It’s simply the worst of all. I’ve always hated that scene, right from the start, after I saw it for the first time. And the worst about it is that it’s meant to be funny…
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Same here. I saw it the summer of 1978, freshly converted to the cause, hoovering up everything Bond-related. 007 could do no wrong for me - and even the 11yo fanboy I was didn’t agree with this. I cannot fathom how this idiocy passed muster even at the height of the Bond craze.
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I agree to a certain point: for me there is a difference, since Pat does seem to like/be attracted to Bond. It seems to be more of a verbal sparring, this thing about her boss. Hardly believable that Bond would want her to be fired nor be in a position to cause that.
One could, however, view this studliness of Bond on the whole silly and awkward. If every woman immediately falls for him where is the challenge? His character should have to really work for a woman‘s attention.
So, Amazon, get rid of this.
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I agree we’re probably meant to interpret Bond and Pat’s interplay as flirtatious and driven by mutual attraction. However that is not how it comes across, whether because the performers don’t have the right chemistry, or maybe they themselves didn’t pick up on that context based solely on the written word. As filmed, the message seems to be that while women are required to pretend they’re uninterested, all they really want is man who takes “no” off the table; with the obligations of propriety met, they’re as eager for casual sex as the guy. Note that once they do cross that line, Pat’s much more into Bond than the reverse. This all fits with the 1960s “man’s world” mindset of “sexy stews” and hot secretaries: some may be more of a challenge than others, but they can all be unlocked with the right key.
I agree the “studly Bond” schtick is silly. The trick is to lean into the silliness and have fun with it. As noted, TMWTGG grates on me because Bond is a lecherous horndog, chasing every woman in the film but not seeming to particularly like any of themr, and maybe hating the gender in general. Andrea offers herself up to him because she’s desperate to escape Scaramanga and sex “sweetens the deal,” and that’s good enough for Bond: sex is sex and it’s been hours. Nevermind he’s got a girl waiting in the wardrobe; that’s all the way on the other side of the room. Once he’s done, he assures Goodnight “your turn will come,” which should maybe be humorous but ain’t. He seems to genuinely believe he’s “God’s gift to women.” In the previous film, he tricked Solitaire into bed, while Rosie only sleeps with him to aid her efforts to deceive him. Who knows if she finds him attractive or not? And who cares; she’s here and she’s willing. Miss Caruso seems to be genuinely into it, but she also seems a lot like Goodnight, which is to say an airhead. We also don’t know how she ended up in his bed, only that she did.
Things turn around for me with “Spy” and MR, where Bond continues to be a sexaholic but now it’s played for laughs The humor, the gadgets, the stunts, the Union Jack parachute, the Lotus, Atlantis; nothing about the film is subtle or restrained, so why not treat sex the same way? Bond’s MO becomes, “My name is Bond, let’s get it on” (“I had lunch but I seem to have missed desert”) and every woman he meets shrugs and says, “Sure, why not?” It becomes part of the joke; there’s no danger of anyone thinking this era reflects the real world, so let’s dial it up to 11 and have a few laughs with the absurdity of it all. Basically, if you accept Bond as a cartoon character, it works, but the more “real” he and his world are, the more horrible a person he can seem.
Then he mellows a bit. With Corrine, Lisl, Melina, Octopussy, Magda and Stacey, you get the feeling of a genuine connection, not necessarily mutual animal attraction but some degree of sentiment between characters who genuinely like each other. Bibi is judged too young – even though she can’t be much if any younger than Solitaire – so Bond shows restraint. Thus the latter half of Roger’s tenure works better for me. Then we get Dalton, who’s almost a serial monogamist, and Bond’s years playing slave to his own hormones seem to be behind us.
Like a lot of elements involved with movie Bond, I think the key is to keep one foot in the absurd and never insist on taking the route of grave solemnity and “realism.” Because a James Bond who lives in the real world would be a monster.
