For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond

James Bond is more than just a fictional superspy; he is an iconic figure in global popular culture and his name has become synonymous with various elements featured in his films. Agent 007 is known for his espionage skills, dashing good looks, smooth personality, refined taste, inventive gadgets, slick cars, extensive travel to exotic locations, unrivalled ability to defeat deadly villains, and perhaps most importantly, his relationship with the Bond Girl. From novel to film series, the Bond Girl has become one of the most memorable and marketable elements of the franchise. While most women featured in the films are generally referred to by the colloquial descriptor of “Bond Girl,” Lisa Funnell argues that the term should be reserved for the non-recurring lead female protagonist featured in each film. She notes that while “Bond engages with numerous women” the Bond Girl is defined by “the strong and intimate relationship she builds with Bond by the end of the film” (“I Know” 465). In essence, she functions as Bond’s primary girlfriend/lover and her (sexual) role in helping to confirm Bond’s masculinity and heterosexuality is often signaled through the use of a double entendre for her name (e.g. Honey Ryder, Pussy Galore, Dr. Holly Goodhead, etc.).

However, it is my contention that the Bond Girl functions as more than just Bond’s sexual partner in the film. The Bond Girl, in many ways, operates like a magician’s assistant, as her performance is largely defined by her relationships with both Bond and the audience of the films. In this chapter, I will first explore how the Bond Girl, like the magician’s assistant, acts as an object of desire. Using Laura Mulvey’s gaze theory, I will argue for a scopophilic relationship between the assistant and the audience—i.e. that the Bond Girl is there to be looked at and distract the audience from the trick that is taking place, a principle in magic known as misdirection. Second, I will examine how the Bond Girl, like the magician’s assistant, must also be extremely skilled in magic as she is the one who actually does the majority of the work in an illusion. While Bond, like a magician, is the one who takes the bow and receives the credit through applause, it is the Bond Girl, like the girl in the box, who has done most of the hard work. When viewed through the lens of magic, the Bond Girl is “more than meets the eye” as she takes on a more active role in the Bond universe.

JAMES BOND AS MAGICIAN

In the literary and film franchise, Bond functions much like a headlining magician in Western magic. On the most basic level, Bond is the headliner of the novels and the films, which focus on the amazing feats he performs. However, Bond’s “magician-ness” is also defined by the similarities that can be seen between his Cold War appearance and the somewhat stereotypical image of the Victorian-Age magician. According to Francesca Coppa, the traditional attire worn by a magician is white tie or “a top hat and tails”—a black evening tailcoat and trousers, a white dress shirt and bow tie, and a black silk top hat. First worn in the Victorian era, this style of formal evening dress was a way of “asserting the superiority of the British gentleman over the Eastern ‘other’” (Coppa 85). In her book Vanishing Women, Karen Beckman traces the influx of magic into Great Britain. During the second half of the nineteenth century, as British imperialism flourished in India, tales of mystics and magicians came back to England and caught the attention of the British public. In response to the relocation of these exotic performers to Great Britain, local magicians began to develop a more professional and polished approach to their art. During this time, “the Victorian conjuror begins to dress in evening suits rather than mystical magician’s robes, and his assistants are almost invariably either Indian males or English females” (Beckman 42). Thus the British magician was perceived as being a “Western capitalist rather than an Eastern mystic” (Coppa 86). Through costuming, the magician was able to convey powerful messages about his identity, and particularly his nationality, ethnicity, and class.

Much like the magician emerging in the British colonial system, Bond was defined by his image and especially his costuming. In the midst of the Cold War (1947-91), Bond is set up as a British gentleman and model of Western civility, a figure, in the words of Jeremy Black, “designed to resist the threat to empire” (4). Beyond the larger image of Bond as the manifestation of the “skill, brains, and professionalism” necessary to express the political threat to Great Britain that existed during this period (ibid. 4), Bond is, in many cases, explicitly defined in contrast with the Eastern Other both politically as well as aesthetically. From Russia with Love (Terence Young 1963), for example, is concerned with the portrayal of the Eastern Other, from the opening credit sequence focusing on the body of a belly dancer to the exotic Turkish setting of the narrative. Istanbul exemplifies the conflict of “East-West intelligence operations and confrontation and offered the opportunity of describing a place that could be at once gritty and exotic” (Black 29). It is this exoticism that forms the basis of establishing Otherness (ibid. 29). In one memorable scene, Bond watches a belly-dancing performance by Turkish gypsies during his stay in Istanbul—a performance that eventually turns into a fistfight between two women who are in love with the same man. Like the Western magician whose clothing separates him from the Eastern mystic, Bond sticks out in his charcoal suit against more traditionally dressed Turkish people, adorned with bright colors, flowing skirts, and tan suits. It is also important to note the contrast between Bond and the Russian Other. While not necessarily analogous with the eastern mystic, within the context of the Cold War, one cannot help but notice the costuming differences that exist: Bond in his neutral business suits versus the Russians portrayed in green military uniforms.

