But does Bond really have to be fetishised? I mean physically? The tux, the suits, the car - sure. But a bodybuilder‘s body?
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It’s not the body builders body - not the point the physique is framed to be an object of desire, Brosnan had no bodybuilder physique, Campbell frames him to reference Ursula Andress just as he does with Craig.
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Somewhere a long time ago I read a quote from Roger, responding to a (probably joking) question about whether he’d ever do a nude scene on screen. Roger said, “Clothed, men are different. Naked, we’re all the same.”
Obviously in the strictest sense that’s not true or some guys wouldn’t make money taking their clothes off while the rest of us might make more money by promising to keep them on. But in another sense, I do agree with him; part of what set Bond apart from other movie heroes for me was his sense of style and sartorial taste. I never had any burning need to see Roger in a state of undress, though if anything both he and Dalton made me feel better about myself when their shirts came off. I appreciated that young Sean had a fine physique, but it wasn’t at all key to the appeal of his Bond for me. I guess it’s nice for Craig that he can fill out a bathing suit, but on the whole I’d have preferred he look more comfortable in a well-tailored suit than he does in jeans and a ballcap, which IMHO ne never quite manages: even when he dons a nice suit, it feels like it’s only to set up a scene where it’s ripped to shreds.
I’m a straight guy, so I guess I’m not the audience for “undressed” Bond, but it really seems to me that the character’s appeal, for a long time, was how he looked in clothes, not out of them. If I wanted to ogle a bare, manly chest, there were always the Tarzan movies.
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I think it’s more that from the early 1970s onwards the films became more and more child-friendly and an outing for the whole family and not so much that directors were concerned with whether or not Bond should be a fetish object himself.
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That’s a good point; this scene kept coming back to me after I’d written the above.
Perhaps the idea does go back to Fleming, is ingrained in Bond’s DNA?
The man spent longer beside Bond’s bed. He scrutinized every line, every shadow on the dark, rather cruel face that lay drowned, almost extinct, on the pillow. He watched the pulse in the neck and counted it and, when he had pulled down the sheet, he did the same with the area round the heart. He gauged the curve of the muscles on Bond’s arms and tights and looked thoughtfully at the hidden strength in the flat stomach. He even bent close over the out-flung open right hand and examined its life and fate lines.
I think though that Fleming’s lines don’t quite go into fetish territory. Or at any rate not into the sort of fetish we might expect.
It’s interesting, Tatiana is asked if she could have sex with a man she’s not in love with and answers it would depend on the man. She’s given a photograph of Bond:
Tatiana drew the photograph cautiously towards her as if it might catch fire. She looked down wearily at the handsome, ruthless face. She tried to imagine… ‘I cannot tell, Comrade Colonel. He is good-looking. Perhaps if he was gentle.’
Not much interest there; the idea and the image don’t do a lot for her.
Now General G looks at Bond:
…[he] carefully went over the face with his magnifying glass. It was a dark, clean-cut face, with a three-inch scar showing whitely down the sunburned skin of the right cheek. The eyes were wide and level under straight, rather long black brows. The hair was black, parted on the left, and carelessly brushed so that a thick black comma fell down over the right eyebrow. The longish straight nose ran down to a short upper lip below which was a wide and finely drawn but cruel mouth. The line of the jaw was straight and firm. … General G held the photograph out at arm’s length. Decision, authority, ruthlessness - these qualities he could see. He didn’t care what else went on in the man…
Apart from the bizarre art of physiognomy reading Fleming revelled in, there is perhaps a different kind of fixation in play here. Amis already noted the Bond novels contain an element of self-fetishisation and this would perhaps illustrate what he thought of. We read such a passage about Bond - with whom we identify - and by way of transference we want to be this guy Bond, that badass spy a Russian Intelligence General thinks so highly of.
Bond must be somebody we want to be: handsome, decisive, dangerous. For that to work he’s got to have an air of the physical attraction we’d like to have ourselves. The flat stomach with its ‘hidden strength’, the bulging muscles we’d gladly tone with cold showers to be in shape.
