James Bond: America by Proxy
Part Two
Check out part 1 in this series here.
The Opening Song: The British Invasion
In addition to pioneering the opening sequence that would mark every Bond film to follow, From Russia with Love introduced the concept of a film-specific opening song, playing over the opening credits. These songs are remarkable in that they are, even after 60 years, almost uniformly good. They played over stylized sequences of silhouetted women posing or dancing provocatively (a feature that mostly faded with the arrival of Craig, for reasons that will be explored). These opening songs are quality pieces; many received nominations for Best Original Song in the relevant Academy Awards season, and some charted as hit singles and are still played on the radio.
On February 1, 1960, four African American students from North Carolina A&T College tried to buy lunch from a Woolworth’s lunch counter. On the counter was a sign that read “Whites Only.” When they were refused service, they began America’s first sit-in, and what American culture views as “the sixties” began. Things changed radically in America, with new cultural forces erupting into the popular consciousness with astonishing speed. John Kennedy was elected President in 1960, the same year that the Vietcong formed. Fidel Castro had taken power in Cuba the year before, and under pressure to deal with him, in 1961 Kennedy ordered the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and the abortive Operation Mongoose (a ridiculous scheme to assassinate Castro run by the CIA). The Iron Curtain gained tangible form in the construction of the Berlin Wall, and U.S. Army advisors were sent to Vietnam to assist the South Vietnamese regime against the pro-Communist Vietcong. Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, further embarrassing the Kennedy administration.
Kennedy triumphed the next year when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought America and Russia nose to nose over launching facilities in Cuba. The standoff was tense, but Russia’s Krushchev blinked first, and America could claim a Cold War victory at last. Public spirit soared along with John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. Clearly, a comeback was in the making, but then Camelot fell. President Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963. America mourned.
It is not a stretch to view Kennedy’s actions in and around Cuba (success in the Missile Crisis and mistakes with Castro) as the actions of a man under the influence of espionage fiction. Be that as it may, the idea that the United States faced a series of foes plotting from all over the globe took hold in popular culture. It happened just as another cultural influence made landfall—the opening song of the British Invasion.
On January 18, 1964, the Beatles entered America’s Billboard Hot 100 chart with “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” Perhaps symbolically, America embraced the British in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. Much like the inward-turning generation of post-World War II Americans sought comfort in the conformity of the fifties, so too did the mainstream America of the sixties, so frightened at the death of the President who had promised such a bright future, turn to popular entertainment for momentary escape. Perhaps in keeping with his storied spycraft, Bond crept into theaters while the rockers and punks of Britain occupied the spotlight at the record store. The Beatles and groups like them re-introduced America to style, and style was something Bond certainly had. His pseudo-sophistication and smooth snob appeal won him many fans; when Goldfinger was released in 1964 the public devoured it.
The Plot Thickens: Masterminds, Schemes, and Spycraft
Goldfinger and its successor, Thunderball, may have provided escape. They also provided context for the popular American audience about what the US was doing on the global stage. The Korean conflict had come and gone, and the troubles in Vietnam were beginning to heat up, both illustrations of American popular perception of “action” in the world: military boots on the ground, fighting the good fight for freedom. The looming threat of communism and the Cold War, however, made this notion increasingly misguided, as direct action seemed increasingly remote. Even Johnson’s ordering of combat troops to Vietnam in 1965 was not about defeating communism writ large. The popular political slogan regarding communism, after all, was not truly defeat of the red menace. It was containment. While Kennedy’s Cuban standoff with Khrushchev could be viewed as a high noon-style faceoff on a dusty western street, the fact was that it ended without bloodshed (and with a little bit of frantic behind-the-scenes diplomacy). The Missile Crisis did not resolve, which is to say there was no shootout that brought law and order to Tombstone. Rather, it simply ended, with the threat of violence (and nuclear fire) averted and the status quo maintained. Likewise, there was no serious sense that the escalating Vietnam conflict would be the end of communism, just a reinforcement of the walls between it and the free world.
