Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Sexy Secret Agent Sex

With Skyfall, the latest James Bond adventure, now out on DVD (and Bluray!) I've been thinking a lot about the 50 year old movie series.  My first experience with the world-famous spy with a license to kill and blow lots of stuff up came in the Summer of 1996, when my aunt and uncle rented GoldenEye.  I was hooked immediately; dreaming of car chases at insane speeds, longing to mow down tons of guys with a machine gun, and hoping to one day be sexually assaulted by Famke Janssen.  By the time Tomorrow Never Dies hit theaters in 1997 I had collected all 17 official Bond films (on VHS!) and watched each one about five times.  I even had the unofficial film, Never Say Never Again, which featured Sean Connery's return to the role.  Also, Rowan Atkinson was in that one as a character named Nigel Small-Fawcett.  Heh heh.  Small-Fawcett.

As an adult I finally picked up the source material, the novels by Ian Fleming, starting with Casino Royale.  The Bond of the books differs quite a bit from the Bond of the cinema.  Whereas the cinematic 007 evolved almost into a super-hero, the version in the novels was an often cynical man, spending the first few chapters of most of the books haunted by boredom and loneliness.  The movies typically open with Bond wrapping up yet another exciting mission (or being forced to pull out of the mission) or wrapping his arms around yet another exciting woman (or being forced to pull out of the woman).  There's no mention of what happened to the girl who stuck with him through all of the vehicular explosions and maniacal villain speeches of the previous film, but in the novels you may find James lamenting about his most recent love affair ending unsatisfactorily, with the girl leaving or things falling apart.

I feel like Daniel Craig and the filmmakers behind the rebooted Bond series (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall) have crafted an on-screen Bond that is more akin to his literary namesake, while of course retaining the awesome explodey tradition of the films.  Craig portrays a more vulnerable man, with actual human emotion, as did Timothy Dalton in his two entries in the series.  But whether Bond is seen as a real human being capable of failure or the pistol-packing playboy super-hero of the late Connery films and Roger Moore era, there's always one element that never changes:  Bond is a sexy secret agent who has sex with lots of sexy ladies.

My eight year old daughter has become quite a fan of the 007 film franchise, and we usually spend Friday or Saturday nights eating snacks and watching Bond foil the plans of yet another villain.  It was quite a relief when she almost immediately pegged Mr. Bond as what he is: a womanizer who drinks too much.  I only hope she retains the ability to recognize this type as she gets older.  On the flip side of this, I spent my adolescence thinking James Bond was about as cool as you could get.  How wonderful it must be to sleep with a bevy of woman, moving from one to the next without so much as a second thought!  Of course, as a grown-up I much prefer a monogamous relationship which carries much greater benefits and pleasures.  Aside from forcing most of us to realize that we're more Nigel Small-Fawcett than James Bond, trying to lead the life of a womanizing playboy carries with it a certain emptiness and many dangers that could threaten or alter one's life.  And this, most recently, is what I've pondered about the world's favorite spy.  What would his life, and sexual encounters, really be like?  What sort of consequences would he have to face?

Remember that scene where James puts on a condom before launching his love-rocket into some woman's volcano lair?  No?  That's because it never happened.  As far as we know, from what we see and don't see in the films, Bond thinks condoms are for wimps and communists.  So, for starters, Bond, James Bond would most likely encounter diseases, sexually transmitted diseases at some point.  Probably at a lot of points.  He frequently meets women who are ready to sleep with him at the drop of hat, knowing nothing about him other than that he looks good in a suit.  With alarming regularity he meets and has sexual intercourse with women that have names like Honey Ryder and Pussy Galore.  It's as if the parents of these women somehow knew they had birthed skanks and thus named them as such.  Am I to believe that these women are normally chaste, and that James Bond is the first person to Thunderball them?  I doubt it.  And odds are that at least a few of these women are carriers of crabs or chlamydia.

How would 007 handle it?  Perhaps he'd visit his old buddy Q.  "Right, now pay attention double-o-seven.  Remove the cap from this ordinary tube and squeeze from bottom to top.  It will emit a cream that should soothe your itching and burning areas." Q might say.  Bond would make a quip about how his last mission had gonorrhea badly, to which Q may reply, "For heaven sakes, if you can't respect my equipment the least you could do is respect your own."

