We need to talk about James Bond. The debonair master spy and mass seducer of women is looking a lot less charming today than he did back in his glory days in the 1960s and 1970s. As any relatively conscious person who’s watched an older Bond film in recent years can tell you, Bond was less a seducer than a straight up rapist — tricking, blackmailing and sometimes physically forcing women to have sex with him.
But some longtime fans of Bond really don’t want to hear about it. That’s part of why it made such a stir when the director of the upcoming 007 movie No Time to Die recently acknowledged that Bond, James Bond, was a rapist.
“Is it ‘Thunderball’ or ‘Goldfinger’ where, like, basically Sean Connery’s character rapes a woman?” director Cary Fukunaga told one interviewer. “She’s like ‘No, no, no,’ and he’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ That wouldn’t fly today.”
Actually, Fukunaga is only half right here: Bond didn’t commit sexual assault in Thunderball or Goldfinger; he did so in Thunderball and Goldfinger.
In Thunderball, he forced kisses on a nurse as she fought back, then later follows her into her room against her continued protests. You can guess the rest. Goldfinger was less subtle. Bond threw the memorably named Pussy Galore to the ground in a hay-covered barn loft and forced himself on her, while she actively resisted him (until she decided she was into it — because by the movie’s logic all women want to be raped by 007.).
If you need a refresher, or haven’t seen the movies in the first place, you can watch the scenes here and here.
These are only the most notorious of Bond’s predations; throughout the movie series, especially during the Connery era, Bond seems to grope, slap, or otherwise sexually harass or assault almost every comely woman in his general vicinity.
Watch here to see some of Bond’s least appropriate behavior.
I decided to look on Reddit to see if anyone was talking about Fukunaga’s comments, and I found the most, well, intense discussion in the KotakuInAction subreddit, the home of the site’s Gamergate dead-enders and other right-wing culture warriors. They’re a pretty angry bunch, especially when it comes to pop culture that, in their mind, has gotten too “woke” for its own good.
There are the outright deniers, like the commenter called asterKnight48902 who declares that it “[l]ooks like whoever came up with that is borderline delusional.”
And there are those who consider Bond’s style of, er, seduction to be perfectly ok — and also, somehow, consensual. “Women like sexually aggressive men who murder people,” explains East_Onion. “Get over it.”
“Words mean nothing, as usual,” complains GreenOrkGirl. “Anyone who is not a so[y]boy is a rapist now.”
In another comment, she added
Thanks to modern “feminism” that word lost its meaning. In media you cant distinguish real rape victims (no one cares about them), from “omg he complemented a woman, what a RaPiST!!!
“I can’t wrap my brain around this,” writes Krombopulos-Snake. “So, consensual sex with women trying to kill you is now rape.”
“Women ,though they’re loath to admit it these days, prefer strong agressive men,” asserts 0llygruntt. “Most of the bad boy Chads, that they’re longing for, are of that ilk.”
Another commenter, blaizken_420, complains that “having masculine straight sexuality is considered worse [than murder] now.”
As far as many of the commenters are concerned, talking about the rape scenes as rape scenes is a bigger sin than putting the scenes in the movies in the first place
ForPortal accuses the director and those who think like him of being iconoclasts, in the worst sense of the word,
look[ing] at James Bond the same way the Taliban looks at a Buddha statue – as an affront to their religion that must be destroyed.
Justiceavenger2 declares that
The woke crowds entertainment is ruining established franchises and celebrating it on twitter.
Others talk boycott.
Burningheart1978 declares that Fukunaga’s comment is just “[a]nother reason (not that I needed more ) to give this double woke seven a miss…”
“Ok so that’s the final nail in the Bond coffin huh?” sososomanythrowaways comments, “It was already going poorly a few movies back.”
Some just want Fukunaga cancelled.
“Remove the director,” demands carmachu.
It’s a tad ironic how those who are the loudest opponents of so-called cancel culture are so eager to cancel their ideological foes.
