JAMES BOND in the 1980S

June 1983 Marxism Today 37 Casino Royale, the first Bond novel, was It is no accident that the Daily Express published in 1953 when, as David Cannadine serialized this particular novel, in which has observed, the coronation celebrations Bond is pitted against the Soviet espionage provided 'a retrospectively unconvincing organisation SMERSH, as, in the late reaffirmation of Britain's continued world JAMES BOND 1950s, Bond functioned primarily as a power status'. The last of Fleming's IN THE 1980s political hero for the lower middle classes. novels, The Man with the Golden Gun, An exemplary figure of the cold war era, appeared in 1965, the year of Churchill's Tony Bennett he personified the virtues of Western funeral, 'self-consciously recognised as the individualism, effortlessly triumphing over requiem for Britain as a great power'.1 the leaden hand of Soviet bureaucracy. The same period also witnessed a Equally important, particularly after the gradual relaxation in the relations between Suez fiasco and humiliation, Bond offered East and West as the acute tensions of the an imaginary outlet for a historically cold war period gave way to the less scene — a case of history repeating itself blocked jingoism. His exploits — warding troubled atmosphere of detente. There that would be farcical were it not so tragic. off the communist threat to world peace had been significant changes in the sphere Great power illusions have been kicked single-handedly, reducing the USA, in the ol gender and sexual relations, too. In the into a macabre half-life again in the person of Felix Leiter, to the role of 'permissive society' of the early 1960s, aftermath of the Falklands crisis. The assistant and by-stander — fictitiously both male and female sexualities were, to a royal wedding — and then the royal placed Britain once again at the centre of degree, freed from the cloying stranglehold pregnancy, the royal birth, the royal world affairs, an imaginary compensation of marriage, family and domesticity which christening and god knows what else — for the disappointments and rebuffs of had characterized the 1950s. have again placed the nation, in its more history. It is a gloomy prospect, but real When Fleming died in 1964, by which traditional and imaginary forms, at the enough, that the Bond of the 1980s will time three Bond films had been released, centre of people's lives. And the family is resume some aspects of the ideological Bond's currency in relation to these areas again being triumphantly re-installed as the currency of this peroid in being made to of cultural and ideological change was true centre and purpose of life as the echo to the tunes of a nation triumphant. already well established. As a popular effects of unemployment and the increas- However, perhaps this is being too hero, the figure of Bond coordinated a ing momentum of the anti-abortion lobby pessimistic. It is true that the figure of series of ideoligkal anxieties and cultural threaten to reverse the advances of Bond has always reverberated to the concerns centring around the questions of feminism. ideological concerns of nation and nation- nation and nationhood, the relations There is, then, cause for concern that hood, the relations between East and West between East and West and changes in the the Bond of the 1980s might be merely a and conceptions of masculinity and femi- pattern of gender relations. ghostly shadow of his former, 1950s self. ninity. However, the precise ways in which It is perhaps therefore fitting that 1983 Although Casino Royale was published in these concerns have been combined and should see the release of two new Bond 1953, with Live and Let Die and Moonraker expressed in relation to Bond have varied films. In June, Roger Moore appears in his appearing in 1954 and 1955 respectively, during the different moments of his career sixth Bond film, Octopussy, produced by Bond did not have a significant impact on as a popular hero. A revival of the Bond of Eon Productions, the company responsible British popular culture until he was taken the 1960s would be a more attractive for all the previous Bond films. Then, in up by the Daily Express in 1957 — in the prospect. the winter, Never Say Never Again will be form of both a daily strip-cartoon and the This was undoubtedly the moment of released after a long legal dispute contesting serialisation of From Russia with Love. Bond. The social reach of Bond's popular- Eon Productions' claim to a monopoly ity in the 1950s was relatively restricted. over the legal right to describe a film as 'a The novels did not sell particularly well Bond film'. Sean Connery, who co-wrote until the Daily Express took an interest in the script for this film with Len Deighton, Bond and, even then, annual sales never will once again stalk the screen as James topped the quarter of a million mark. Bond after an absence of twelve years. It With the first cycle of Bond films starring