For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond

“Who Is Salt?” was the tag line used on posters in the months leading up to the 2010 release of director Phillip Noyce’s film Salt, starring Angelina Jolie. In spite of its vague marketing, Salt went on to become the most successful female spy movie in history, earning more than $300 million USD at the worldwide box office. Salt was praised by critics and audiences for being a fast-paced action film that follows the exploits of Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative and KGB spy, as she evades both American authorities and Russian terrorists while thwarting a nuclear strike, the assassination of the Russian President, and a coup to overthrow the United States government. The question “Who Is Salt?” is a specific reference to her narrative status as a double-agent. But, as a female spy, it is also indicative of the character’s uncertain position within the larger genre and traditional gender representations. Women in spy movies are typically cast as seductresses, villainesses, or romantic prizes for the male hero. The infamous “Bond Girl” type tends to overshadow any other female representation in espionage tales. Yet Salt is more like Bond than his Bond Girl. Her atypical status as a female superspy reveals many of the gendered preconceptions inherent in the spy genre that has limited female heroism.

Salt is an interesting case study because the film was a self-conscious attempt by a major studio to create a female equivalent to the Bond franchise. The change of the protagonist’s sex exposes the gendered assumptions of several key spy film conventions, such as patriotism, sexuality, and trustworthiness. Much of the press surrounding Salt addressed Jolie’s assumption of a role usually associated with masculinity. It was widely reported that the role of Edwin A. Salt had been scripted for Tom Cruise. When he backed out studio executives approached Jolie who had previously declined their requests to be a Bond Girl on the grounds that she would rather play Bond himself. The character was changed to Evelyn Salt and with only some minor script adjustments, Jolie found herself playing the closest thing to a female Bond. Roger Ebert wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times: “Salt is a damn fine thriller…” (¶ 1) and “Evelyn does everything James Bond did, except backwards and barefoot in the snow” (¶ 6). Richard Corliss, in his Times review, claimed that Salt effectively honors “the core premise of a Bond or Bourne film—that the main character is bold and resourceful” (¶ 4). By most accounts Salt delivered a female superspy as good, if not better, than Bond and other male spies.

SALT AS BOND NOT BOND GIRL

The change of gender did not lessen any of the action sequences or abilities of the protagonist. Salt scales the sides of buildings, jumps from one moving vehicle to another, and fights as well as any male character. In fact, Salt’s gender does not seem to be a factor in the film. No blustery villains ridicule her as “just a girl,” no sexist agent calls her “butch,” and she never has to dress revealingly or flirt with men to disarm them. The increased prominence of action heroines over the last 15 years in film series like Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino 2003, 2004), Resident Evil (Paul W.S. Anderson 2002, 2004, 2010, 2012, 2016, Russell Mulcahy 2007), and Jolie’s own Tomb Raider (Simon West 2001, Jan de Bont 2003) has also normalized cinematic representations of women kicking ass. Audiences no longer perceive action skills as exclusively masculine traits. Discussing early action heroines like Ellen Ripley from Aliens (James Cameron 1986) and Sarah Connor from Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron 1991) Elizabeth Hills notes, from the perspective of gender binarism “aggressive women in the cinema can only be seen as phallic, unnatural or figuratively male” (39). Jolie’s Salt manages to subvert these outdated conventions and appears to be a heroic character that just happens to be female.

That Salt does not emphasize the heroine’s femininity marks the film as being significantly different than other action-oriented films and television programs. Strong female characters in contemporary Hollywood continue to be represented as sexually attractive. Embodied by traditionally beautiful actresses like Kate Beckinsale, Milla Jovovich, and Scarlett Johansson, most mainstream films offset the implication that casting women in violent and heroic roles renders them masculine or unfeminine by emphasizing their diminutive physical size, delicate faces, and sexual desirability. As Lisa Purse notes, “female heroes combine their readily apparent strength and skill with a more traditionally feminine, and often emphatically sexualized, physique” (“Return” 187). The standard objectification of the male gaze is in full force when women kick ass. The sexual fetishization of modern heroines is often justified as a form of post-feminist liberation, wherein women can embrace beauty and sexuality as just one of the “girly” pleasures they can employ for their own purposes. Salt’s divergence from this tradition is notable since Jolie is clearly recognized by the public as one of the world’s most beautiful women. Her established celebrity status predisposes audiences for Salt to interpret her character as sexy even if the film itself does not overtly eroticize her. Thus, Jolie as Salt can be sexy despite deemphasizing her femininity as a plot device.

While the action sequences in the film present Salt as an equal to the likes of Bond, the narrative diverges from the Bond formula in notable ways, particularly in relation to sex and nationality. Part of the audience’s pleasure in watching Bond has always been his sexual adventures. Bond’s sexuality panders to the heterosexual male viewers’ fantasy of being irresistible to women. “There was never any question,” observe Colleen M. Tremonte and Linda Racioppi, “that Bond would not only vanquish his male enemies but that he would also dominate even the most assertive Bond ‘girl’” (184). Bond’s sexual exploits carry the weight of ideology in that he repeatedly asserts Western patriarchal authority over other nations through his domination of women. As Tricia Jenkins argues, through “Bond’s sexual prowess […] Britain can subdue even the most powerful, deviant nations in the world” (313). Though the Bond films have struggled to appear less misogynistic in recent years, particularly since Daniel Craig took over the title role in Casino Royale (Martin Campbell 2006), his relationships with women are still a key ingredient in the Bond formula. Despite the inclusion of Judi Dench as Bond’s female superior M starting with GoldenEye (Martin Campbell 1995), and an increase of active roles for Bond’s female helpers in recent years, women in the world of Bond are still exotic beauties included for their looks rather than their skills.