There are, I should add, a handful pf cmmenters in the thread who acknowledge that Bond is basically a psychopathic rapist, like JaredLJohnson, who writes,
In Goldfinger he literally throws Pussy Galore around a barn and then pins her down and physically forces himself onto her until she stops fighting back. In Thunderball he kisses Fiona multiple times as she fights him back and tells him no. In Live And Let Die he stacks the deck against Solitaire who believes in the tarot readings in order to bang her, which probably constitutes rape by deception. In multiple movies he physically assaults women before trying to initiate something sexual with them. You could pick pretty much any Bond from the 90s or earlier and find a sex crime — coercion, sexual assault, date rape — in almost any movie. You fucks can downvote me, but look at any of those scenes and imagine the movie isn’t about Bond and they look an awful lot like sex crimes.
Sure do.
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It gets even better: if you read the book, Bond correctively raped Pussy Galore out of lesbianism (she’d turned that way owing to childhood molestation by an uncle.)
CW: Ian Fleming in the books literally writes “all women love semi-rape”.
@FMO:
Yeesh. How horrifying.
One thing I want to call out in the original post is this from GreenOrkGirl:
You mean the word, “no,” GreenOrkGirl? Funny how it’s not feminists who are redefining it.
“… and when you’re a star, they let you do it.”
dumb donald
It’s both appalling and a ridiculous plot hole in Goldfinger since the real world just doesn’t work that way. It’s bad to the point that I think they should reedit that one to where he instead gets Galore to switch out the gas canisters by simply revealing to her that the nerve gas Goldfinger plans to use is lethal, contrary to what she had been told. No difficulty convincing her then to go along with what she’d already thought the plan was, with knockout gas.
i swear these guys think if a woman isn’t bleeding and constantly screaming at the end of a scene like that it isn’t rape.
@Elaine The Witch
More like: if the perpetrator is someone they admire, they think it can’t be rape.
I know “complemented” is a misspelling for complimented but “complemented a woman” sounds like some old-fashioned euphemism for PIV intercourse.
In Thunderball he also blackmails a woman into sex. With orchestral music that implies romance.
It’s been a while since I saw them, so I’m not sure if that is the same incident mentioned by the director. Bond films never sat well with me (neither did the books).
@Karalora
Absolutely. I think that people can also get their knickers in a twist if they believe they are being criticised for one of their own kink/sexual predilections. I’m sure loads of people like the whole “sexually dominant man semi-violently makes woman in two minds realise she wanted it all along” (like in Poldark with Elizabeth, and probably a gazillion other examples) trope, which is fine, but not fine when presented in popular media as Normal Sexual Behaviour. Like in the Poldark example, in the book that scenario is specifically framed as rape, whereas in the tv series – I imagine because they wanted the frisson without spoiling the hero to modern audiences – it’s just left hanging. Which as much as I love the show, is a problem!
It’s complicated as well for men who take any comment on stuff like this (which is from films sometimes made over FIFTY YEARS AGO. Jesus! Is it so hard to accept culture can move on?) as an attack on masculinity in general, ideas about which seem to become muddled with their sexual persona.
In Fleming’s novel ”The spy who loved me”, Bond is explicitly described as being the same kind of person as the gangsters he helps get rid of. That is, he’s a killer without a conscience.
That is, sexy as Connery was, Bond’s character and depravity were never secret.
@Mrs_Morley Bond always struck me as a virtuous sociopath. You know, if you consider loyalty to the British spy agency a virtue. 60’s spy movies in general were basically power-fantasy-anime for male boomers.
The Goldfinger scene is the worst esp. if you have read the book. Galore is implied to be a lesbian in the film and she is a lesbian in the book pretty explicitly. So it’s actually “corrective” rape.
Regarding the “it can’t have been rape because Bond is the Good Guy” argument… that is pretty much conservative “morality” in total.
“We are Good, therefore whatever we do is Good. They are Bad, so whatever harm We do to Them is twice-Good.”
This also perfectly explains things like decrying “cancel culture” while seemingly constantly engaging in it.
“Cancel culture is a Bad Thing that They do. We do not do bad things. Therefore what We are doing cannot be cancel culture. By definition.”
Completely OT:
You might have heard that the island I live on, La Palma, is in the middle of a volcanic eruption. I am on the lucky side of the island. All we’ve had is small earthquakes (like 3.5) and intermittent rain of nasty ash which is tiny glass splinters. You need an N95 to sweep it up. We can’t let the cat out or she’ll get it on her fur, then lick it off and swallow it. She’s been bashing our ears about this all day long.
