Sexy, smart and strong: The ultimate male fantasy


Bond's a ladies' man without peer who just happens to have a licence to kill.

Sexy, smart and strong: The ultimate male fantasy

From the moment he appeared on the pop culture map with the publication of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale in 1953, master spy James Bond has been the ultimate male fantasy.

He's a ladies' man without peer who just happens to have a licence to kill. He's an athletic adventurer who travels the world, fearlessly taking on lethal villains while gambling, sipping martinis and bedding babes.

So sophisticated and charming is Bond that he's fuelled many a female fantasy too, despite the never-ending accusations that a certain underlying misogyny is one of Agent 007's cornerstone character traits. Hey, as Carly Simon put it in her 1977 Bond theme song: Nobody Does It Better. A cad he may be, but Bond represents a seductive walk on the wild side for countless women.   

For all the constants in the Bond mystique, though, the character has also evolved dramatically over the years, morphing from decade to decade to best suit the changing social mores of each new era.

Consider that in the course of 22 films, with six actors taking the starring role, Bond has been a suave, studly Cold Warrior and a campy, tongue-in-cheek smoothie. His outrageous excesses were toned down in the late 1980s and turned up again in the '90s, in a winking, self-referential fashion for the age of irony. Now, with Daniel Craig's Bond, as seen in the 2006 movie Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, which hits theatres today, 007 has been reinvented as a dark, deeply conflicted hero for these grim times.

According to James Cork, author of The James Bond Encyclopedia, it's this very duality in Bond's nature, both his unchanging and ever-changing elements, that has been the secret to the character's tremendous staying power as a cultural icon.

"Any great, long-term character must have this dichotomy within them," Cork says. "They can't be someone you can pin down. You can't get beneath the surface with one simple definition.

"It's a very deft trick to pull off, how much you change and how much you keep the same. What can you strip away and still have it be Bond? . . . The filmmakers have pulled this hat trick. They've taken this character that was iconic in the '60s, and pure entertainment from the '70s through to the '90s, and now they've reintroduced him as someone who people are interested in the essence of, rather than the trappings."

On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969, which starred George Lazenby, was, in turn, a move back to Fleming's vision, with a more dramatic Bond. In some ways it was even a precursor to Craig's Bond, with 007 genuinely falling for the Bond girl, only to have her die tragically.

When Roger Moore took over the role in the '70s and into the '80s he played the character as a parody. "There's a wink and a nod to the audience," says Cork. "[Moore's] saying, 'This is absurd. You don't believe I'm a secret agent. But I'm going to take you to beautiful locations and show you amazing stunts. There will be visual spectacles and fun one-liners. The villains will be larger than life and ridiculous.' This Bond was more about great entertainment than anything."

Inevitably, the Moore years gave way to Timothy Dalton's Bond of the late '80s, which again steered closer to Fleming's territory. Not only was Dalton's Bond more serious, but, notably, the womanizing was significantly toned down in the Dalton films, just as the world was first experiencing the AIDS crisis and the need for safe sex was becoming urgent.

However, the '90s saw the return of a fun and frolic Bond, played with a suave metrosexual flair by Pierce Brosnan. "Brosnan's Bond was a total celebration of Bond's legacy and everything that people had loved over the years," says Cork.

In the politically correct '90s, Brosnan's Bond faced the criticisms of the character head on, with a knowing, humourous nod. In 1995's Goldeneye, Bond's boss M was played for the first time by a woman (Judi Dench) and in one memorable scene she dresses down the ribald secret agent, calling him "a sexist, misogynist dinosaur [and] a relic of the Cold War."

Brosnan's Bond was also cleaned up in other ways. "Maybe it's just correct not to have Bond hitting women at this point," Cork says. "Eventually there's a social cost to embracing this behaviour and maybe it's just not right anymore. Also, when you've got this agent performing these really tremendous feats of physical prowess, is he really going to smoke a lot? We now view that as something that impedes your health and it's not the thing that most well-educated and sophisticated people in society do."

After four Brosnan films, the last of them, 2002's Die Another Day, derided by many critics for its reliance on flash over substance, Bond was again in need of a retooling.

Enter Daniel Craig, the darkest, toughest Bond in the history of the franchise.

"Ever since he was created in the '50s, he's been changed by each generation to represent the male aspirations of that generation," Cork pointed out.

He also remains the coolest of rebels, says Cork. "Bond's always had the benefit of representing the establishment and at the same time being very much an individualist and a rebel . . . . There's that tension in his relationship with M in that he honours and respects his boss and does what he (or she) says, but he always wants to do it his own way."


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