That work of balancing global interests between superpower nations increasingly became the province of spies, and American culture had to come to grips with that. Bond’s presence in theaters broke spy-agency ground that television producers flooded into, with shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, The Avengers, and I Spy enjoying popular success. Bond, at the head of this phalanx of fictitious espionage operatives, served as a crucial Rosetta stone for American (and broadly Western) audiences allowing the public to have solid names and concepts they could latch onto for collective psychological safety.
In every film, Bond becomes aware of a mastermind’s grand scheme, and after a series of adventures, gunfights, car chases, and other assorted action sequences manages to thwart the plan, defuse the bomb just in time, and seduce a woman just ahead of the credits. It is not hard to see why this formula would be derided as an adolescent boy’s fantasy of how men should respond to villainy. Crucially, however, these battles against world-threatening evil do not involve beach landings or large volumes of military hardware. Bond fights in secret and his victories are never publicly known. His shadowy wins do not change or “save” the world. Instead, they preserve it. Keep it in balance.
Bond’s British identity also allowed him to operate in corners of pop culture where American heroes were absent. American heroic portrayals of Americans only came to include spies in Bond’s wake. When American action heroes were put on film, they succeeded best when they were law enforcement officers, soldiers, criminals, or some combination of all three. Even Napoleon Solo and Jim Phelps, arguably the two most prominent American fiction-spies of the period, worked for organizations either flavored as a sort of world police (U.N.C.L.E. is an acronym for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) or so secret as to be easily left undefined (The Impossible Mission Force gets very little detail, interacting with Jim Phelps only through those ubiquitous tape recordings).
In 1965’s Thunderball, SPECTRE was back, apparently possessed of “some sort of collegial succession system … no sooner does it lose one arch-fiend than it produces another to throw into battle against James Bond,” according to reviewer Richard Grenier. Again set mostly in the Caribbean, this time Bond thwarts the plans of Emilio Largo, SPECTRE’s mastermind du jour, who has stolen a pair of nuclear bombs from a downed Strategic Air Command bomber which SPECTRE intends to ransom for £100,000,000 worth of diamonds. Again we see the Bond franchise show the audience real-world considerations few contemplated in daily life: bomber patrol schedules, Western (i.e., NATO) nations placing observer officers in each other's aircraft, the security apparatus surrounding nuclear weapons, and how the superpower nations might try to keep such weapons out of the hands of those outside the acceptable geopolitical order. “Lucky for us, Bond is there, effervescently ready to throttle, knife, shoot, and suffocate anyone who menaces the integrity of the Secret Service,” wrote Hollis Alpert in his review.
The referred to Secret Service is of course Her Majesty’s Secret Service (of which James Bond is agent 007, after all), but American government involvement begins to creep into the action, playing even more of a role in Thunderball than it did in Goldfinger. Bond was irrevocably British, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t lead US troops, or, especially in the case of Thunderball, be rescued by them at the end, like the old cavalry charging from the ridge in countless westerns. Still, Bond was in charge, metaphorically “America,” with the capacity to summon soldiers when needed to fight for the right and defend the West from tyrants.
Bond Girls
The women of the James Bond films have been endlessly dismissed as sex objects, comic foils, oppressed victims, or messengers, never allowed to deal with Bond as equals. 1967's You Only Live Twice became the most blatant example of this perceived misogyny on parade. There are layers here, however, that are worth considering. During Goldfinger’s run, both Shirley Eaton (who played Jill Masterson, the woman who was famously killed by being painted gold) and Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore) complained to Newsweek that women built as they were (mature and full-figured) had fallen out of favor in pop culture. Ann-Margaret and Yvette Mimieux, and other “nymphs,” they said, were getting all the good roles, as audiences that had gotten younger sought images of femininity that were younger-looking.
The position of women in the sixties was in a state of flux (as was most everything else). On one hand, women were afforded more opportunity than ever before educationally—the number of women attending college skyrocketed in the early sixties. Once on campus, however, their movements and activities were heavily restricted. At some universities women had to live on campus until they were 21, most campus dorms were segregated by gender, and visitation was restricted, in most cases to only Sunday. Doors had to remain open a regulation amount. At Illinois, girls were prohibited from kissing their dates while leaning against the building. Those breaking the rules lost some or all of the few privileges that existed.
