Absolutely!
But at least that list of people you just went through are some of the most memorable characters in the whole series. And, compared to Fleming himself, I’d say Eon are positively fag hags!!! I appreciate what you describe is a genuine issue and I do not mean to trivialise it, but I do think there are far worse offenders than Bond: Basic Instinct, Bruno, Clueless and Silence of the Lambs I’m looking at you. No LGBT portrayal has ever spoiled my enjoyment of a Bond film, in fact Wint and Kidd and Silva definitely enhanced it.
I never said they were the worst or doing it maliciously, and i enjoy the characters too, but it does take me and others out of the film for a bit.
but the point is Bond/EON can and should do better not that they are horrible people
I’ll just go through it - I didn’t mean it to sound aggressive
I didn’t specifically reply to anyone nor imply anyones sexuality - just expressed that some of the general points being made did slightly swat away the issue at hand - at least from what i read, I apologise if I made an incorrect assumption
You said: [quote=“Arbogast777, post:40, topic:931”]
I continue to think the flamboyance was a nod to him being Latin, not homosexual.
[/quote] which is what i responded to - general flamboyance. re: the clothing etc… Hollywood routinely fails to deal in nuance, I don’t see a reasonable likelihood where someone dressing flamboyantly who also engages on screen in LGBT flirtation isn’t being coded gay rather than latino (Licence To Kill’s portrayal for example has none of Silva’s characteristics)
I don’t see anything with Q that explicitly labels him LBGT in the same way as Silva. Ben Whishaw is gay so we can extrapolate from that if we wish but imo it is never explicitly implied or states though I could be wrong and correct me if i am.
Yes, there are bad gay people in the world and gay villains can exist (and do) - the issue as I said, is that UNLIKE with heterosexual heroes and villains, there is no counterbalance - no good gay characters to balance the bad - they are seen as evil because they’re evil, with Silva, the LGBT is coded into their villainy - its a part of their villainous traits - not all but it undeniably a part - If we were to only watch Bond films, the only LGBT characters would be villains who have some element of their sexuality treated negatively and that is the issue I take with them .
And apologies again if I came across harshly, it certainly wasn’t my intention
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I’d certainly welcome an LGBT ally… as long as they too are as over the top as the villains under discussion, so that their camp/flamboyance can be seen in a positive light. Bond has openly embraced camp since Goldfinger so an outrageous ally would be a great addition!
I’m down - maybe we can see Bond’s “first time” 
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Let’s just see if he can whistle or not!
Fair enough. But if Silva being gay is not a signifier of villainy, why is the character gay? And why have his queerness denoted through performative flamboyance–the traditional method of representing queer villainy?
You make an excellent argument about Silva character and motivation. Taken as true, having Silva signify as gay makes even less sense.
Yes. I will send you the updated rules & regulations if you like 
What I love about SPECTRE is the subtle way they go for Q’s homosexuality: the scene at the juice bar (as I pointed out before); the bit of glee when Q puts the tracker in his blood; and Q’s line about cats.
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But… is that really a signifier? May the actor´s open homosexuality get confused with the character he’s playing here?
I have absolutely nothing against Whishaw´s Q being gay - but nowhere in the films this is actually pointed out. And they easily could have - look at “Star Trek Beyond” in which Sulu greets his husband/lover, which - IMO - is handled perfectly, since the sexual preference does not define the character but is only one part of his private life.
Whishaw´s Q, for me, is a tech nerd who mainly lives for his job, can therefore at best have attachments to his pets (cats), and actually enjoys Earl Grey because he is British - just like Captain Picard always ordered from the replicator “Earl Grey. Hot.”
His glee when putting the tracker in Bond´s arm, to me, is obviously his small revenge for Bond disrespecting Q´s work and demands. In his lab he tries to be in charge - just like Llewelyn´s Q tried to be and got angry whenever 007 made fun of his work.
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But when a character’s sexuality is signified, it must be signified for a reason. We are not culturally in a place yet where being queer is a neutral fact. Individuals may be there, but not society as a whole.
Because historically sexual orientation (not preference–I do not prefer to be gay–I am gay) was singled out in order to oppress a segment of society. Those oppressed then took that element of their lives and claimed pride in it in opposition to the oppression. Our sexuality was first singled out not by queers, but by those who wanted to stigmatize us. We just opted to make fabulous lemonade out of the lemons we were handed. If you are a heterosexual, you never had to endure this process, so you may wonder why sexuality plays such a big part in people’s lives since it did not function so in yours.
So I ask the same question I asked Dustin: if true, why signify him the way the film does?
We obviously posted apart - so the signifier question I tried to answer above.
As for the historically demeaning treatment of homosexuality - yes, absolutely, this has been unfair and downright ugly in mainstream cinema for ages.