will be his sixth time in the part too. Sean Connery — from Dr No (1961) loYou The long-awaited Battle of the Bonds Only Live Twice (1967) — Bond became a has at last arrived. No doubt much ink major presence in British cultural life, a will be spilt comparing and contrasting popular hero with a mass audience. The Moore's and Connery's portrayals of films had a dramatic impact on sales Bond. A more interesting question, how- figures for the novels, too. Between 1955 ever, concerns precisely how the Bond — and 1961, 1,506,000 copies of the Bond or Bonds — of the 1980s will compare novels were sold in Britain. Between 1962 with the Bond of earlier periods. and 1967, total British sales were a If other signs of the times are anything staggering 22,790,000, suggesting a consid- to go by, the prospects do not look good. erable working class readership. The current political situation looks increas- ingly like an action replay of the 1950s, 1 D Cannadine, 'James Bond and the Decline of when Bond first arrived on the cultural Roger England' Encounter, 53(3) November 1979 p46. 38 June 1983 Marxism Today The cultural and ideological currency of of private gain. No longer an adversary modernise the nation, best encapsulated in Bond in this period, however, was mark- of the Soviet Union, the threat Bond the slogan 'Swinging Britain', associated edly different. The Bond films eschewed averted — more in tune with the period with the development of a new style, image the SMERSH formula, typical of Fleming's of detente — was that of the world being and rhetoric of cultural and political early novels, in favour of the SPECTRE destroyed as a result of a misunderstand- leadership. Refashioned as the very model formula. In this, Bond is pitted against an ing between the super powers wrought by of the tough, abrasive, unsentimental international criminal organisation — usu- the evil machinations of a criminal genius. professionalism which, according to the ally SPECTRE, the Special Executive for As a symbol and image of nation and rhetoric of Heath and Wilson, was destined Counter-intelligence, Terror, Revenge and nationhood, moreover, Bond accomplished to lead Britain into the modern, no Extortion led by the diabolically mad but something of an ideological about-face. illusions, post-imperialist age, Bond clever Ernst Stavro Blofeld — which Initially a rallying point for a chauvinism represented, in a highly condensed form, exploits the fragility of the relations well and truly on its uppers, Bond, in the the much heralded 'classless' spirit of the between East and West for the purposes 1960s, formed part of an attempt to age. A hero of rupture rather than one of June 1983 Marxism Today 39 tradition, a break with the traditional ruling class heroes — such as John Buchan's Richard Hannay and Cyril McNeile's Bulldog Drummond — with whom he had earlier been likened, Bond crystallised the virtues of a supposedly new, untraditional, anti-establishment committed to rescuing Britain from the dodoism of its traditional rulers. The images of sexuality in the relations between Bond and 'the Bond girl' were also, although again in a strategic and limited way, modernising. Representations of 'the Bond girl' in fanzines and the like typically stressed her qualities of freedom and independence. 'They are women of the nuclear age', Terence Young argued, 'freer and able to make love when they want to without worrying about it.'2 However, 'the Bond girl' was 'liberated' only in the areas (bed) and respects (sexuality) that 'liberated man' required. In all other respects, she accepted a 'naturally' subordinate position in relation to men. But it was a change from Doris Day. In sum Bond's ideological and cultural associations were forward rather than backward looking in this period. A 'hero of adjustment', he facilitated an ideological shift from one image of nationhood to another and from one set of gender identities to another whilst preserving a degree of continuity between the two. An ideal popular hero, he was both 'progres- sive', a sounding-board for change, yet also conservative, limiting change within clearly defined boundaries. This subtle, double-edged ideological these in different permutations. Never it's food for thought. An ideal Bond for the and cultural currency gave way, in the exactly what you'd call a 'positive hero', 1980s would try to unionise espionage 1970s, to a more straightforwardly reac- but clearly some Bonds are better than workers, campaign for gay rights in the tionary construction of Bond. With the others. secret service, encourage Miss Money- Roger Moore films, especially the later ones And if Fleming had developed his hero's penny to leave M and set up an abortion such as Moonraker and The Spy Who character a little differently, he might have clinic, leak all he knows to END, exchange Loved Me, the centre of narrative interest been much more bearable.

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