The franchise’s historic use of sexually available Bond Girls is crucial to Bond’s status as a masculine and British ideal. As Lisa Funnell notes, Bond is:

firmly located within the lineage of British heroes. Envisaged through the lover literary tradition, Bond joins some of Britain’s most glamorous literary and early cinematic heroes who were presented as brilliant, witty, urbane, cultivated and sensitive, as well as gentle heroes, men of action who risk everything for a higher cause and the women they love. (“I Know” 458)

Unlike Ian Fleming’s novels, in which Bond was rooted in the British tradition of masculine lover, the films have melded the British lover with the American ideal of the brute “everyman” hero. The balance between British and American models of heroic masculinity have varied from film to film, and from actor to actor, but Bond’s sexuality has remained a stable indication of his brand of heroism. His sexual conquests confirm his heterosexual masculinity (Black 107), particularly for American audiences that might perceive “witty and urbane” as feminizing traits. Bond’s hyper-sexuality has been somewhat diminished in the Craig era films, with him bedding fewer women and developing more serious romantic relationships. But Bond’s virility is still foregrounded and visually bolstered through the display of Craig’s muscular body. More than any of the previous Bonds, Craig’s masculinity is displayed through his body and its ability to bear the marks of physical pain. This ability to triumph over physical trauma is a marker of American ideals of heroism, the clearest examples of which appeared during the Reagan era films of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Still, the long-standing tradition in Bond narratives is that sex is a crucial part of the escapist male fantasy. The persistent double standard in Western culture regarding casual sex means that if a female spy like Salt were to have sex with multiple men she would be perceived as devious and slutty. But where Bond has recently been limited to fewer sexual partners per film, Salt is denied any sexual relationships at all. Despite being portrayed by Jolie, Salt does a fairly remarkable job of not eroticizing her. Scenes of her falling in love with her husband are romantic rather than erotic, and an opening sequence showing Salt in her underclothes being tortured is brutal rather than sexual. Likewise, when Salt is trying to evade capture in the CIA headquarters there is a moment when she removes her panties that could have been played up for titillation but is instead presented as utilitarian, as she quickly uses the garment to cover a security camera. The film does not undermine Salt’s status as an active protagonist by essentializing her sexually. This is no small accomplishment given that women in Bond narratives “have always been conceived in terms of male desire and pleasure […and] represented as erotic spectacle” (Woollacott 110). While this is a welcome change in the depiction of strong women in a spy-action film, it also means that she is not allowed to actively engage in sex as Bond does. Salt’s only romantic involvement is with her husband, who is unaware that she is a double-agent. Moreover, the character is mostly absent from the narrative, seen only briefly in flashbacks and during his execution. While Salt is certainly attractive, she does not flirt with men in the film.

Salt’s avoidance of sexualizing its heroine is an exception to the spy genre rule that female agents have to be seductresses. Female spies have had more success headlining their own adventures on television, but even there women are overwritten by sexuality. Series like Alias (2001-06), Nikita (2010-13), and Covert Affairs (2010-14) focus on strong and competent women who are often presented as more Bond Girl than Bond. These heroines—Sydney Bristow, Nikita, and Annie Walker respectively—are exceptionally skilled agents but often have to rely on their beauty in order to dupe men. In almost every episode they are called upon to perform an exaggerated feminine stereotype as part of their mission. Sultry guests at formal parties, high-end prostitutes, and damsels in distress are regular undercover assignments. This convention is an example of what Mary Anne Doane refers to as a masquerade of femininity (Femmes 25). In contrast, exaggerated sexuality is not part of Salt’s spy skills. When she infiltrates the White House, she impersonates a male soldier rather than a stunning female party guest. Salt’s masculine masquerade, while surprising, is employed in a practical sense to gain access to a restricted level rather than to suggest that she is a masculinized heroine.

Because female sexuality and espionage are so closely linked in popular culture, these small screen super-spies have to strike a balance between appearing sexy and being sexually compromised. While Bristow, Nikita, and Walker are routinely fetishized by their narratives, they never employ copulation to achieve their missions. They use the lure of sex as an effective tool of the trade, but as good American heroines they would never actually prostitute themselves to accomplish their goals. In her discussion of sexuality and nationality in Alias, Miranda J. Brady argues that the series presents:

foreign and minority female spies as single-minded vixens who apparently place personal and national interests above family. Conversely, Sydney Bristow, the white American female spy, desperately clings to familial normalcy and wants nothing more than to reproduce the heteronormative familial structure. While foreign female spies will shamelessly enter into a sexual contract (including marriage) to gain information, Sydney Bristow will only emulate the use of sex for espionage, saving copulation for meaningful, conjugal relations. (113-4)