GOOD FILMS HAVE SUBTEXT. What do I mean by subtext? On the surface Raiders of the Lost Ark is a movie about an archeologist seeking to find the biblical Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do. That’s its text. But is that really what Raiders of the Lost Ark is about? Is this basic “plot” enough to tap into the worldwide public consciousness and produce a phenomenon? No way. What makes Raiders resonate, the reason we find ourselves saying, “That was a really good movie,” is that we are having an unconscious reaction to the film’s subtext. Raiders of the Lost Ark is really about an atheist’s search for God. Now, you’re not necessarily supposed to know this is what the film is about, but you are supposed to feel it. It’s one of the ways movies manipulate you emotionally. And despite what some people will argue, good filmmakers use subtext the way they use lighting. It’s all very specific and intentional but designed to be invisible.
As a rule, subtext is communicated with metaphors. To continue with the Raiders example: In the beginning, when confronted with any mention of spirituality, Indy flatly says he doesn’t believe in “all that hocus-pocus” and even calls the lightning coming from the Ark “the power of God or something” [emphasis mine]. The screenwriters communicate Indy’s disbelief (or at least skepticism) without ever using the word atheist. But the Ark can prove the existence of God; therefore, metaphorically, the Ark is God. By the end of the film, Indy commits the ultimate act of faith by closing his eyes when the Ark is opened. “Don’t look at it!” he screams to Marion. Indy demonstrates that he does not seek proof. He believes, and, thus, God spares his life.
Now, if Raiders of the Lost Ark were just about the search for an archeological relic, the ending would be a letdown. After all, Indy loses the Ark. But that’s not the feeling we have at the end of Raiders, because the real story has been resolved. Indy has found his faith, and spiritual unity with his long-lost love, Marion.
Such is the subtextual journey of Dr. Jones. What about Mr. Bond? Is subtext at work in the 007 films, or are these just “spy” films devoid of deeper meaning? The fact that these movies are so ritualized and continue to be compelling decades later tells us they are not simple spy movies. There’s more going on . . . much more.
So let’s examine what I see as deep subtext in three classic James Bond films: You Only Live Twice, From Russia with Love, and the prototypical Bond film, Goldfinger. Warning: What follows may forever change the way you look at these three films. Like Indy, you don’t have to believe in all this “hocus-pocus” for it to be real. I’m going to open the Ark, and it’s up to you whether you close your eyes or have a look inside.
You Only Live Twice is a perfect title for this fifth James Bond adventure. After the megapic Thunderball, where else could Bond go but to the after-world? Yes, beneath its surface text, You Only Live Twice is a movie about James Bond’s death and journey through purgatory. Never has a world seemed so out of Bond’s control; yet never has Bond seemed so utterly resigned to his fate. “I just might retire to here,” he tells Tiger. If you think I’m reading too much into You Only Live Twice, you only have to be reminded that the author of the screenplay is Roald Dahl, who wrote such psychedelic hero’s journeys as Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and James & the Giant Peach.
You Only Live Twice starts in very familiar territory with 007 in bed with a beautiful woman. The end of most Bond movies is the beginning of this one. Except his companion is Asian, a fact unusual enough for Bond to comment on it: “Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?” His instincts that there may be something “off-taste” about his latest conquest prove correct when she turns out to be his very own Angel of Death. Gunmen sweep into the room, and Bond is killed before our eyes. “At least he died on the job,” says the police officer on the scene. We then drift into the title sequence. But are we seeing puffy clouds and harps? No. We’re in a world of volcanoes, fire, and lava. James Bond is on his way to Hell.
The movie then opens with Commander Bond’s burial at sea. The movie, as a metaphor, begins here as 007’s corpse is retrieved by two divers (flying angels) who bring it not back to the surface but aboard a submarine (the first of many phallic symbols in this film). “Permission to come aboard?” asks Bond.
After a briefing—where, notably, M and the rest of the SIS staff are dressed in white uniforms while Bond is in black—007 is ejected from the sub’s torpedo tube. (007 as sperm? Sure, why not?) Bond then surfaces into a world that’s entirely unfamiliar to him, a world in which he is constantly trapped and fooled, usually by women. In this strange upside-down world, Bond is called “Zero Zero” instead of 007, and even his martini order is mysteriously reversed, “stirred, not shaken.” Oddly enough, Bond confirms the mix as “perfect.” Bond admits to Tiger Tanaka that he’s never been to Japan, which is odd for a man as worldly as James Bond—and didn’t he mention an affair with “Ann in Tokyo” in From Russia with Love? Also revealing is the fact that You Only Live Twice is the only single location Bond film. There’s no globetrotting here. James Bond is stuck.
