Greetings, reader!
So, I've been doing James Bond -themed posts all month due to the 60th anniversary of Goldfinger's release. I polled my Instagram followers on what the fourth post should be, after my ranking of the James Bond actors, the franchise's top 10 villains and my ranking of the theme songs. The overwhelming winner of the poll was this: the top 10 'Bond girls', from a feminist perspective. A challenge, but a welcome one.
First of all, what defines a Bond girl? "Any female character from the franchise" would be too broad, as it's hard to think of Judi Dench's M as a 'Bond girl' (also, no one else would stand a chance if she was on the list, due to how much ass she kicks). But it would've been boring and narrow to limit the list to only the more conventional love-interest / human-shield types seen in a majority of the films. Therefore, I decided that any female character who has at least some sort of sexual and/or romantic connection to Bond, on the vast scale from flirty banter all the way to marriage (yes, that happened), qualifies for the list.
As for the method in how I ranked them from a feminist perspective, well, it's just as convoluted as one might expect. Various points-of-view are juxtaposed with one another: how fleshed-out and interesting the character is, how much agency they have in the film's plot, how compelling the acting performance is, strength and independence, positive influence and norm-breaking, and managing to steer away from the harmful norms that have defined most Bond girls (objectification, one-dimensional looks-driven character writing, tropes such as the human shield or the damsel in distress et cetera). Basically, the further the characters are from Christmas Jones (Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough), the higher they get ranked.
Here are my honorable mentions: Kara Milovy (Maryam d'Abo, The Living Daylights), Lucia Sciarra (Monica Bellucci, Spectre), May Day (Grace Jones, A View to a Kill), Paris Carver (Teri Hatcher, Tomorrow Never Dies), Solitaire (Jane Seymour, Live and Let Die).
10. Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell, Licence to Kill)
The two Bond films that star Timothy Dalton were a step up for the tradition of the Bond girls - the more down-to-earth and espionage-oriented style made for a period where the female characters weren't over-sexualized, had actual personalities, and had actual human names instead of names like Holly Goodhead, Anya Neese, Missy Cligoris and Plenty O'Toole (two of those are from real Bond flicks and two I made up, and I bet you can't tell which are which).
Pam Bouvier is a decent character - nothing about her is massively influential or glass-ceiling-shattering, but when compared to a vast majority of Bond girls, she feels significantly more like an equal female sidekick in a standard action film than a human shield / mere eye candy / any number of other poorly aged tropes from deep in the veins of the patriarchy. She spends a majority of her screentime kicking ass alongside Bond, and might be ranked even higher if it wasn't for the fact that neither the character nor the acting performance aren't particularly memorable.
9. Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen, GoldenEye)
Yes, the character's name here is a poor-taste relic from the past (it's weird how the Brosnan era progressed and modernized so many elements of the franchise successfully, yet they brought the wacky Bond girl names back - one could argue that it's not as bad when it's done tongue-in-cheek and almost parodically, but still, it's very borderline). But everything else about her is badass.
Janssen makes the character lively and interesting, and her villainous turn only barely qualifies her as a 'Bond girl' - she never has sex with Bond, but there's enough flirt in the air before their allegiance to different sides is fully realized to qualify her for this list. Many Bond girls fall into the femme fatale category, and this trope alone doesn't make a character into a feminist icon - many of the franchise's femmes fatale have fallen into just being sexism in a different form, such as the villain's only skill being using her feminine wiles to seduce the good guys et cetera. But some of the villainous Bond girls really stand out on their own, managing to outsmart and/or outfight Bond himself, and Onatopp is one of the more memorable examples.
8. Elektra King (Sophie Marceau, The World Is Not Enough)
Like the previous entry, this character from Pierce Brosnan's third outing as 007 turns out to be quite villainous - and a compelling, well-written villain at that. She has all the charms and wiles for those expecting a conventional Bond girl, but isn't limited to them - Elektra King is a powerful badass, whose arch escalates from a steamy affair with Bond to coming into her own as a powerful antagonist for the secret agent to go up against. And to think that she's in the same film as the infamous Christmas Jones - that's a real side-by-side comparison on how to write and how not to write Bond girls.
7. Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi, You Only Live Twice)
Here we have the only Bond girl from the Sean Connery era to make it onto the list - it figures that there weren't many, as many of the most blatantly objectified Bond girls come from the franchise's early days. But there is one who stands out as a more positive example, and her name is Aki.
First of all, she has agency and empowerment - whereas many of the Connery Bond's sexual conquests were female caricatures with seemingly no mind of their own, there for Bond's taking (there's even a few instances in Goldfinger and Thunderball where the protagonist borderline rapes someone - not a fun rewatch for modern sensitivities), Aki is not victim nor object, but a woman with desires of her own, and is the first to make her move on Bond.
Additionally, her role is not limited to flirtation and sex, as she turns out to be handy in a fight and has a major role in the film's action-packed final act. She's also the franchise's first Asian 'Bond girl', and while many of the cultural misadventures from You Only Live Twice are in very poor taste, her character isn't reduced to a mere stereotype and makes for a nice step of diversity in this particular tradition of the franchise.
6. Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco, GoldenEye)
From the moment where Judi Dench's M chides Bond for being a 'sexist dinosaur', it was clear that GoldenEye (and thus the Pierce Brosnan era as a whole) would do some things differently. A prime example is the film's primary Bond girl, Natalya Simonova. While her character retains all the beloved and non-problematic aspects of what it is to be a Bond girl (serving the story as a love interest and/or sidekick to the main character, being a charismatic and entertaining part of the film's cast, et cetera), the filmmakers manage to drop all of the obviously sexist elements from the character archetype.
