James Bond as Archetype (and Incredibly Cool Dude)
by Michael Dirda
A couple of years ago, I happened to be giving a talk to the graduating seniors at a Catholic girls' school. During the question period, one young woman asked, "If you could be any character in literature, who would you choose?" Given that I write about books for a (hardscrabble) living, I could see that she expected me to name some obvious literary heavyweight, such as Odysseus, Prince Genji, or Huckleberry Finn -- all of whom flashed through my mind as good answers. Instead I paused for a moment, put on my most sardonic look, and huskily whispered into the microphone, "Bond, James Bond." It brought down the house.
Of course, people thought I was kidding. And, of course, I wasn't.
Having just read Devil May Care, by the novelist Sebastian Faulks "writing as Ian Fleming," and recently enjoyed Casino Royale, Bond's latest cinematic adventure, I don't see any reason to change my answer. It is a truth universally, if seldom publicly acknowledged that virtually every American male, from puberty onward, would love to be 007. He's got the best toys, attracts gorgeous women, and wins at every game, be it golf, baccarat, or -- in Devil May Care -- tennis. Such (arguably) shallow benefits might be sufficient to explain part of Bond's appeal. But there's something even more primordial to his mythic glamour.
What, after all, is a man's deepest wish? Freud talked about "honor, power, riches, fame, and the love of women" -- and Bond certainly encompasses all those. Still, that libidinal litany can be boiled down to a single desire, half hidden in the shadowy reaches of the male psyche and more clearly delineated in world mythology: As Joseph Campbell would say, men long to be heroes. No doubt about it. And yet I think the masculine ego also hungers for something a bit more noirish, if you will. At least some of the time, guys want to be thought of as - dangerous. While it's gratifying to be called a hard-working professional or a good provider, those admirable traits don't make our hearts beat quicker. By contrast, to overhear oneself described as "a man not to be trifled with" -- that's quite another matter.
Our institutions, as Foucault used to remind us, are designed to instill order and discipline, to create team players and salarymen, to compel our unruly hearts to abide by timetables and deadlines. But what man dreams of being safe and respectable, or, God forbid, prudent? No wonder women fall for outlaws. Surely the most distinctive if subtle thrill in all of James Bond occurs near the opening of the film of Live and Let Die. As the secret agent boards a plane bound for New York, we see the clairvoyant Solitaire methodically turning over one tarot card after another. As she places each down on the table, she speaks a single emotionless phrase. "A man comes - he travels quickly - he comes over water - he will oppose." And then, after the briefest of pauses: "He brings violence and destruction."
Indeed, he does, for the cards never lie. Bond famously possesses a license to kill, but in some ways he also embodies license itself, the spirit of anarchy and transgression. No rules apply to 007. He lives beyond good and evil, outside the confining strictures of the biblical commandments. Like the medieval figure called Vice or the Renaissance Lord of Misrule, James Bond turns the world upside down. He sounds an "everlasting no" to the smugly arrogant and powerful, cocks a snook, as the British say, at those full of messianic ardor and contempt for ordinary human beings. In a Bond book or film, the megalomaniac mastermind -- Blofeld, Rosa Klebb, Hugo Drax -- always comes up with the perfect plan, carefully worked out to the last detail. Said evil mastermind also possesses expert henchmen, a high-tech lair, and seemingly infinite resources. World domination or world destruction is just within his (or sometimes her) grasp. The countdown has started; nothing can go wrong.
But that pesky and strangely persistent British agent keeps popping up to cause a bit of bother. Only when it's too late do Goldfinger or Mr. Big or Dr. No realize that Bond isn't just an operative of MI6; he is Siva, destroyer of worlds, bringer of chaos. At the end of a Bond movie, the impregnable fortress is in ruins, the beautiful plan in tatters, the invincible villains all dead.
While he may thus act like a scourge of God, Bond hardly looks like a Tamerlane or Conan. The first words we think of when we describe James Bond -- at least the 007 of the films -- are suave, debonair, cosmopolitan. All those are shorthand for Bond's supreme personal characteristic, what Renaissance courtiers always aspired to exemplify: sprezzatura. That is the ability to perform even the most difficult task with flair, grace, and nonchalance, without getting a wrinkle in your clothes or working up a sweat. Bond not only is cool, he always looks cool, at ease in his skin, at home in the world. Whatever his surroundings, he's the best-dressed guy in the room.
Again, the innate urbanity and smoothness is certainly emphasized in the films, which clearly aim mainly for spectacle, the visually dazzling. While American action-movie heroes tend to be grungy (think of Bruce Willis in the Die Hard series), Bond is consistently elegant, conservatively dressed in beautifully cut suits. Little wonder that David Niven -- the very exemplar of British savoir-faire -- was considered for the original screen role. Significantly, when asked once to explain the appeal of his books, Ian Fleming first mentioned his use of luxury brand names. The secret agent's casual shirts weren't just cotton, they were Sea Island cotton. Thus began the promotion of high-end products by their association with Bond. You can actually own the stuff that dreams are made of. Right now you can buy, from Turnbull & Asser, expensive replicas of the evening shirt and tie worn by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. Till recently, Pierce Brosnan regularly appeared in magazine advertisements for Omega watches. Long ago, an Aston Martin became every boy's fantasy car after 007 drove one in Goldfinger.