So we know that James doesn't use condoms.  Those are for CIA dorks.  You'd think that at least one time he'd have slipped one of his little secret agent swimmers past a woman's iron curtain.  But as far as we know, there are no little Bonds running around.  If there were, certainly he'd have to pay child support.  So he's a secret agent, big whoop!  In the films it seems like everybody knows who he is.  Even if that wasn't the case, believe me, domestic relations (or whatever it's called in the UK) would track him down and make him pay.  Sure Bond leads a jet-setting lifestyle full of expensive meals, smart suits, and high-tech gadgets, but this is all at the expense of her majesty's government.  In the novels Bond only takes home a humble paycheck to a humble flat to sit around depressed about the weather until the next maniac shows up on MI6's radar.

Okay, so in the first film of the new series, Casino Royale, there is a four and a half hour long scene where Bond has his nuts beaten over and over again with a giant knot of rope.  It wasn't four and a half hours long, you say?  Well, it seemed like it.  So maybe in this new version of Bond he's incapable of reproducing, but the original series starts with Dr. No and there's not any indication that he's sterile.  Surely he must have impregnated at least one Mary Goodnight or Octopussy along the way.

How would 007 handle it?  With his public servant salary he'd probably have to find more lucrative work to handle numerous child support payments.  With his skill set he'd have to either become a full-time professional gambler or a freelance assassin who charges big bucks to eliminate problems.  However lax his moral code is, though, he seems to staunchly stand behind his vow to protect Queen and country (except when he goes rogue every once in a while).  Perhaps his best bet would be to use his incredible super power to make himself younger and have a different face every decade or so.  When the bobbies knock on his door to arrest him for non-support they might be expecting a man with the face of Sean Connery, only to have their call answered by a man who looks like George Lazenby and claims that he's not the father, it was "the other fellow".

If there's one thing that might concern 007 more than STDs or unwanted pregnancies, it might be meeting a woman who isn't a knockout on the scale of one to knockout.  "Doesn't James Bond ever meet any ugly women?" my daughter asked.  The answer, usually, is "No."  If he does, she's probably an old hag who works for SPECTRE.  But wouldn't a real spy potentially find himself in the position where he'd have to seduce a non-knockout to try to gain some crucial information?  What if he had to seduce, gulp, a man?  In Skyfall, the villain, Silva, somewhat awkwardly caresses a restrained James' legs in an attempt to psyche him out.  Bond cooly and casually implies that Silva is not the first man to do this, leading some people on the internet to jump to the conclusion that the latest incarnation of Bond is bisexual.  I don't buy it.  It seemed to me to be a simple tactic to let Silva know that he wasn't going to be able to win with such head games.  Clearly this Bond, like his predecessors, enjoys the company of beautiful women exclusively.  But if a James Bond existed in a somewhat real world, he would doubtlessly run into his fair share of women ranging from plain to frumpy to downright gross.

How would 007 handle it?  Tasked with seducing a woman in order to gain some information about the bad guys, Bond is shocked to find out that she doesn't look as enticing as her name implied.  Let's say her name is Lotta Cumming or something like that.  So, he switches from doing what he does best (sex stuff) to what he does second best (blowing stuff up).  He shoots a conveniently placed barrel, which causes fifty other barrels to explode.  In the ensuing mayhem Lotta is struck with a flaming barrel and mortally wounded.  Now Bond tells her that he was totally going to do it with her, because she's totally attractive in a non-conventional way, and this is enough for her to spill the needed information before dying.  Bond makes a pun about his penis.  Mission accomplished.

It's a damn good thing that Bond has the incredible ability to become younger every 10 or 15 years.  Realistically, as the man aged he would succumb to liver failure or lung cancer.  Or syphilis.  That's if he was lucky enough to continue to be able to dodge bullets sprayed at him by three hundred machine-gun-toting goons.  More importantly, his constant reinvention has given him staying power at the box office.  Fifty years after Fleming's spy first swaggered into the hearts and minds of the pop culture masses, Skyfall has taken in over a billion dollars worldwide and become the seventh highest grossing film of all time.  If nothing else, this ensures that for years to come generations of fans will continue to enjoy watching agent 007 overcome muscle-bound henchman and slug down his shaken-not-stirred vodka martinis.  And have more sexy, sexy relations with lots more sexy, sexy women.

Here's to another fifty years of "keeping the British end up".

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