted to a supper of soft-shell crabmeat and pink champagne. Later in the novel, as he drives around France, he dines at a Michelin starred restaurant.
He’s no stranger to room service either, regularly wolfing down three course breakfasts and drinking multiple Vodkas before dinner.
Fleming tells us that Bond only eats and drinks like this when abroad and likely on a mission, trying to convince us that his tastes are modest otherwise. Yet, during Moonraker, he cannot help loading his hero with food and drink while dining with M at his club in London as he puts away Vodka martinis, smoked salmon, lamb cutlet, asparagus in Bearnaise sauce, pineapple and a bottle of Dom Perignon 46.
Some of those items might sound less auspicious to readers now but fresh pineapple in particular along with most of the others was a luxury during rationing and the subsequent years.
Fleming would describe these moments passionately and adroitly. They, along with the smart furnishings of the hotels Bond stayed in, helped to create a lifestyle for the secret agent that was 5-star.
The films, when they began in 1962, only amplified the luxury and the glamour.
The amount of alcohol, be it Vodka, whisky, champagne or wine, that Bond gets through is mind blowing as is his 40-a-day cigarette habit. One can only think this is a combination of mid-20th century values where nobody considered the damage smoking and drinking heavily did to the body with Bond needing the stimulants to perform his duties which included facing death regularly.
Later in the series of novels, perhaps Bond’s gluttony was considered by Fleming as he is despatched by M to a health farm in Thunderball. Bond detests the detox and going without alcohol and tobacco although he eventually tolerates it. This doesn’t mark a shift in the novels however because, once back on the road, he’s greedily consuming the best of the best.
The films have maintained this aspect of the Bond persona. The cigarettes were gradually phased out but good food and booze have remained.
Which begs the question, when did the glamour become sheer gluttony? Furthermore, why do the film makers and audience feel the need for it after several decades. Unlike in the 1950’s, a large proportion of the latter can now enjoy the same luxuries as 007 as ironically the excessive product placement demonstrates.
So why else is this iconic figure still going?
There are a whole host of action and super heroes in the market place, with many of the former being part of a far more contemporary premise. But this one, however out of date, remains and has carved out a niche position.
What this reveals is what Bond represents beyond his tuxedo and Vodka sipping. Firstly, this is the man who few women will turn down. In an often toe-curling demonstration of sexual gluttony, Bond on screen usually seduces at least two women per film and sometimes, as with Moonraker, as many as four.
Sex sells but a lot of these liaisons are nothing to do with the plot so that the level of sexual encounters is gratuitous. Is this mere titillation or is there something deeper at work here?
The likelihood is male and perhaps female members of the audience enjoy watching their onscreen hero seduce all the beautiful women in front of him. It’s a moment of fantasy wish fulfilment for the audience.
Onto a finer point, Bond defines manhood for presumably the Alpha Male ideal but he also forms an identity. One that was cooked up in a bygone era.
James Bond, 007, licence to kill On Her Majesty’s Secret Service lurks in the British psyche. He represents the best of British, how a certain group in British society regard being British and would like to think is how they are portrayed across the globe. Handsome, stylish, important, intelligent, gentlemanly, resilient, a force for good; a world policeman if you like.
Bond is backed up by Q branch which feeds into another side of how the British might regard themselves; plucky, imbued with endeavour, innovation and initiative. While the British have spent decades with their motor industry being either bought out or closed down, it’s a comfortable crutch to see Q and his team constantly get Bond out of trouble with his reliable Aston Martin or wristwatch.
Strangely however, 007 in all his glory, is a beacon of style and action for those outside of the United Kingdom where the narrative is slightly different. Bizarrely, Britishness sells abroad. Since the 2012 London Olympics even more so. The Union flag, so often a contentious symbol for those it represents, is almost a brand logo, a symbol on t-shirts as commonly seen as the Nike swoosh. And James Bond, like The Beatles and one Harold Potter of Hogwarts, are tied in with that.
Put simply, Britain has been overtaken as a global military power, it’s empire long since eroded. This was well underway by the time 007 was created but in his role in constantly defeating international threats that, apparently nobody else can, he symbolises old Britain.
The old Britain is what some who want to leave the European Union wish to be returned to, arguably overestimating our influence and importance on the world’s stage. James Bond is one of their spiritual Three Lions. But, much like colonial sentiments and the old British Empire, James Bond is a relic and an incongruous head scratching and eyebrow raising curio.
Ian Fleming seemingly held his hero up as what he wished he himself might be. He used the novels to comment on foreign cultures, customs and ethnicities. No 007 novel passes without there being some voyeuristic and judgemental cultural tourism as Fleming can’t help but opine to his readership who he presumes he knows better than. British consulates in the West Indies are portrayed as being bastions of respectability and civilisation (Dr No, Thunderball). People of colour in Harlem, New York as being ignorant and subversive (Live & Let Die). The United States of America is both marvelled at and looked down the nose at (Diamonds Are Forever).
Fleming’s narrative feeds into the British sense of superiority. One that has pervaded Britain ever since without being substantiated. British popular music is undoubtedly special and something the nation more than punches above its weight at. As it does with acting and film making – ironic given the Bond films are put on the screen by American producers.
The British cannot but help reiterate how they are imbued with a sense of fairness and uphold values such as freedom of the press and democracy. Following multiple phone hacking scandals and referendums, one senses these are myths and that the United Kingdom merely distances itself from the “tinpot governments” it likes to feel superior to by institutional bullying swept under the carpet rather than machine gun Policing or Martial Law.
Yet one of our biggest folk heroes is James Bond, licenced to kill, which he does leaving a big body count in his wake. He is no Robin Hood, a member of the aristocracy who rebels to steal from the rich and give to the poor (perhaps more identifiable as a hero in the era of austerity). He is a member of the upper class who then goes on to kill for the upper class. To maintain the status quo. To feed the gluttony of a deluded British sense of identity under the guise of glamour.
Athon 