Simonova is sexy without being over-sexualized, badass without being a fetishized stereotype, a love interest without being objectified or losing her sense of individuality. While their story isn't over-romantic (remember, it's still Bond), the two leads manage to form a slightly deeper connection than Bond does with a vast majority of his conquests, signaling a possibility of growth for both the character and the franchise.
5. Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh, Tomorrow Never Dies)
Yeah, the character name is unforgivable (she'd probably be ranked even higher if it wasn't for that). Everything else about this character is pretty amazing. Michelle Yeoh gives such a brilliant performance, and while she and Bond do end up hooking up in the film, she is so much more than a mere sexual interest for the main character. She's a total action hero, every bit Bond's equal (or even ahead of him) in terms of espionage, combat skill, wit and general badassery.
4. Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux, Spectre & No Time to Die)
Honestly, Swann could be ranked all the way at #1 if the only parameter for this list would be avoiding sexist tropes - she's probably the least problematically written Bond girl out of them all, which goes to show how the last few films of the Craig era were quite successful in 'getting with the times'. Unfortunately, the thing is that the character simply isn't as memorable or outstanding as many other seen in the franchise - and while this is a separate fact and has nothing to do with the character being written in a less sexist way than previous Bond girls, the juxtaposition of these facts unfortunately lead to a lot of conclusion-jumping by viewers of the incel kind, going all "See, this is what happens when the Bond movie go all woke" and other bullshit.
Anyways, while Swann isn't as memorable of a character as this list's top three, that does not mean that she's a bad one. Her chemistry with Daniel Craig's 007 is subtle but well-executed, Seydoux's acting skills are on point, and her arch in Spectre is pretty decent (in No Time to Die, she has less to do, but it was still a nice touch to bring her back).
3. Teresa 'Tracy' di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg, On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
I mean, there has to be something pretty special about the one woman, out of the tens (probably hundreds) that Bond has slept with, who he ended up marrying. Tracy, brought to life by an unforgettable performance by the legendary Diana Rigg, had what it takes for the ever-womanizing secret agent to feel something deeper.
Obviously, this alone doesn't make her a feminist icon (whether they're sexual conquests or wives, let's not forget that they're all female characters written by male writers to serve the storyline of the male protagonist and exist in relation to him). But, in many regards, Tracy comes out as stronger, more fleshed-out, and less objectified (sure, many will still remember her for her looks, but that's not because the character is constantly put into revealing male-gaze clothing with flimsy excuses, but rather because the filmmakers couldn't really do anything about Diana Rigg's divine beauty) than many of her counterparts.
2. Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach, The Spy Who Loved Me)
Many aspects of feminism, representation and character writing had to be taken into account when making this list, and there are some viewpoints that would indicate a lower ranking for Amasova - chiefly, the fact that her motivations do largely lie in the feelings she had for two different men in her life, and female characters driven by their romantic pining for the men around them are a bit too common in fiction written by men, when contrasted to the more complex and diverse motives that male writers usually reserve for their male characters.
But, from every other viewpoint, Barbara Bach's legendary character earns a high ranking - as driven as love and love-related conflict as she may be, she is still one of the most memorable, compelling and badass characters seen in the entire franchise. Not only does she outsmart, outcharm, outfight and generally out-secret-agent Bond time and again, but she absolutely steals the show (with all due respect to Roger Moore's fantastic 007). I reckon there aren't too many James Bond films where James Bond isn't the best character, but this is one where that is definitely the case - 007 might have the most screen time, but for all intents and purposes, Anya Amasova is the main character here. Almost feels wrong to categorize her as a mere 'Bond girl' - maybe in this film, Roger Moore actually plays the 'Amasova guy'.
1. Vesper Lynd (Eva Green, Casino Royale)
There's a reason that the modern Bond flicks are more represented on this list than the older ones - while there are exceptions, both in the form of ahead-of-its-time instances like Aki in You Only Live Twice and setbacks like (*sigh*) Severine in Skyfall, the general direction over time has been that the Bond girls, from a feminist perspective, have become less problematic and more on-point over the course of time, which makes sense as our society is slowly (painfully slowly, but still) becoming aware of the harmful effects of patriarchy and misogyny.
From Ursula Andress' Honey Ryder, who talked like a child to appease some worrying fetishes and whose character development began and ended with "bikini", all the way to the array of different kinds of strong female characters we see in No Time to Die, it's quite an evolution - and I'd argue that the first major 'Bond girl' from the Daniel Craig era is the biggest and most important individual stepping stone in that journey.
From the viewpoint of us woke leftists, it seems like a ridiculously obvious decision, but it sure took them long enough: in the 2000's, when planning the next big Bond flick, the producers and writers apparently sat down and said: "What if, instead of writing a sex-driven caricature who runs around in skimpy clothing lazily demanded by the plot and who has the name and personality of a supporting character in a porn flick, we wrote an actual female person whose presence makes this a better movie?".
Because that's what Vesper Lynd is. They even managed to do it in a way that didn't seem to piss off the old-school Bond fans (except the most blatantly sexist ones, but hey, fuck them) - after all, she's still absolutely gorgeous, has nice chemistry with Bond, and serves the story as a love interest. But, here's the key - she's not defined by her sexiness, she's not diminished to reliance on chemistry with the lead, and she serves the story in other ways as well. Lynd's got a mind of her own, a complex relationship with Bond, a brilliant acting performance to back it all up, and the viewer will become invested in her with striking sincerity. That's the gold standard right there.
Thank you for reading! The next few weeks will focus on rankings of the best-ever movies in various genres, and as a soft transition from Bond month, I'll start with "The top 15 action flicks of all time" next Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment