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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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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