I would really appreciate it if Mammotheers could pass this around and/or donate. (I know a lot of you can’t possibly donate. I understand)
(I know it’s genuine because I translated the English version.)
Thanks.
@Sheila: Glad you’re OK. I got some of the dust from Mt. St. Helens’ eruption so I know what you mean. It’s finely-powdered glass and it gets everywhere. La gata is going to have to keep yelling, sorry for all your ears.
I read an article about the Canaries recently where they were described as dormant volcanoes and thought “that terrain doesn’t look very dormant to me” so…
I will pass it along.
@Full Metal Ox, @Burt Hondo: The book also has this nasty little passage:
“Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and ‘sex equality’. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits—barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them. Bond smiled sourly to himself as he remembered his fantasies about this girl as they sped along the valley of the Loire. Entre Deux Seins indeed!”
Yikes! You’re actually there? I’ve got that eruption on one of my other browser tabs.
Odd, I don’t see any links in all of that. Credit card input forms, Patreon, Paypal, or etc.
@Nequam
Oof, that passage from the book was a major “yikes”.
“So, consensual sex with women trying to kill you is now rape.”
I’m faily sure that, if she’s trying to kill you, the sex is not consensual.
it kind of reminds me of that book that has like the 12 year old girl who is getting raped by her stepfather, but the book is from the stepfather perspective who is all like “I love her and she clearly wanted me by the way she ate a popsicle while crying after her mother died” and now so many people think that book is about a young girl seducing an older man and not a pedophile putting his fantasy on a little girl and convincing himself that she wants him because he gave her a soda pop.
@Elaine the Witch:
it kind of reminds me of that book that has like the 12 year old girl who is getting raped by her stepfather, but the book is from the stepfather perspective who is all like “I love her and she clearly wanted me by the way she ate a popsicle while crying after her mother died” and now so many people think that book is about a young girl seducing an older man and not a pedophile putting his fantasy on a little girl and convincing himself that she wants him because he gave her a soda pop.
I presume you mean Lolita?
(Which affords a cue to drop a cultural footnote: that’s not what adherents of the Lolita fashion styles want, either; in fact, in Japan where that body of styles originated, it tends to be a semiotic sign that the wearer is not in a hurry to grow up sexually.)
@GSS ex-noob. She’s mostly siamese. You know that cry siamese cats have that’s even more like a human baby than the usual cat’s cry? Yeah, that.
@Surplus Yes, that one. The drone footage is spectacular. Of course, the emotional effect is different when it’s people you know personally, roads you’ve driven down frequently. I can’t believe that only 10 days ago, seeing an active volcano was on my bucket list. To be fair to me, the previous eruption here was right on the southern tip of the island and the lava went down to the sea. It wrecked some vineyards and almost bankrupted the salt works, but nobody lost their homes. This volcano has already spat out more lava and ash in 8 days than the 1971 eruption did in 4.5 weeks and it’s gone through several villages. I still feel stupid.
The long numbers that start ES are codes for electronic bank transfers. I gather that’s awkward for people in the UK and USA, so some friends in the UK set up this gofund me: https://gofund.me/4331ea35 I’ve known these people for about 10 years and I know they’re honest. The money will come to the people who need it.
Tovius
Unless that happens to be the kink of both parties, then it’s likely consensual. However, that is something both parties would have to agree to in advance, setting ground rules and stuff like any other kinky encounters need to have before they begin.
@full metal ox
yes that is the book I mean. lolita fashion in japan is inspired by things like rococo France fashion and allice in wonderland with the poofy dresses and pastel colors. it’s not suppose to be little kid at all, it’s just not suppose to be a sexy type style of dress. It’s more like fancy lady having Victorian tea time. it has many different type of styles as well. I think goth lolita is the best (no surprise there, I’m a goth) but there is also punk lolita, sweet lolita, casual, country, that sort of thing. then you will also obviously get different types of lolita depending on what country you are in. on tic tok I’ve seen a rise in these Japanese style lolita which are a mixture between a Victorian woman corseted type dress with the high neckline with a lace collar, combined with a traditional Japanese Kimono.