If we’re perfectly honest about it, physically most of Fleming’s Bond adventures could be done by a reasonably fit average person with the necessary training, mainly swimming, some shooting and a bit of close quarters combat (the gist of which can fit into a brochure in the Get Tough spirit). The real dealbreakers are the courage, stamina, endurance under stress and pain; qualities we’d like to possess but will never know until put to the test.
But the purely physical aspect could just as well be handled by a balding, potbellied guy with a weak chin and sausage fingers. Only then we wouldn’t want to be him.
Or in Fleming’s words:
‘…Within the Secret Service, this man may be a local hero or he may not. It will depend on his appearance and personal characteristics. Of these I know nothing. He may be fat and greasy and unpleasant. No one makes a hero out of such a man, however successful he is.’
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I need to register BondsGottaBeBlond.com
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Put me down for this suggestion.
I believe you also raised the possibility of Gary Oldman as M. I would like that too - my only request is that the role is written with George Smiley in mind and that Oldman wear the glasses.
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Elba and Oldman would have the kind of charisma Fiennes brought, making me respect and fear M (and rightly so, considering his nano-virus scheme).
I guess the kind old veteran of the earlier years would not work anymore these days, and if Bond were scared (a little) by his boss it would be all for the better.
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For £180 you can succumb to the feeble charms of the 007 Store and acquire The Seven Decades of James Bond Advent Calendar - Limited! Edition!, no less.
It’s a numbered edition, but presumably that means it has numbers on it. A barcode, maybe.
I think I spend less on dog insurance, and even that’s a racket.
Cynically, they can only be bothered giving you 7 windows to open rather than 24, presumably because they had an inifite amount of tat and could only stretch that far; hence Limited! Edition! Also, 24 would remind people of another spy bloke with the initials JB and there would be all sorts of IP issues, no doubt.
“A flavour of the contents…”
1960s. Dr. No (1962). Universal Exports leather card wallet and collectors card. A.k.a. a cheap wallet with a piece of card inside it. All your Chritsmasses have come at once.
1970s. Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Slumber Inc. silk sleep mask. They were meant to be dead, not asleep. Is this really the best respresentation of 70s Bond? Job lot of sleep masks acquired when Spirit Airlines went bust?
1980s. Licence to Kill (1989). Boxed trio of Isthmus Casino hand carved marble drinks coolers. I have no idea what this means. “Hand carved” bodes ill.
1990s. GoldenEye (1995). Numbered edition GoldenEye key bottle opener. A bottle opener. Woo-de-hoo. I am overcome with delerium. They say it’s the thought that counts. There was no thinking going on here.
2000s. Casino Royale (2006). Limited edition Vesper socks. Jesus Christ (I can say this, Christmas is all about Da Babby Jeesus. And “Vesper socks”)
2010s. Skyfall (2012). Numbered edition mounted production sketch. A photocopy of a sketch. You treat me richly, you really do.
2020s. No Time To Die (2021). Hand embroidered quote linen pocket square. Worth eleven pence, and money well spent to end up looking like the sort of person the BBC will have to apologise for in about ten years’ time. .
Wallet, a bit of card, sleep mask you pilfered from a budget flight, denial that No Time to Die is really from the 2010s, a sketch, some socks, a bit of cloth, a bottle opener and whatever the Licence to Kill one is. It’ll be a cold Christmas in the orphanage this year. Good - roast orphan gives much better crackling if kept slightly under room temperature.
£180.
Yet around here, you’re getting the Bond Advent Calendar - The Badvent Calendar - for free! You’ll be just as underwhelmed but at least there won’t be that gnawing guilt that you have wasted your money; only your time. You can spend the money on other, better things, i.e. me.
December 1
And who’s this behind the first little window? Why… it’s a completely knackered-looking Michael G. Wilson! Hello Michael! Merry Christmas, Michael!
Why does Eon seem to have given up producing Bond films, Michael?
- We killed him in the last one. And it was “last”, not “latest”.
- Bond has no more right to exist than, say, The Saint or Bulldog Drummond or the like. It’s amazing it’s gone on this long.
- We keep coming up with ideas but the wristwatch manufacturers won’t fund them.
- We make more profit annually from the Bond Store than the worldwide gross of Licence to Kill (inflation adjusted), so why bother?
- Frankly it’s been coasting since the 1960s, time for a resty-rest.
