From the gay teenager angle: I worked a job during high school at Caldor–a discount department store. After a few checks, I went to Bloomingdale’s to buy a Members Only jacket and a Ron Chereskin sweater. My mother could not buy me clothing from that moment on (which she was none too pleased about. I never quite knew if my being gay upset her more because I was having sex with men or because I was asserting a very different aesthetic from hers).
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I wonder how or whether the Bonds after Moore have influenced any teenager‘s view of mating rituals.
Dalton was courteous but rather preoccupied with other things.
Brosnan attracted women easily and did try to be a protector with romantic ideals.
CraigBond shows affection but also scorn for Vesper, even before her betrayal, then reacts rather cooly to his few conquests until we are asked to believe that Madeleine is the one he gives up everything for. But seduction or even romancing has never been on his mind a lot. How‘s that for a role model?
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A word for John Steed and THE AVENGERS overall (at least the seasons with Emma Peel and Tara King which were the ones broadcast in America).
I loved the series because of the interplay between Steed and Emma and the mutual courtship between them (and contra Dustin, I believe there was courtship). There was an aura of equality that appealed to me, and also an acceptance of eccentricity–as if how you did things mattered not a whit so long as you were proper/ethical in what you were doing. This was catnip for a queer teenager since it signified that the category of queerness was not the problem that society made it out to be. What was important was the kind of queer person you were.
He is allowed one–it just plays out differently. I am reminded of the friends who would say to me: “You mean so-and-so is gay?” “Yes he is. He just does not fit your idea of gay, so you miss it.”
What makes you say that Steed is unavailable? I think he is–his door always seems open to Mrs. Peel.
I always thought that with practice, effort, and education one could achieve suaveness, refinement, an ability with language–I saw Addison DeWitt as within my grasp. Mankiewicz always said that life loused up the script, but at least we could always act our parts with the proper elegance (Addison, after all, does tire of Eve).
Thanks for this SAF. Girls, of course, had cooties so I stayed away from them LOL (writing that sentence makes me realize how early on I was given the message that there was something dangerous about females which one need arm against–in this case with a cootie shot. I have no idea if this was strictly an American trope).
I do not think it is. More important is Pussy saying she had never met a real man before–as if lesbianism was something that occurred in the absence of encounters with real men–an illness that arose like scurvy, which is brought about by a Vitamin C deficiency.
True. Since they will end up together anyway, any aggression on the male’s part is understood on the part of both participants as an inevitable step along the road.
A wonderful encapsulation of how Dalton Bond strikes me.
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Oh, there is definite proof that Steed has a soft spot for Mrs. Peel - he sure as hell would love to love her.
Only…
Mrs. Peel. And this means, Steed being a person acting within a moral code - at least that of British prime time tv - that for Steed she is off limits.
But that’s not the end of it. Of course there was Cathy Gale: off limits on the grounds of her being not that much into him. And he not into her.
And then Tara King: off limits on the grounds of her being his subordinate.
There has of course been a sexual element to it from the moment Cathy Gale in her leathers and motorcycle outfit was paired with Steed as his steady sidekick. But the show itself didn’t go further into the theme for the same reason Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin are never an item: it destroys the balance of a pair who are supposed to chase down dangerous people week after week, walking independently but striking together.
That’s why I say Steed is not available. And he knows it, may regret it even when Emma drives off with her returned husband. But Steed doesn’t make the rules - the writers do.
Entirely different is Bond’s creed: he’s frequently with married women and no considerations of moral guilt disturb him ever about this fact. Bond’s moral code is markedly different from Steed’s. So much so that he even considers marriage practically on the spot. Bond would never understand not going for it if a woman and he find themselves on the same wavelength.
Ah yes - haven’t looked at it this way before.
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Understood. I approach it this way: yes, there is a code and Steed and Mrs. Peel obey it. However, there is also the reality of their mutual attraction the consequences of which play out when the cameras are off and the screen goes dark. I realize this is a queer reading since it reflects what it meant to be queer during the era when I was a teenaged gay boy: I (and the rest of my cohort) would never do anything with our friends or older men–we would even publicly condemn such behavior–but when no one was watching…
The brilliance of THE AVENGERS is that either reading works–just as I was obviously gay to some people and straight as an arrow to others.
I have never seen the Cathy Gale episodes. I have the Mrs. Peel/Tara King episodes on blu-ray. Are the remastered Gale episodes on dvd worth having?
Lastly, I want to thank everyone for this discussion. I asked a complicated and personal question and I appreciate all the responses.
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What I have seen some years ago was billed as a ‘first’ - the entire run of the early episodes when Steed was a much more shady figure closer to Deighton’s stories. The entire show had a different makeup then. The material was from a range of sources and I can’t say whether it was remastered or how the current dvds compare.
Overall it was a fascinating glimpse into tv made in another era. But it probably depends on the price and how much of a fan you are. Personally I’ve found I bought lots of things I don’t really watch often - or at all.
That reading isn’t so queer - there have actually been one or two episodes where it was alluded Mrs. Peel had spent the night at Steed’s apartment. So there was at least some winking involved when the last few frames faded…
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It’s worth mentioning that Emma (like Cathy) was presented as a widow, and thus fair game (plus in those days, a pretty young widow would have illicited a certain wink-wink, nudge-nudge response. (No husband to dishonor, but no innocent virgin,either. A perfect set up for a work by “Anonymous”).