Nearly every aspect of female students’ lives was regulated: attendance, dancing, dress codes, fighting, swearing, tardiness, drinking, and even just loitering. This was not the case in James Bond films. “Bond girls” were upbeat and jet-set. They were rich and free, doing more or less as they pleased. If the action and plotting of the Bond films represent America over time, we must accept that the objectification of women in the franchise reflects their objectification in broader American culture and is not something the franchise can be condemned for as an outlier.
In fact, their objectification in the franchise is questionable to begin with. With some standout exceptions, it didn’t take very long for competent independent women to arrive on the scene. Pussy Galore easily bears the brunt of critical and academic derision based on her name alone. But Galore is as strong, competent, and independent as any woman in 1960s cinema. She is a full-figured adult (as has been stated), runs her own business (an aerobatic show, even, in a time when female pilots were rare), fully understands and commands her sexuality, and makes her own decisions consciously. That she has sex with Bond is an act used to condemn her, but this too she chooses.
When women in Bond films could not choose, Bond came to their rescue. Domino, Thunderball’s Bond girl, was the ward (which is to say quasi-hostage) of Largo; rescuing her from the villain was part of Bond’s larger plan. While Bond as white knight is too much of a stretch (his goal was hardly pure, after all), Thunderball has distinct overtones of female anti-authoritarianism.
The women of You Only Live Twice bear the trappings of professional freedom: they work for the Japanese Secret Service (whatever that is). They are professional women, and though they obey the orders of their boss, Tanaka, and line up to sleep with Bond, they at least have their own lives.
Wrinkles
Perhaps part of the problem with the public perception of ostensibly strong, professional women jumping into bed with Bond was the growing age difference between them and Connery’s Bond. You Only Live Twice was the fifth Bond film, and Connery was telling industry insiders it would be his final turn as 007. Critics admitted he seemed to be slowing.
The franchise formula was also growing old, and to energize it the filmmakers simply made everything bigger and more complex. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head mastermind of SPECTRE, is himself the villain of the piece, and he lives in a secret base even more extreme than Dr. No’s. Blofeld’s cavernous base is itself a cavern; it lies inside a dormant volcano, complete with a false lake at the top that retracts to allow his re-entry capable rocket to come and go. That’s right, a re-entry capable rocket. That nobody seemed to notice. In 1969. Sit with that a moment. Hundreds of Japanese staffers crawl the place, none of whom has accidentally leaked to anyone—not grocers, cabbies, prostitutes, bookies, or anyone else—that the base is just across the bay from their town. Blofeld is engaged in a ludicrous plot to steal American and Russian space capsules from orbit, provoking a war that will allow him to take over the world. The film is so unashamedly absurd that almost any joke about the Bond franchise and formula circles back to this film.
While cracks forming in the Bond formula were being filled in by bigger and bigger effects, so too were the cracks forming in President Johnson’s Vietnam policy being filled in with bigger and bigger lies. The Tet Offensive of 1968 blew it all to pieces. Media images from the streets of Saigon were horrifying. Americans were fighting for their lives. People were executed in full view of the cameras. Haggard faces and haunted eyes prevailed. Public outcry over this revelation that the nation was clearly no closer to winning the war than they had been years prior was immense. The government, and especially Johnson, had been lying all along, and there was no remedy. Johnson was ousted from his party’s election ticket at a convention that turned into a riot, and Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election with relative ease.
While the departure of Sean Connery from the Bond franchise was much more voluntary than Johnson’s exit from national politics, depart he did. George Lazenby made his debut as 007 in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Critics were appalled. Lazenby was decried as totally unable to carry the role. The plot was equally panned: Blofeld had returned, personally overseeing a Swiss clinic wherein a bevy of Bond girls were being brainwashed to unleash bacteria on command to destroy all crops on earth.
Much more important, however, and especially disappointing to fans and those who analyze Bond films as literature, was the subplot of his wedding. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service introduced the viewers to Tracy, the daughter of a crime lord competing with Blofeld, who Bond marries. Easily the strongest female ally of Bond across the entire franchise, she saves him from death and joins him not as a conquest, but as a partner. Unfortunately, she is gunned down by SPECTRE at the end of the film, just minutes after the wedding.
