Eco commented: “Bond represents beauty and virility as opposed to the Villain, who often appears monstrous and sexually impotent.” Racism and national chauvinism abound in Fleming, along with other unpleasant attitudes. Umberto Eco, in a 1979 work, pointed to a number of binary oppositions that defined the Bond novels: positive values and features (Free World, Great Britain, Western civilization, sacrifice, duty, willingness to undergo pain, loyalty, physical attractiveness) associated with the secret agent and negative ones (Soviet Union, foreignness, physical deformity, luxury, excess, perversion, disloyalty) attached to the enemy. That and the coinciding of nerves so completely relaxed after the removal of tension and danger, the warmth of gratitude, and a woman’s natural feeling.” Ayn Rand was a big admirer, unsurprisingly. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Fleming’s narrator, a woman, explains: “All women love semi-rape. The relationships are generally of the dominator-dominated variety. A number of the female characters are lesbians and have to be returned to “normalcy” by Bond.

Many adolescent boys were drawn to them in the less permissive atmosphere of the early 1960s. The Bond novels were vaguely risqué in their time (Fleming’s wife called them “Ian’s pornography”), with hints of unusual sexual activity. In Fleming’s fiction, however, the cool and collected Briton outthought, outfought and outloved not only his Soviet opponents, but also his American “allies.” The first one, Casino Royale, appeared in 1953.Īs numerous commentators have pointed out, James Bond’s rise as a fantasy secret agent coincided with Britain’s actual decline as a world power during the postwar era. The son of a Conservative Member of Parliament who died during World War I, Fleming worked for British naval intelligence in the Second World War and used some of this experience for his Bond novels. Ian Fleming (1908-1964), who wrote the books on which the films were initially based, was a fairly unsavory character. They are not so much a barometer of popular moods but of the thinking of a layer of mercenary film studio executives attempting to gauge or guess at popular moods. The James Bond films have been with us for more than 40 years, for better or worse.

Casino Royale, directed by Martin Campbell, screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, based on the novel by Ian Fleming

Casino royale 1967 film complet