If course it turns out Peter Peel is still alive in the end, but no one knew that until he staggered out of the jungle, and I’ll wager the writers cooked that up at the last minute.
At the end of one episode, Emma provea she’s over amnesia by telling Steed she recognizes him as the man who…then leans in and whispers something in his ear, raising Steed’s eyebrow (at least). We can be forgiven for filling in the blank with something steamy. Amazingly, now I think on it this might even have been “The Forget Me Knot,” where the next scene would’ve shown the return of her husband!
I don’t think the fact that we never see these two in bed means it didn’t happen, only that they’re too classy to do it in front of the audience. It’s not that kind of show. But the beauty of it is, you can read it however you like: if you want to believe there’s something going on, you’ve got plenty to work with, but if you prefer to believe there isnt, there’s no proof of anything.
Even if their minds weren’t on board, I think Steed and Emma’s bodies closed the deal when they were inhabited by a larcenous mind-swapping couple in “Who’s Who.” One of my favorite lines in the series comes when Steed searches his flat in pursuit of the villain who’s stolen his body and what he finds in an ash tray leaves him aghast: “What sort of a fiend are we dealing with? Any man who would bite the end off a cigar is capable of anything!”
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My husband understands such behaviors very, very well as our modest one-bedroom apartment is overrun with books, dvds, and blu-rays (which somehow keep appearing).
I mean queer as a reading that has moved beyond modernist ambiguity (found in the Bond novels) into the realm of the play of queer/postmodern aesthetics–from the furrowed brow to the winking eye.
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I had totally forgotten about this, very true. Also, this was the 60s, relatively young widows used to be far more common back then.
And yet, the trait was used as some kind of hurdle, at least initially. Your explanation is spot on, it’s been the ideal way to provide ambiguity and allow both readings, the chaste and the savoury. After all, this was still considered family tv and had to adhere to moral standards of a kind.
One more thought on Pussy Galore; it just occurred to me that she shares an important trait with Severine:
He said, ‘They told me you only liked women.’
She said, ‘I never met a man before.’ The toughness came back into her voice. ‘I come from the South. You know the definition of a virgin down there? Well, it’s a girl who can run faster than her brother. In my case I couldn’t run as fast as my uncle. I was twelve. That’s not so good, James. You ought to guess that.’
Bond prescribes her T.L.C. and then his mouth comes down ruthlessly on her.
So Pussy Galore is also a victim of child abuse and likely experienced it not just once, giving her at least in part a similar background as Severine.
Her claim to never have met a man is of course meant figuratively: she never met a man before she trusted enough to give another go after she was abused by her uncle. But we do not learn how she fared after Bond and although the ‘cure’ option will no doubt cater to a particular brand of conviction - that was apparently widespread in 1959 - there is no actual proof she went on as heterosexual from that point onwards.
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That definition of a virgin is terrifying. And Bond kissing her ruthlessly then seems at least troubling. But I get the impression that Fleming intended Bond to be the alpha male who really could put the past to rest and imprint the right feeling of what a man is all about.
While Bond is not an incest loving rapist Fleming obviously did not understand that Bond only enforces the idea that women must be taught how to feel.
As others remarked in the Severine discussion of SKYFALL‘s shortcomings, here it is Pussy who calls the shots: It’s her changing sides onboard the airplane, without any realistic hint of how they should escape this situation*.
She is the one approaching Bond on the ship that picks them out of the water. And she is the one telling Bond about her experience in the first place, another highly unlikely confession.
Overall, Goldfinger is perhaps the closest Fleming came to self-parody, a sendup of his own creation that is full of superlatives, crime de la crime, richest man in history, ‘…I doubt if anywhere in the world a man has eaten as good a dinner as that tonight.’ Bond eats stone crabs with melted butter in a bib ‘like a pig’, behaves like a rowdy behind the volant of the DB III and is apparently the only one able to see the obvious while the Bank of England’s ‘research department’ suspect Goldfinger of smuggling. My my, how does he do it? If only we had a clue…
Everything about the book is out of proportion, exaggerated - but then only so much as to suggest it’s its own spoof, not beyond. The lack of logic reasons why Goldfinger should keep around Bond and Jill, while they have no function in the scheme. The coincidences that let Bond find Goldfinger’s z-marked stash and run into Jill. The idea it would be possible to poison a whole town all at once, military base including. Or that nobody should have thought about it before and installed a protocol to defend the base and Fort Knox itself.
Fleming even manages to break the rule of Checkov’s gun again: for the third time - after Casino Royale and Moonraker - Fleming mentions ‘a long-barrelled Colt .45 in a trick compartment’ but Bond never actually shoots the bloody thing.
Having a lesbian character** in the tale, naming her Pussy and letting her fall for the charms of the hero after a sum total of twelve exchanged sentences seems not that much more over-the-top in a satire that features flying bowler hats, a buzz saw set to cut the hero in half and a girl covered in golden paint. None of it is anywhere close to reality, Fleming’s trick is that we don’t realise it when we read it.
*The plane is en-route to Russia and she can have no idea about Bond‘s plans or his hidden weapon (that would hardly help him, except in a suicidal attack on the plane)
**Come to think of it, Pussy talking about her abuse by her uncle at the age of 12 somehow comes across as if she isn’t meant to be a real lesbian. A traumatised victim of child abuse (done away with on the last page), but not a real lesbian…
Doesn’t get better, does it?
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