Things get even more surreal when Bond must “become Japanese.” Bond is operated on in a womblike room, married, and given a home in a pearl diving village where, strangely enough, he seems perfectly content. He’s moved another ring closer to his final resting place. But a violent reminder of his own death (again in a bed) snaps Bond out of his passivity, and it’s off to the volcanic lair of the villain. Here, for reasons not fully explained, Bond thinks the answer to the crisis at hand is to go into outer space. A natural instinct to ascend into the heavens, perhaps? But just as Bond is about to finally leave his purgatory, the master of the volcano recognizes him and shouts, “Stop that astronaut!”
It’s appropriate that Ernst Stravo Blofeld is seen for the first time in You Only Live Twice. Up to this point in the series, Blofeld has been only an unseen, omniscient presence, ordering other men to commit his evil deeds while stroking a cat (cats are traditionally the guardians of the underworld). The clearest metaphor of the film is that Blofeld is the Devil. After all, who else would live in a volcano? When facing Blofeld, Bond pretty much verbalizes the subtext of the film. “Yes, this is my second life,” he says.
Of course, it all ends in a fiery explosion caused not by Bond but by Blofeld—and Bond finds himself back where he was at the end of Thunderball: in a raft with a bikini-clad woman. Back to the familiar world of 007. Back to the surface. Resurrection.
Is From Russia with Love a great spy film? Yes, but there is more—much more. Like the original novel, From Russia with Love is really a catalog of “secret” sexual fetishes thinly veiled by the world of the ’60s Secret Agent.
Think about it. From Russia with Love depicts sadism (making two fish fight to the death); oil massage (Grant on SPECTRE Island); S&M (Klebb’s handy riding crop and brass knuckles); pimp prostitution (Bond and Tatiana are both, essentially, employed to have sex); erotomania (Tatiana falls in love with a photo of Bond “like young girls fall in love with movie stars”); lesbianism (Tatiana’s “interview” with Klebb); polygamy (Kerim’s multiple children suggest multiple wives); exotic dancing (in this case, belly dancing); erotic wrestling (the Gypsy catfight—more on this later); ménage a trois (Bond is delivered both gypsy girls to his tent); bondage (the dead Prussian in the back of the Renault is very well tied); oral sex (Tatiana’s mouth is just the “right size” for Bond); voyeurism (the men watch Bond and Tatiana as they secretly film them, among many other examples); public exhibitionism (Tatiana wants to wear her nightgown “in Piccadilly”); sadomasochistic homosexuality (the Grant-Bond confrontation); and yes, even foot worship (how else can you account for the appeal of that spike-tipped shoe or Grant’s insistence that Bond “Crawl over here and kiss my foot!”). Much of this comes from the novel, and it’s no secret that Fleming enjoyed a taste of the whip from time to time.
The gypsy girl fight is From Russia with Love’s most infamous scene of pure sadism. Never has a Bond movie felt so much like a snuff film. Where most movies poke fun at “catfights,” this film puts it on a level of a gladiatorial match. They don’t say the girls are fighting to death, but they don’t say they aren’t! In fact, the fight between the two women “in love with the same man” is so savage (or so arousing?) that Bond asks for it to be stopped. Strange that the only way we’re “saved” from this scene is by an explosion of good old-fashioned gunplay. Stranger yet is the relief we feel at the arrival of this “safe” movie violence. How sexually charged is this scene? When From Russia with Love aired on ABC throughout the ’70s and ’80s, the entire gypsy camp sequence was cut from the film. I doubt this was because of the belly dancer.
Related to the gypsy fight in its depiction of sexual violence uncommon in a Bond film is Bond hitting Tatiana in real anger aboard the Orient Express. It’s interesting to note that Bond is posing as her husband at the time. Her crime? She lied to him. Dark.
But the confrontation with Red Grant is the ultimate ordeal for James Bond in this sexually lethal world. Of all sexual terrors, being on the end of a homosexual rape certainly ranks high. The lead-up to the fight is highly charged with innuendoes. Grant has clearly been aroused by the footage of Bond and Tatiana’s lovemaking. A line that exists in the continuity script but is missing from existing prints has Grant saying, “What a performance!” Grant makes Bond get on his knees (waist level) and tells him it’ll be “painful and slow.” Let’s not forget that this whole confrontation is taking place in a train compartment (read bunk, read bed). And what’s the first thing that goes when they start their “struggle”? The light. There’s an orgasmic quality to Grant’s silent death, but maybe I should stop here before I lose the family audience—which, by the way, is what the movie does as well. In the book, the Grant-Bond fight is the climax of the story and rightfully so. But the filmmakers felt compelled to give us a helicopter and boat chase, which dilute the sexual subtext of the film. But maybe that’s the intent. After all, sometimes a boat chase is just a boat chase.
