As I suspect has been the case for a lot of people, I've spent quite a lot of time over the past few weeks watching Bond films. The films I've watched have spanned the entire history of cinema's longest running series, spanning from Dr. No (1962) to SPECTRE (2015) and to be augmented in November with the oft-delayed release of the twenty-sixth entry, No Time To Die. It's likely that there will be a new Bond in place for the character's sixtieth cinematic anniversary in 2022, at which point the series will refresh itself all over again. It's a truism to state that the series has kept itself current by reflecting the mood of the era in which each film was made, but there has to be more to it than that for any institution to not only survive, but succeed, for as long as Bond has. Plenty of art reflects its time, but none have reflected so many times as Bond.
The character of James Bond was born in 1953, an amalgamation of various people author Ian Fleming respected during his wartime service. The character's name derives from an ornithologist, author of the work 'A Field Guide To The Birds Of The West Indies'. Fleming described the ornithologist's name as 'brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine', wanting Bond to be 'a dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened'. On the page and on the screen, Bond quickly outgrew the narrow confines of his conception. The essence of what made the character successful, though, has endured from the moment Ian Fleming sat down at his golden typewriter (really) to the present day.
Prior to his marriage to girlfriend, Ann Charteris, Fleming sat down to write what he described to a friend as 'the spy story to end all spy stories'. The novel, Casino Royale, was Fleming's last-ditch attempt at an escape back into the masculine world of intrigue and suspense of his days as a wartime intelligence officer. Soon to be married and with a baby on the way, Fleming feared his own domestication.
Outside the walls of Goldeneye, Fleming's coastal estate in Jamaica, the 'winds of change' subsequently described by Harold Macmillan were blowing across the British Empire in the aftermath of the Second World War. India, considered the Empire's crown jewel, had been granted independence in 1947. The decolonisation process was underway and the United States was rising in Britain's place as a dominant world power.
The simultaneous occurrence of Fleming's nuptials and Britain's decline on the world stage is reflected in Bond's character, his place in the world, and his arc through Casino Royale. Fleming gave Bond many of his own personal habits and the character is shaped as an idealised version not only of the author, but British bachelorhood in general: he is a man of action and decisiveness, in control of his environment, a little cynical and indulgent, but seeking no validation or recognition. He depends on nobody but himself, with women in particular viewed as strictly 'recreational' and with Bond having a noted dislike for 'having feminine things around him'.
Over the course of the book, Bond falls in love but is betrayed. The betrayal, and death of the woman, Vesper Lynd, kicks Bond out of his lethargy and cements his determination to destroy the Communist threat behind his suffering. As a reflection of Fleming, this inverts his real-life situation. Where Fleming was wary of transitioning from a life of adventure into settling down, Bond expresses frustration with his life as a spy in Casino Royale and appears willing to domesticate himself with Vesper. Whereas Fleming feared that his affections for Ann would end his adventuring lifestyle, for Bond it is the pain of love being betrayed that renews his commitment to his former life, the symbolic death of the woman allowing the continuation of independence and bachelorhood.
This parallel works just as well with Bond as a symbol for Britain. In the real world, Britain's power and its sense of independence was crumbling. Unlike for Britain, fate intervenes for Bond to regain his sense of purpose and self. Neither Casino Royale nor the subsequent Bond novels shy away from Britain's diminishing place on the world stage, but just as for Fleming's sense of bachelorhood, in Bond its values and strength find a symbol of stability even as they are decaying everywhere else.
It goes without saying that the Bond of the books is a very different beast to the Bond of the films. In the books, Bond is frequently assailed and prone to bouts of melancholy, which he overcomes through force of will. As Fleming got older and his health declined, Bond becomes more introspective in his suffering. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond falls in love again but, once again, his beloved wife, Teresa, is taken from him only moments after they are wed. This time Bond's reaction is not one of renewed dedication, but a slide into profound depression.
In the subsequent novel, You Only Live Twice, Bond gets revenge on the man who orchestrated Teresa's death at the cost of his sense of self: he suffers amnesia after being wounded escaping the villain's lair and briefly lives another man's life before a reminder of his old self draws him back to Britain not out of determination, but fated inevitability. Fleming closed his final novel, The Man With The Golden Gun (completed posthumously by Kingsley Amis from Fleming's early draft), with Bond reflecting not on bachelorhood as something to be clung to, but something his nature destined him to whether he liked it or not. At the end of a life of turbulent but passionate relationships, one senses the tragic regret in these thoughts coming from Fleming's Bond-self.