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I don´t think in times where A is making thumbnails with Bond gunless we have to discuss Bond misshandling women…and we didn´t have anything really questionable since TMWTGG (1974!!!) and even that has sparked a discussion between secretagentfan and others…
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It is probably a result of my work/life experience, but a person who has been sexually abused and/or been forced to engage in survival sex work does have a huge portion of their life impacted by these experiences. Severine’s sexual abuse/trauma is more notational than anything else in SF (it is a spy/adventure movie, after all), but I do find Bond’s behavior toward her creepy.
Because even in the 1960s, women and their lives were understood instrumentally. Female agency only begins to (re)appear in films in the 1970s–think WANDA or KLUTE.
But even when a film is absurd or fanciful, the creators draw on contemporaneous understandings of social relations for their narratives. No matter how fantastic, there is reference (positive, negative, and/or both) to the way society operates at the time of creation.
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I applaud all the different opinions on this, and when I was encountering Bond for the first time (when I was so much younger) and it really was „a man‘s world“ I was often irritated by Bond‘s behaviour in general.
But I never thought he was the clean cut hero anyway. He was a scoundrel, a dangerous guy who happened to be on the side of good. If he had decided to become a tool for the evil maniacs he would have been frightening.
That’s, however, what made him interesting for me. He was wish fulfillment on the one hand, yet challenged me to question those „wishes“.
I would not want to see that taken away from this character.
As a kid I also responded to Han Solo that way. He was a selfish cynic who just decided to help the rebels. Not a white knight.
Of course, I always loved and still do Superman for his genuine decency. So maybe there is hope for me. 
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Most of the great movie heroes have a darker side, or at least are not Pollyannas.
Indiana Jones is a grave-robber, essentially. He doesn’t fight the Nazis because they’re evil, but because they’re trying to kill and him and they’re between him and the relic he wants. Han Solo is a smuggler who shoots first. Rick Blaine sticks his neck out for nobody. Batman fights evil, but dressed like a vampire and using scare tactics. And in more recent tellings of the myth, he’s less interested in justice than revenge. And yet in the end, they all do the right thing, so we get to have our cake and eat it too: justice is served, the really bad guys are defeated but the hero isn’t a corny Dudley Do-Right.
I always liked that Bond was lethal, and fought the villains with methods as ruthless as their own. This was especially gratifying as a kid growing up in the early 70s, where pressure from parental anti-violence groups had castrated TV heroes and especially Saturday morning cartoons, where for example the Super-Friends solved all the world’s evils with lectures on political correctness and if you were really, really lucky maybe Batman would toss a lariat around the villain, or Superman would grab them by the shoulder at which point they’d surrender. I remember waking up early to see re-runs of Jonny Quest and practically leaping for joy when Race Bannon mowed down villains with a tommy gun. Was this not the greatest cartoon EVER?
In that context, the Bond movies were a godsend, eagerly anticipated whenever they showed up on the ABC Sunday Night Movie. Are you kidding; people killed with flying hats, dumped into car crushers, shot with spear guns, thrown in amongst the piranhas, tossed off of cliffs, boiled in radioactive pools…what more could a red-blooded American kid want from a film?
The sex was another matter, but not necessarily because Bond was promiscuous, or lecherous or rapey. More because it happened at all. Watching the movies with my folks, I wanted to crawl under the couch whenever the smooching started, and they probably did, too. I used to get “the speech” every time: “We’re going to let you watch this, but we want you to know we don’t approve of James Bond’s lifestyle.” By which of course they meant sleeping around, not pinning people to trees with spears; the latter was okay.
Anyway, having started at such an early age, I tend to accept Bond’s interactions with women as part of the deal and didn’t give it much thought until I had kids that I wanted to pass along my interests to. None of my three kids (two sons, one daughter) care a whit for Bond: they don’t hate the films, but neither are they entertained. And from this new perspective I begin to understand that Bond’s attitudes and behaviors at the very least root him in a time and culture that no longer exist, and arguably shouldn’t. The best I can do to explain it away is to say, “Well times were different” or “It’s part of the fantasy” etc. But yeah, times WERE different and arguably the fantasies we indulged in the 60s and 70s are no longer appealing to young audiences of today. Bond’s attitudes and worldview threaten to make him seem about as contemporary and relevant as Alan Quartermain.