When you get right down to it, James Bond films are modern representations of what Freud called the Oedipal stage of development—namely, the unconscious anxiety male adolescents deal with when challenging their all-powerful fathers in a struggle to find their own way in the world and, most importantly, emerge with their own women, their reward for completing the Oedipal “mission.” That’s why the best Bond villains must be older than Bond, and why Bond films first appeal to boys at around age fourteen.
It’s in adolescence that we play out our own inner Oedipal/separation dramas, and Bond films help us deal with the exotic “outside” world. As with fairy tales, we repeat the basic story over and over without variation and until we “grow out of” them. That’s why some older Bond fans feel the Bond films “stopped working” after some particular point/film in their past. It’s not that the films stopped working (that’s obvious from all the new fans), it’s that older viewers are no longer able to connect emotionally with the films on this most powerful subtextual level. So which film best displays this Oedipal subtext in its most archetypal form? That’s simple. It’s the film that’s frequently held up as the archetype of all Bond films—Goldfinger.
Incredibly, Goldfinger starts off with Bond admitting to cabaret dancer Bonita, “I have a slight inferiority complex.” Sure, he’s making a quip, but it’s a strange quip for James Bond to make. By having Bond say this, the filmmakers establish the very existence of psychological “complexes” in the world of James Bond. Furthermore, at its root, an “inferiority complex” is an Oedipal complex. So you have to ask, “To whom does Bond feel inferior?” You only need to look at the title of the film to find the answer.
Auric Goldfinger is clearly a father figure and Bond clearly a “son” in this film. Just compare their cars. Both cars are British but clearly of a different era. Goldfinger drives a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, old-world power derived from wealth. Bond drives a brand-new Aston Martin DB5, a symbol of “youthful” sexual power. In fact, Bond’s car is more than sexual; it’s turned into an object of fetish via amazing gadgets. The only extra on Goldfinger’s Rolls is Oddjob, and yes, Oddjob is the physical representative of Goldfinger’s sexual power. But more on this later.
The core of the Oedipal drama is the hero’s/son’s relationship to women and the danger/anxiety he faces when stepping into this most sacred realm of Daddy’s sexual power—going after his “gold,” so to speak. Goldfinger goes out of its way to play every beat of this subtextual theme. In fact, the inciting incident of Goldfinger is not a massive crime or a compelling mystery, but the massive Oedipal mistake Bond makes in sleeping with Goldfinger’s woman (metaphorical Mommy). The love scene in Bond’s hotel suite seems more domesticated than normal. He’s trying on the role of husband, i.e., “Father.” I mean, have we even seen Bond in a kitchen before? And Bond’s Beatle remark (“That’s like listening to the Beatles without earmuffs”) seems out of character. Complaining about rock-and-roll music is something an old man does, not a young, modern man like James Bond. This is also the last thing Bond says before he’s knocked unconscious by a mysterious hand (the phantom hand of Daddy Wrath?).
When Bond awakes, he is presented with the most famous image in all Bond history: Jill has been killed. More than killed, she has been reclaimed, smothered by Goldfinger’s power (his gold), and turned into his eternal object. Goldfinger is sending a powerful message to Bond here: Dead or alive, this woman is mine. Bond is truly shaken by this, and for the rest of film, he will tread very lightly around women.
Almost secondary to Bond’s psychodrama is the plot (text) of Goldfinger. “This isn’t a personal vendetta, 007,” warns M. But, of course, it is, because Bond’s official mission is perfectly in line with his Oedipal mission. Find out where Daddy gets his power—his gold. Gold/money clearly symbolizes adult power in this film, a power that Bond doesn’t have. “You’ll draw it from Q Branch in the morning,” scolds M when Bond reaches for the bar of Nazi gold at the Bank of England (yet another symbol of old-world power). Moneypenny even reminds us that wedding rings are made of gold. She does this, by the way, as she deftly tosses Bond’s hat onto the hat rack—a demonstration of power usually reserved for Bond. Powerful, in-control women abound in Goldfinger; it’s one of the reasons the film feels so contemporary.
One thing that has always amazed me about the Bond-Goldfinger relationship is that they fully know what each is trying to do to the other, yet they engage in a sort of bizarre civil dance. It’s not unlike a rebellious teen who sits at his father’s dinner table, secretly wishing to stab him with a steak knife, and the father who accepts his son’s murderous intent because he knows the son is not yet “man enough” to take him. Therefore, Father and Son do “battle” via sports. In Goldfinger they play golf. And what’s the prize? Gold (and all it represents). But we know the gold bar is not Bond’s to gamble with. It’s a dangerous bluff on Bond’s part. It’s also correct on a subtextual level because if Bond really had such power, he’d have no need to challenge Daddy at all.
After Bond wins, Goldfinger must reestablish the balance of power by demonstrating that he too possesses a measure of Bond’s sexual power, perfectly represented in his henchman Oddjob. Oddjob cuts off the head of a female statue, beautifully evoking what he did to Jill. And neither killing real women nor decapitating statues is a problem for the Goldfingers of the world, because they “own the club.” Touché. Bond may have won the game, but he’s still a youngster in Goldfinger’s world.