Lazenby lacked the experience and skill essential to play the role of Bond, especially considering the material he was given to work with. Looked at in the broad context of the Bond milieu, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is an integral link, presenting us with an important facet of Bond’s life and character. Taken on its own, it was soundly disappointing to the fans and producers alike.
Appearances Matter
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service has not held up well through the years, and beyond the obvious problem (Lazenby himself) a few things can be said about style on screen and the suspension of disbelief. Connery’s films are still watchable today and suspending disbelief at the plots and gadgets remains possible. One reason for this is simply the style of Bond as portrayed by Connery. He dressed classically, and was nearly always in a suit. Lazenby appears in a kilt, is further victimized by 1969 formalwear and ski fashions, and impersonates a tweedy gay genealogist to infiltrate Blofeld’s clinic.
Moreover, the gadgets of the Connery films, while primitive by today’s standards, made no effort to appear real. Connery-Bond’s gadgets (generally provided to him by the inimitable Q) are small, as befits his work. Indeed, in much the same way Star Trek communicators would eventually inspire the design of cellular phones, Bond’s gadgets have often been given a close look by real intelligence agencies for real-world application (from “homing beacons” to shoes with spring-loaded knife blades in them to TSA backscatter imaging). We may scoff at some of the gizmos, but we can believe that they might exist. Lazenby-Bond has a photocopier delivered to him (via a crane!) so he can duplicate some secret documents. While “photostatic copies” were new and probably exciting in 1969, the scene is laughable today and would have worked better if Bond had simply produced some sort of compact spy camera and photographed the documents.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service simply couldn’t figure out how to be stylish and couldn’t figure out how to stay plausible. Critic Paul Zimmerman pleaded “Come back, Sean!” Come back Connery would, in 1971's Diamonds Are Forever.
By the start of the 1970s America was tired. The antiwar and other protest movements had been going steadily for five years or longer, with no real success. The war in Southeast Asia was a continuing stalemate, though the Nixon administration was drawing down troops. The protest movement was beginning to bring serious consequences on itself, as at Kent State. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died. Led Zeppelin was still recording, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were still churning out folk tunes for the protesters, but the gentle cooing of the Carpenters and disco beats of ABBA began to float over American airwaves. Across America, Americans wanted to return to something familiar amid the fright and the uncertainty.
Sean Connery’s return as 007 was thus a success. Diamonds Are Forever took Bond to Las Vegas, where he once again pits himself against the fiendish Blofeld, who this time has a killer satellite poised to wreak destruction on the unsuspecting world.
Diamonds are Forever continued the trend of featuring more competent women in Bond films. In fact, the film plays up the franchise’s advancing portrayals of competent women by displaying several along a continuum. The star example is wily smuggler Tiffany Case, who provides important help in Bond’s investigation, jokes self-referentially about her name, and sleeps with him without being seduced by him—a very sex-positive feminist move. In the middle of the line are the female heavies Bambi and Thumper, who have an acrobatic brawl with Bond that almost proves more than he can handle. And finally, Diamonds are Forever gives us a character with a name even sillier than Pussy Galore, the gold-digging barfly Plenty O’Toole. O’Toole is admittedly absurd, but must be recognized as also very Vegas, and her presence in the film with Case elevates the latter dramatically. This trend of stronger and stronger supporting women in Bond films would continue from this point and only rarely look back.
Sean Connery: America by Proxy
If any single character paralleled the movement of America through the sixties, it was James Bond, and especially Sean Connery as James Bond. Newsweek called Connery’s Bond “the exquisite thug.” He moved blithely through his world, doing as he pleased to whomever he chose. He dressed well, ate well, played well, fought well, and lived well. He began his career in Dr. No as the America of Kennedy: boisterous and energetic, ready to save the world. He finished his career in Diamonds Are Forever older, wiser, and (gasp!) greyer. His age by the time of Diamonds Are Forever reflected the fatigue America was itself feeling after the tumultuous sixties. Sean Connery as James Bond was 1960s America.