In the subsequent novel, You Only Live Twice, Bond gets revenge on the man who orchestrated Teresa's death at the cost of his sense of self: he suffers amnesia after being wounded escaping the villain's lair and briefly lives another man's life before a reminder of his old self draws him back to Britain not out of determination, but fated inevitability. Fleming closed his final novel, The Man With The Golden Gun (completed posthumously by Kingsley Amis from Fleming's early draft), with Bond reflecting not on bachelorhood as something to be clung to, but something his nature destined him to whether he liked it or not. At the end of a life of turbulent but passionate relationships, one senses the tragic regret in these thoughts coming from Fleming's Bond-self.
The Bond of the books tracks the masculine psyche's self-image from projection (heroism, independence, adventure) to introspection (vulnerability, loss, ageing) alongside that of his creator. The penultimate Bond novel, You Only Live Twice, is aptly named for marking the second time Fleming and Bond faced a version of death together. The first time, in Casino Royale, Fleming used the perceived 'death' of his spy life to give Bond a rebirth in his. In You Only Live Twice, with Fleming facing his own mortality, the death of Teresa results in the end of Bond as masculinity externalised and the entry into masculinity reflecting.
Had
this Bond carried through to the films, it is unlikely the series would
have lasted anywhere near as long as it has. The aesthetics of the films
are similar to those of the books - Fleming's post-war fascination with
travel and the finer things in life persists even in times of bottomless consumption and easy migration - but Bond himself is firmly locked into
the earlier iteration of Fleming's alter-ego. It is telling that as Fleming's Bond shifted away from the earlier version of externalised masculinity, so too did reviews of the books become angrier and more personal, as though critics were taking the character's evolution as a personal affront.
The popularity of Film Bond reflects a character for whom no such growth has taken place. Although the tenures of each actor can be broadly categorised into those who portrayed Bond as an archetype (Connery, Moore, Brosnan) and those who portrayed him as a character with emotional and personal depth (Lazenby, Dalton, Craig), any hint of self-reflection is strictly surface-level. Film Bond has suffered four notable tragedies: the death of his wife in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; the mutilation of Felix Leiter and death of Della in Licence To Kill; the death of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale's rebooted timeline, and the death of M in Skyfall. All four instances served as a renewal of the traditional Bond identity, as per Fleming's Casino Royale novel. None have led to the collapse and change marked by Fleming in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice.
With No Time To Die set to be Daniel Craig's final outing in the role and likely the last adventure for the Bond of his timeline, it will be interesting to see whether his interpretation of the character is allowed to evolve at the end of his cinematic life. Craig's Bond was defined, at least at first, by a return to the work of his creator. Perhaps it would be appropriate, then, for the generation of men whose entry point into the series was Craig's 2006 debut, Casino Royale, to see their Bond bow out in a similarly conclusive moment of evolution as Fleming's character.
Despite this, it would be unfair to view Bond's unchanging nature in the films as a flaw. Ian Fleming created Bond to be a symbol of endurance and hope to cling to during the unpredictable, chaotic times of post-imperial, Cold War Britain. Those determined to paint Bond as a force of imperialism are not
literally wrong, in that the character originated from his creator's
desire to preserve the sense of self-determination lost as the British
Empire crumbled, but as ever miss the bigger point: as times change, so
do the values for which Bond symbolises preservation.
Where the novel Bond was very much his creator's character, Film Bond is universal. Fleming's growth as a person meant his character had to change with him, but for fans of Film Bond, he is less of a reflection and more a legacy to be received and passed on. His constancy makes him a character to be handed down from generation to generation, a symbol of steadfast courage no matter how much society changes around him, for better or worse. It is no coincidence that Bond films have been a regular feature of the British television schedule during the coronavirus outbreak.
Where the novel Bond was very much his creator's character, Film Bond is universal. Fleming's growth as a person meant his character had to change with him, but for fans of Film Bond, he is less of a reflection and more a legacy to be received and passed on. His constancy makes him a character to be handed down from generation to generation, a symbol of steadfast courage no matter how much society changes around him, for better or worse. It is no coincidence that Bond films have been a regular feature of the British television schedule during the coronavirus outbreak.
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