I think that’s the real issue, and what Eon’s obviously been struggling with for a while now: how do you stay true to a character created with 1950s (arguably 1930s) sensibilities AND make him appealing to a world that’s moved on? And as usual, my only response is: better them than me. Because I have no idea.
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I think that was a more sophisticated reading than the majority of viewers attempted/engaged in.
Being a scoundrel or dangerous is fine. Sexually assaulting women is on another level.
Exactly. Going “back to Bond” is impossible, because the cultural moment that produced him is gone. The Bond archetype will continue to exist, and be used in combination with the present moment of filming.
Because they have seen how deleterious they were.
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Have they, though? I would like to think that young audiences have learned from history. However, as there never is one homogenous group of anything, I doubt that this applies to more than one bubble.
Outside of that, people, young or old, are still proving resistant to learning anything, with the current political climate even daring them to indulge in any debased thinking of their choosing.
That certainly is true - but cultural moments are like fashion trends, they come and go.
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Maybe the Bond template is simply no longer relevant for how young folks relate to o̵u̵r̵ their times? A curious entertainment like a Jane Austen time capsule, funny, weird and baffling - but ultimately nowhere near their own lives.
We’ve been discussing hero/antihero dynamics, seduction, female agency and a number of other topics with regards to Bond. I suspect none of that needs a Bond figure as focal point to negotiate these topics any longer. As I write this I’ve just read a mainstream news site testing dating apps and their online chief editor is looking forward to meet a new girlfriend - because, as she informs me, a happy relationship needs not be a monogamous one.
Bond would have little use for his charms in that environment.
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I have come to believe that most audiences have stopped analyzing movies for their content or thinking about them deeply after viewing them.
That kind of perceptive work is done only by (some) critics, fans or cineastes anymore.
The onslaught of content has turned cinema and tv into the equivalent of background radio. You tune in, let it wash over you, sometimes hum along if you like something, but forget about it when you turn it off.
That is tragic for those who hold the art form of audiovisual storytelling dear to their heart. But the rest will not care.
The same goes for literature. New studies show that how many people over 14 do not even read one book per year anymore? 50 per cent. The other half is mainly going for fluff (see the large shelf of romance soft porn disguised as Young Adult, consumed by many between 20-40 year old female readers, written in a style consisting of the most basic and shortest sentence structures). And the few educated readers seeking serious literature are dwindling by the decade.
So, Bond films might still contain cultural messages of questionable content - but the intended and needed audience will not care. They just want spectacle, and as long as Bond provides that they will click on it.
Having only the Craig Bonds crack the Amazon Prime streaming top ten also proves that most audiences don’t care for „old“ films. Only that which is still in their mind.
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It’s been going so long because the lead character is malleable so another change will come. We probably worry about that a bit too much. It probably won’t be “our” Bond but so be it; it has a habit of surviving.
Been through the process sufficient times now, and yet here it still is, and so am I. Just about.
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If it’s right that the script is being written now and no casting of Bond until the script is finished and the fact that they are looking for a youngish unknown bloke to play Bond chances are you probably won’t see him appear in anything till next year, so be on the lookout for a young bloke have your Q-dar on because chances are when casting is done we will be like…That guy!!?? Oh I’ve seen him in a small part somewhere. Really him?! Oh yeah he could actually be quite good. I think the next casting will get a Craig response at first. But wouldn’t it be good if they make the announcement and we are all thinking Yes I can go with this!! Let’s go.
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Next year, Casino Royal will be 20 years old. The same amount of time between YOLT and TLD. Most of the Craig films are old films now. Anyone under 25, likely did not see the first three films of his era when they were released. I believe you’re referring to the ancient films. Perhaps we should use the marker BCE (Before the Craig Era) to refer to them.
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I get your point, i tend to mark age by when i met my wife as we met at uni. If i saw something before i knew her, its old.
Our oldest child is a teenager
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Apparently it was 20 years ago today that Craig was announced.
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Who?!? 
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But he’s blond!
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And only 5’10’’ tall.
And he once used a lifejacket.
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