Bond is, in fact, a connoisseur in the largest sense: He is one who knows. The omnicompetent 007 can handle himself with utter confidence in a casino or on a golf course, at a shooting range or on a ski slope. He can drive a tank or fly an airplane or bet all his chips on the turn of a card and win. In Bond's world, the hotels are always five star, the Bollinger properly chilled, and the bespoke suits created on Jermyn Street or in Italy by Brioni.
Of course, the Bond women are also a connoisseur's choice. Like the spy who loves them, they are more than just seductive; they look as if they had just emerged from the sea, perfect in every way, eroticism incarnate. One after another, though, each gladly accepts her role as what the French call "le repos du guerrier" -- the warrior's rest. Bond's sexual electricity is such that even a lesbian like Pussy Galore (in Goldfinger) inevitably ends up in his bed. A woman I know, trying to explain the visceral attractiveness of the first actor to play Bond, put it this way: Most men are boys; Sean Connery is a man.
Bond, then, is utterly glamorous, but not just in the usual urbane, film-star mode. He is also glamorous in the old connotation of delusively alluring, not to be trusted, a false enchantment that hides a trap. In a heartbeat, Bond can switch from rakish playboy to Rambo; alternately, he can strip off a frogman's suit to reveal a white dinner jacket underneath. Fleming's hero is always more than he appears to be.
In this respect, 007 calls to mind a more sophisticated version of that favorite adventure-movie archetype: the underestimated man. Sooner or later, the long-suffering rancher, mocked and abused by the bad guys, will wearily strap on his six-guns -- and reveal a lightning draw and a deadly aim. That mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan daily is really Superman. To the astonishment and sorrow of Penelope's suitors, the despised beggar in rags strings the bow and notches his first arrow -- the remorseless Odysseus returned home at last.
Bond always returns, too, even from apparent death at the end of the book version of From Russia With Love. After a long hiatus, this summer the secret agent has come back in Sebastian Faulks's Devil May Care. Critically admired for such novels as Birdsong and Human Traces, Faulks is just the latest writer to continue the series, though he is certainly the most distinguished since Kingsley Amis, who wrote Colonel Sun under the name Robert Markham. Alas, Faulks is no more successful than any of the others, including the late John Gardner -- an excellent thriller writer himself (see the Boysie Oakes and Professor Moriarty novels) -- or Raymond Benson, three of whose Bond adventures will be republished this fall. Even judging by the least exigent standards, Devil May Care is surprisingly unimaginative. Much of the action is adapted from previous Bond books or films, the raggedy plot contains an inordinate number of absurdities, and the true identity of a major character is obvious from the get-go. While the writing competently speeds the story along, it is otherwise undistinguished. At least Amis/Markham enjoyed himself, as one can tell just from his slightly campy similes: A man's eyes have "the controlled interestedness of a sniper's as he reaches for his rifle." Colonel Sun's lips are "the color of dried blood."
Could Faulks have been deliberately imitating Fleming's plain style? Could the original James Bond novels have actually been as heavy-handed as this? As a test, I reread Live and Let Die and was taken aback by its embarrassing datedness -- the casual racism and crude sexism, the hokey slang and the succession of improbabilities, the simplistic action. The film -- one of the worst of the Bond series -- actually seems richer, more complex and layered. That was a disturbing discovery. Fleming reportedly once said that he designed his books to be read by tired businessmen on long airplane flights. Faulks seems to have taken that to heart: If you're on a jet to England and don't want to watch the movie, Devil May Care will provide a diverting few hours.
While the book is set in the 1960s, Faulks does indulge in some oblique comment on today's world. A CIA operative alleges that the United States might welcome terrorist activities against allies as a way of pricking them into joining America's latest crusade -- here the Vietnam War, but one immediately thinks of more-recent conflicts. Julian Gorner, "a power-crazed pharmaceuticals magnate" (in the words of the dust jacket), confesses that he once thought of subverting Britain from within by taking over The Times, buying television channels and other papers, and gradually corrupting people's moral fiber with pornography and propaganda. The name Rupert Murdoch goes unspoken, and doesn't need to be. Not least, Gorner aims to flood England with hard drugs and transform it into a third-world country. The implicit suggestion here is that Gorner may have been defeated by Bond, but that his plan is still going strong.
In the end, though, it doesn't much matter if Devil May Care is a dud, or if some of Fleming's own novels have grown into period pieces. Bond is now mainly a cinematic property, and I suspect that it's only geezers -- like me -- who still read the novels or want to, and mainly for nostalgia's sake. After all, Bond sees the world in black and white; he's a spy who never came in from the cold war. Alas, our 21st-century world has grown rich in shades of gray, and our wars are again no longer just cold ones.
Still, James Bond lives on, for he has outgrown the books, and even the movies can scarcely contain him. A half-dozen actors have played him, and there will be more in the future: Bond has become as archetypal as Hamlet or Sherlock Holmes, a hero with a thousand faces -- and among them are yours and mine.
Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of the memoir An Open Book (W.W. Norton, 2003) and four collections of essays: Readings (Indiana University Press, 2003), Bound to Please (Norton, 2005), Book by Book (Henry Holt, 2006), and Classics for Pleasure (Harcourt, 2007).
Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)
Dirda, Michael. "James Bond as Archetype (and Incredibly Cool Dude)." The Chronicle of Higher Education 54.41 (2008). Academic OneFile. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
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