Danger then arrives in the form of another woman. Tilly Masterson is a mystery to Bond, and Bond goes to great lengths to check her out. What’s your last name? Where are you from? In other words, do you belong to him? What Bond discovers is she does, indirectly, belong to Goldfinger—because she is Jill’s sister. Once this fact is revealed, Tilly is killed, again by Goldfinger’s penis substitute (there, I said it), Oddjob. The boys all stop playing gunfight and rush to her side, where Bond seems truly traumatized. Again, his choice of the wrong woman has doomed her . . . and this time, he didn’t even get to sleep with her. Castration? Well. . . .
Do I need to go on about how the laser table is a castration device? There’s nothing subtextual here—it’s literal! Goldfinger is going right for the source of Bond’s “power” just as Bond has gone for the source of his. And somehow this feels right. What’s surprising about this scene is Bond does not escape. Goldfinger spares him. Goldfinger holds control the whole time, and it’s Goldfinger who turns off the laser power. Bond’s sexual power is now a gift from Daddy, and a conditional one at that.
Having made a deal with Daddy, the son awakes to find himself rewarded with what else but a prostitute. “My name is Pussy Galore.” (If that’s not the name of a prostitute, what is?) Again, Bond is very careful about ascertaining Pussy’s sexual relationship with Goldfinger before he does anything. When Pussy tells him she’s “Mr. Goldfinger’s personal pilot,” Bond asks, “Just how personal is that?” This question seems a little rude for an English gentleman until you understand the subtext at work here. After being made impotent by the laser-table deal, Bond needs to know whether Pussy is the ultimate insult or possible salvation for his sexual ego. Indeed, the filmmakers go out of their way to show us that Pussy is not Goldfinger’s lover—just the opposite. Goldfinger wants her, but “no trespassing” is her motto. (In the book, Pussy is a lesbian; it’s up to interpretation whether she is or isn’t in the film. The “I’m immune” line is highly suggestive, as is her “flying circus” of fellow female “pilots.”)
Once Bond establishes that Pussy isn’t Goldfinger’s sexual “employee,” he pursues her aggressively. What better way to reclaim your manhood than by conquering a woman Daddy can’t have? But Bond discovers getting your own woman is not as easy as stealing one that’s already been broken in by Daddy. Here’s where Goldfinger embraces its adolescence a little too closely. In the novel The Spy Who Loved Me, Fleming has the main character, Vivienne Michel, say, “All women secretly want to be raped.” Unfortunately, Goldfinger offers up this as the logical solution to Bond’s dilemma. Like it or not, Bond physically forces himself on Pussy in a way that he’s never done in any film. But this act of violence does the trick, and Pussy is instantly converted. Even for a Bond film, this feels naïve. Nevertheless, the ritual is completed and allows Bond to engage in one last battle.
Having restored his sexual potency, Bond is ready to complete his mission. Tellingly, Bond’s “conquest” of Pussy occurs after he has discovered the ultimate source of Goldfinger’s power (an A-bomb). With Pussy as an ally, thwarting Daddy’s latest “cheat” is not as impossible as first imagined. But Bond’s final struggle is a physical one. He must battle the extension of Daddy’s sexuality—namely, Oddjob. Bond does this by showing a superior understanding of the “source” of power as he literally overpowers Oddjob by electrocuting him. (It’s interesting that the movie both opens and closes with Bond killing someone via electrocution.)
Having “killed off” Daddy’s potency, Bond does not seem to sweat his final encounter with Goldfinger. Appropriately, Goldfinger is now costumed in a mock military uniform—a rather desperate attempt at masculine power—and is holding a gun that, with its gold plating, appears more feminine than powerful. The emasculated Goldfinger tells Bond that Miss Galore is “where she belongs—at the controls.” Damn right she’s at the controls! And those are Goldfinger’s last words before he’s sucked through the impossibly small space of the aircraft window in a sort of bizarre reverse-birth death. Goldfinger is more than dead. He’s erased from existence.
“This is no time to be rescued,” says Bond at the end of the film. That’s right. Because having accomplishing his most important mission—liberating himself (albeit temporarily) from his own Oedipus Complex—Bond is free to enjoy the ultimate reward: pussy galore.
JOHN COX was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, where he attended the USC School of Cinema-Television. John has worked as a professional screenwriter for the last ten years and has written projects for Warner Bros, DreamWorks, MGM, Sony, ABC, CBS, the USA Network, and more. John became a Bond fan when he saw his first and still favorite 007 film, The Spy Who Loved Me, in the summer of 1977. He collects James Bond first editions and is also an expert on the life of Harry Houdini. John lives in Hollywood, California.