Battle of the sexes a bit more even-handed in ‘Casino Royale’

By Jake TenPas
The Entertainer

As sad and frustrating as it must be for feminists around the world, the evolution of the James Bond franchise has come to represent the evolution of male consciousness of women’s multi-tiered struggle for equality.

Being that I’m a man, a feminist and an enthusiastic student of masculinist culture all simultaneously, I find myself torn when watching Bond films. As part of me is sucked in by the romantic notion of a spy who is also a connossieur of fine food and drink — not to mention an unrivaled charmer with the ladies — another part recoils in horror at the simplistic depiction of women as disposable objects whose allure expires as the credits roll.

When critics cheered at the more assertive role Halle Berry’s character took in 2002’s “Die Another Day,” I scratched my head. Her name was Jinx, which still sounds like a porn star pseudonym to me, and we’re introduced to her wearing a skimpy bikini. Sure, she takes part in the action rather than playing the damsel in distress, but her primary role was still as a sex symbol and eye candy, something to dress up the movie for the single guys in the audience.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that from a purely aesthetic standpoint. I love looking at beautiful women as much as the next guy. The catch is that the hidden message seems to be eye candy and brain candy can’t go together.

Because Bond clearly functions as projected male fantasy, I’ll let slide the more harmless and visually pleasing of the movies’ indulgences, such as Maurice Binder’s sexy, kitschy title sequences for the early films. But in the series’ simple appeal to men’s baser impulses, it walks a fine line between giving them release and encouraging them to grow in an unhealthy direction.

Still, when compared to the way Sean Connery or Roger Moore’s Bonds treated women, “Die” was a huge step forward. After all, in 1964’s “Goldfinger,” Bond has no qualms with striking women and even engaging in behavior that can only be seen as rape by enlightened eyes.

In 1969, the Bond series was introduced to its first woman of substance in Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg), who inspired such love — as opposed to the usual dirt cheap lust — in Bond that the couple were married by the end of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Of course, she died at the end of the film, clearing the slate for Bond to be free at the beginning of “Diamonds are Forever,” but when she died, the audience felt more for her than it had for all the women in the previous five films put together. The notion that women are actual people, not to be disposed of, was a refreshing one.

Throughout the early ’70s, women were portrayed in a variety of unflattering lights by the franchise, from the greed and vacuousness of Tiffany Case and Plenty O’Toole in “Diamonds” to the pathetic desperation of Mary Goodnight in “The Man With The Golden Gun.” It wasn’t until 1977’s “The Spy Who Loved Me” that we would get another woman who could get the upper hand on Bond in Major Amasova (Barbara Bach), James’ Russian counterpart. Again, however, the apparent equality that was reached was somewhat marred by the fact that her codename was Agent XXX, she ultimately had to rely on Bond to save her and was, of course, long gone by the time of the next film.

While feminism might have made surface dents in the Aston Martin of Bond’s hit-and-run attitude toward women, the reality of the situation is that women were still passengers and not drivers, free to be ejected whenever they became familiar.

The ’80s represented, as with all culture, another monstrous backslide. The aging Roger Moore continued to bed younger and less interesting women throughout “For Your Eyes Only,” the atrociously named “Octopussy” and “A View to a Kill,” which could have been called “A prescription for Viagra,” had Q concocted the drug in his secret lab.

While Timothy Dalton’s Bond was a tad more monogamous (and by that I mean still promiscuous, but with better excuses), it wasn’t until Pierce Brosnan took over the mantle under the franchise’s first female M, or head of British intelligence, played by Dame Judy Dench, that women’s roles again began to evolve. Sure, there was still Denise Richards’ idiotic character, Christmas Jones, but at least there was a substantive female presence around to remind the fellas that women don’t just disappear as they age.

Finally, we come to “Casino Royale,” Bond’s latest adventure, actually based on the first Ian Fleming novel. At long last, we get a title sequence without any naked women in it, an increased role for Judy Dench and a “Bond girl” more interesting and three-dimensional than any since Tracy Di Vicenzo. We also get a Bond that is actually aware that his “love her and leave her” mentality might not be totally healthy, and that is willing, however reluctantly, to care about a woman for reasons other than bedding her.

That said, Bond will be Bond, and the movies need to maintain their core male audience if they’re going to generate revenue. Thus we get a disposable babe in the Bahamas that serves no purpose other than window dressing. Really, there are far worse things in the world than the celebration of the female form. The trick is, you have to keep asking yourself “When does celebration become exploitation?”

Most men — and many women — are unlikely to think such thoughts as the car chases, shootouts and sex scenes speed by, which is too bad. If we’re ever going to have a society worthy of reflection in a truly progressive Bond film, our notions of women will need to be both shaken and stirred.

Jake TenPas can be reached at jake.tenpas@lee.net or 758-9514.