From a geopolitical perspective, costuming has played a key role in helping to define the identities of both Bond and the Western magician, and Bond offers a contemporary manifestation of the Victorian self/Other dichotomy. The parallels that exist between the colonial and Cold War periods in Great Britain in terms of the distinction between British high culture and the Eastern Other allows for comparisons to be drawn between Bond and the Victorian magician.

OBJECT OF THE GAZE

Historically, most great Western magicians have been accompanied onstage by a female assistant who played two important roles in their act. First, she was positioned as an object of desire and framed through the traditional male gaze. The magician’s assistant was not only beautiful but she was often scantily dressed and provided “eye candy” for the audience. Secondly, the magician’s assistant was also extremely skilled in magic, for she is the one that actually does the majority of the work in an illusion. Whether an assistant is a contortionist or very agile, she must perform the majority of the painful physical labor for an illusion to work with a smile on her face. It is my argument that the Bond Girl functions as a magician’s assistant to Bond and plays an active role in helping him to sell his act.

Much like the magician’s assistant, the Bond Girl is presented as the object of the gaze. Laura Mulvey describes the relationship between the (assumed) male spectator and female characters on screen, explaining that “in their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (“Visual” 837).¹ According to Mulvey, women on screen function as a twofold object of desire: they are placed on display for male characters to look at while being positioned as an object of desire for the (presumed male) audience (838). Both groups of men—within and outside of the film’s diegesis—experience a scopophilic relationship with the women on screen, succumbing to the imbalance that exists between the active male gazer and the passive female recipient of the gaze.

Although Mulvey’s essay explores women in film, her gaze theory can be applied to female representation in other types of media and performance styles, including magic. When a magician’s assistant first appears on stage and makes her grand entrance, she is scantily clad and her presence is designed to increase the audience’s visual pleasure. From her sexy strut to her revealing sequined costumes, the sex appeal of the female assistant increases the interest in and excitement for the magic show. The assistant also functions as an object of desire for the magician himself. In most magic shows, there is sexual tension between the magician and his assistant, and in some narrative magic acts—ones in which a story is told—the vanishing assistant is portrayed as the loss of a great love. The sexual chase between the magician and assistant also works in favor of the magician as it reaffirms his power and sexuality. He has the ability to summon beautiful women out of thin air and he proceeds to sexualize them as objects of desire, confirming a sense of machismo masculinity.

The Bond Girl is presented in a similar way in the Bond novels and films. In the world of 007, she functions as a twofold object of desire for Bond, the primary male protagonist who gazes at her, and the audience, who shares his spectatorial position. According to Christine Bold, “one great prowess” of the Bond Girls as “insisted on by narrative voice and Bond’s own comments […] resides in their bodies” (172). The female body is positioned as the object of the male gaze throughout Fleming’s works. One of the most direct examples takes place in the short story, “The Living Daylights” (1966), from Fleming’s final Bond collection. In it, Bond acts as a sniper, tasked with killing a Russian assassin code-named “Trigger,” who also happens to be a cellist in an orchestra. While much of the story consists of Bond waiting in an empty apartment for the sniper to appear, he finds pleasure in watching a woman—who turns out to be the cellist sniper, as well as the Bond Girl of the story—through his sniper scope. Fleming writes,

The woman’s orchestra came trooping down the pavement toward the entrance. Twenty laughing, talking girls carrying their instruments—violin and wind instrument cases, satchels with their scores—and four of them with the drums. A gay, happy little crocodile. Bond was reflecting that some people still seemed to find life fun in the Soviet Sector, when his glasses picked out and stayed on the girl carrying the cello. Bond’s masticating jaws stopped still, and then reflectively went on with their chewing as he twisted the screw to depress the sniper scope and keep her in its center. (97)

Through Fleming’s narrative, the reader is placed in the position of Bond, noting both the mundane nature of waiting alone, which forces Bond to notice even the most intricate details of the world below the apartment, as well as finding relief and excitement in spotting a beautiful woman, who is explicitly the object of the gaze for the duration of the story.