- I am old and I am bored.
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Well, according to the WSJ (WickedSales,James) EON‘s accountant said this is true: enough profit through the store (not even counting the bonus for the advent calendars even the employees have to shill out for).
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In his James Bond Dossier Kingsley Amis wrote how utterly unlikely Bond (in the books) really was* (in 1965 when he hadn’t yet seen half of what the films would come up with) - so that was my initial vote.
But has that really ever been a hurdle to Bond, that he’s ludicrous and entirely a male fantasy? Fleming was the first to admit it - and while he was ambitious he apparently never fell into the trap to over explain his creation as more than a fun way to pass the time from one airport to another.
The likes of Drummond and The Saint - more or less self-employed and of independent means, vaguely racist in a 1920s sense or overtly xenophobic and with a bulging furuncle of pompous nationalist importance for brains as Drummond - are certainly pure dime store entertainment, ‘adventurer’ and ‘gentleman thief’ fighting the machinations of evil forces and righting wrongs practically as a service to society.
A government agent acting in the common interest and on the orders of a vaguely competent political establishment seems just as far fetched. Certainly less real than most of the characters we meet in Lord of the Rings, which turns out to be a fairly accurate representation of the 21st century down to secondary adversaries like Grima Wormtongue.
But most of this has been apparent for the longest time; certainly since the 1970s that gave the world Cambodia’s Killing Fields and charming rulers like Amin or Bokassa. It hasn’t stopped Bond from being successful.
Perhaps it’s really the fact Bond is a business. And every business is based on the streamlining of its model: making more profit with less effort and cheaper ingredients. Travis McGee had an explanation for it (read about it here). And while it seems counterintuitive to downsize the Bond machine to a shoestring op…that Bond calendar from the 007 Shop would suggest that’s exactly what we see happening here.
As long as you can make a profit with cheap tat it’s not necessary to move hundreds of millions and an army of industry workers for nearly the same result**. 
*a guy who just wrestled a bazooka from a G.I. and shot at a train departing at speed, or downing a helicopter with an anti-aircraft gun, all without apparent expertise or training, but hitting his mark nonetheless. The accompanying military personnel would in the real world have to politely decline Bond access to their gear - and that would of course shatter the illusion of the omni-competent secret agent. A replacement would necessarily have to be more realistic, blander, less attractive for our daydreaming selves.
** I suppose Volkswagen could take a page from Eon’s book and sell old posters of the Beetle and the Golf, maybe some spare parts done up in exclusive limited edition VW drag, too.
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I think I can shed a light on that. Judging by the pics on the 007 Store I think it’s these here:
Vaguely dice-shaped thingies one assumes feature in the Isthmus Casino.
Well, we have something similar in Germany: our Granite Gin is regularly sold with a piece of granite:
This cube of rock is supposed to go into the freezer - and afterwards into your drink. It’s supposed to not dilute the stuff. Never tried it out myself.
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I went with “I am old and I am bored” though I dont think its MWG holding things up. At his stage of life though theres got to be at least a bit of temptation to have the whole thing behind you, and to have gone out with a success.
I thought that advent calendar description was one of Jim’s farcical set ups, but then I checked the 007 store and sure enough its a real thing. Just when you think that site cant get any more ridiculous.
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Think of all the people ordering that.
And enjoying it.
And then using these things.
And keeping them.
And buying it as a gift to others.
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The core of the bizarreness here isn’t so much the bric-a-brac itself (a given with most seasonal stuff, especially when found in calendars) but the hilarious price tag. This is the Bond equivalent to Dubai chocolate. And no doubt it sells just as good.
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All those films… just to get to the point of basically being able to sell anything 
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Are we sure Blofeld isn’t behind all this and secretly running the 007 store?
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I want the Slumber silk sleep mask.
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Or some other author of our pain.
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On the other hand, I am tempted to purchase something again, this time a J.B. teddy bear, well I have to admit that such an item is of course necessary and I certainly cannot live without it, so how I ever endured and survived before purchasing one is a complete mystery to me! Well, in my defense, I quickly add that it was the cheapest copy, well, cheap? More than 100 euros, but the rest is so incredibly expensive that this seems like a clever bargain! 
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