Especially in Bond films, I might add - but as you know, Fleming was definitely sharing the views of his time, and the movie Bond went with it in a more subtle way, too.
But as sad as that might sound - Bond might just not be the right kind of hero to look for an LGBT sensibility. He embodies the totally clichéd stereotyp of the old school macho heterosexual.
It actually was Tallulah Bankhead. Dietrich was in AH’s STAGE FRIGHT
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100% this!
But this was also an after-the-fact quote. My personal opinion (pure speculation) is that they goofed. They thought they had a cute idea and it played very differently with audiences than they anticipated (why intelligent people made such a goof is another question). When faced with the negative opinions, they took shelter where most artists (and people) do: intention. It’s that non-apology one often receives: “I am sorry if you took offense. I did not mean to offend.” It is never about apologizing for the giving of offense; rather it is about sorrow over the offended response that occurred (which makes no sense). But if someone apologizes for giving offense, then it means that the possibility exists that they could have seen the legitimate arising of such a response.
Because in the history of film, queerness has most often been used as a signifier of villainy whereas heterosexuality has not been (though heterosexual perversion has). Are there bad gay people in life? Sure, but the reference point for this discussion is not life, but the history of cinematic representation.
I doubt that they would ever have made it specific. The Bond franchise (and maybe EON itself) skews conservative.
And I think that is why SPECTRE is so brilliant–both my reading and your reading are supported by the text without cancelling the each other out. This is part of the capaciousness I find in the film–mirrored in the capaciousness of the mise-en-scene.
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True, and I read around these views and can still find pleasure in the books and films. I know for some my analysis of DAF was a bit much, but I do think there is a reading where Kidd and WInt are not homophobic representations, but they can be seen as such if the premises of my argument are wrong or unsupported.
And that is what makes SPECTRE such a great film for me–it supports both your reading and mine without them cancelling each other out. This is the capaciousness I spoke of earlier–a capaciousness mirrored in the mise-en-scene. SPECTRE is more of an auteurist Bond than SF (though made by the same director), but less of a global success–which may indicate why an auteurist approach is not the best for a Bond film.
Because straight has been the default sexuality in art for centuries–it signifies normality (as it did culturally/societaly).
I am on a bus heading to dinner with husband so more later, but:
I used the term default in the sense that all characters are assumed to be heterosexual unless otherwise indicated (just as until a very recently all people were assumed heterosexual. Why queers had to “come out” to counter default assumptions).
With heterosexuality as the default normal sexual orientation, when queerness is signified it indicates non-norrmality since it goes against society’s default.
There is never any need to proclaim the default setting. Everyone has a sexual orientation and by default it is gay unless otherwise indicated.
I think I have an answer to this…
I see Silva as an ‘alternate version’ of Bond: possibly another orphan recruited early, evidently a fit for the same line of subversion and sabotage, only when Silva went to spook college his understanding of IT got him to the 0101 section instead of 00.
Silva is Bond the way he would have turned out if things had been a little different - in Star Trek he’d be from the mirror universe. He’s a little less blunt, but evidently as expert at killing as 007. He’s loyal, dedicated, deadly efficient and going beyond his brief. Actually, he’s the version of Bond we see coming back brainwashed in Fleming‘s TMWTGG: coming back for the sole purpose to kill M and failing to do it.
Now this second version of Bond is difficult for various reasons. If we draw him too similar we’d only get a caricature: too much on the nose, not a credible character at all and too close to GOLDENEYE’s 006. So there’s got to be a distinction, a way to hint at his distortion and not betray it. With Trevelyan there was next to no explanation why he ended up as the villain when he did. Has he always been a double agent? Did the explosion cause it? Silva has a far better fleshed out character and the gay elements, over the top but still ambiguous, round it in my view.
Maybe I don’t see his gayness as a villainous trait since I’m not entirely sure the villain of the piece is Silva. To me M and Silva both carry the villain’s part - though in M’s case it’s muted and not pursued beyond a certain stage.
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My guess is that the writer wanted to find a new way of making bond/the audience potentially uncomfortable and have fun doing it.
When Silva caresses bonds thigh there’s a pregnant pause in the viewer, not because shock - horror - the villains a GAY!!!, but because we’ve been led to believe over the years that Bond is hetro and never having been propositioned by the big bad before we’re keen to see how he’ll react.
It’s a perfectly weighted, directed and performed scene imo - a canon highlight, unexpected and new and with an ace up it’s witty sleeve in Bond’s retort; he more and less raises the stakes, daring Silva’s to show his hand, as it were. It’s a device set up to create these tensions and needs be no more and no less.
It may serve to express underlying tensions in society, but isn’t it a function of art to play out those tensions and let us debate til the cows come home?
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