06 REWIND A

HYDERABAD, Sunday, January 29, 2023

The name is Bond.

James Bond
SEVENTY YEARS LATER, WE REMAIN IN BOND-AGE TO
THE MASTER SPY
PRAMOD K NAYAR

In a novel, one man says in an ex- general, Bond regarded them as a

asperated tone: mild hazard and he always gave
patriotism comes along and makes them plenty of road and was ready
it seem fairly all right, but this coun- for the unpredictable. Four women in
try-right-or-wrong business is getting a car he regarded as the highest poten-
a little out-of-date. Today we are fight- tial danger, and two women nearly as
ing Communism. Okay. If I’d been alive lethal … So two women in the front seat of
fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism a car constantly distract each other’s at-
we have today would have been damn near tention from the road ahead and four
called Communism and we should have women are more than doubly dangerous for
been told to go and fight that. History is the driver…
moving pretty quickly these days and the None of the representations of class, gender or
heroes and villains keep on changing parts. race, in works like Fleming’s are unproblematic,
The sentiments expressed could belong to wish to destroy, However, beyond of course, from our point of view today. But, we
today, although the speech itself is articulated they first make the formulaic, may want to think about the imposition of our
by a man who is willing to lay down his life, or bored’. The cold- there is something cultural values on texts and authors from a
waste that of others, for his country. It is no ex- ness stems in part fantastic about the wholly different era. Lynn Hunt, author of In-
aggeration, then, to say that ‘the figure of the from the fact that Bond charisma, abili- venting Human Rights: A History, argued in 2002
spy has always been bound up with nation- he has to operate as ties, ruthlessness. Judi in her capacity as the President the American
hood and the idea of what it means to be a ruthless killer. Dench, who would im- Historical Association, that
British’ — the opening sentence of Sam Good- There is little room mortalise M in a series Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind
man’s study British Spy Fiction and the End of for doubt. And this is of Bond films, made the of moral complacency and self-congratula-
Empire. the key Fleming for- comment: ‘[Bond] has to tion. Interpreting the past in terms of pres-
Operating as an undercover operative in mula: Bond is a man of be also a kind of fantasy ent concerns usually leads us to find our-
various parts of the globe, chasing terrorists action. person, that kind of comic selves morally superior; the Greeks had
and thieves, seducing heiresses and rivals, for- strip quality about it has to slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and
ever hunter and hunted, the most popular spy FORMULA TWO be there’. European women endorsed imperial ven-
in contemporary fiction first appeared, com- The critic Umberto Eco tures. Our forbears constantly fail to meas-
plete with tux, pistol and assorted gadgets, 70 noted in an early essay that Bond’s Toys and ure up to our present-day standards. This is
years ago, in 1953, in a novel titled Casino the Bond gallery operates not to say that any of these findings are ir-
Royale. The spy’s identity is now well known. around binary pairs of people Machines relevant or that we should endorse an en-
The name is Bond, James Bond. (M-Bond, Bond-villain, Bond- A key aspect of the Bond for- tirely relativist point of view. It is to say that
woman) and traits: mula is the gadgets and the ‘sci- we must question the stance of temporal su-
excess/Bond-moderation/M, ence’. The Lektor Decoder in periority that is implicit in the … historical
Fleming in Bond Time order/M-improvisation/Bond, From Russia with Love, the jet-pack discipline.
Ian Fleming’s own life was lived close to the in- beauty/ Bond-monstrous/villains. in Thunderball and the autogyro in
telligence services, having served in Britain’s The sleek and suave hero, Bond, is You Only Live Twice (not counting IAN FLEMING PUBLISHED
Naval Intelligence Division. Later, he would in sharp contrast to the villains who the apparatuses in the Bond car, 12 JAMES BOND NOVELS, AND
tap into his experiences, including his in- are ugly, unnatural, disfigured (Drax watches, pens, etc), Bond toys are as TOGETHER THEY SOLD OVER
volvement with Operation Golden Eye that in Moonraker, Jack in Diamonds are intriguing as any in sci-fi texts, leading 100 MILLION COPIES, MAKING
was designed for sabotage operations in post- Forever or Mr Big in Live and Let Die). Mark Brake in The Science of James
World War II Europe. There is also the inescapable feature of Bond to term the works, ‘spy-fi’, a genre
IT THE MOST READ SPY SERIES
villainy that the novelist Kingsley Amis of fiction that fuses spy fiction with sci- IN HISTORY
THE FIGURE OF THE SPY IS drew attention to: the number of foreign ence fiction.
BOUND UP WITH LARGER villains in Bond. Contextualising from the early 20th What Hunt is getting at is also that writers like
QUESTIONS OF NATIONAL Sue Matheson in her essay in James Bond century the technological fetishism that Fleming, or anyone else from the canon for
IDENTITY, ESPECIALLY and Philosophy inventories the foreign: marks the Bond universe, the historian of that matter, wrote for their time, employing a
Emilio Largo, Darko Kerim, Hugo Drax, technology André Millard maps, in Equipping language that were acceptable in their time, and
BRITISH NATIONAL IDENTITY and Tiger Tanaka, who are respectively James Bond: Guns, Gadgets and Technological not accounting for 21st century’s attitudes.
Italian, Turkish, German, and Japanese, Enthusiasm, a history of Bond science and Jeremy Black in The World of James Bond
After Casino Royale, the novels first appeared aristocrats by nature and breeding, are all gadgetry. notes that the Bond books and films drew on
in serial form in newspapers and magazines, illustrations of the popular concept of Niet- The Bond body is itself a killing machine. the then current fears and anxieties — the Cold
later as radio shows and, then of course as zsche’s elite barbarian. Fleming ensured that Bond was skilled in mar- War, the arms race — as well as Britain’s
films. The no-less-charismatic John F Kennedy And, of course, there is an entire catalogue of tial arts, such as judo. As early as Live and Let changing status in the era of America’s rise as
declared From Russia with Love as one of his Nazis and German villains in Bond. Die, Fleming showcases Bond’s judo prowess: a superpower.
favourite books. Fleming published 12 James He bent a little, and with his right hand Black recognises that Fleming was creating
Bond novels, and together they sold over 100 FORMULA THREE straight and flat as a board, whipped characters, both hero and villains, within the
million copies, making it the most read spy se- Bond is clearly high-society material: fit, well around and inwards. He felt it thud hard demonology of his time: the characters were
ries in history. accoutred and poised. Bond is also exception- into the target. The Negro screamed shrilly, products of their era. This does not of course
Played by hugely popular stars from Roger ally fit. In Thunderball, Fleming writes: he has like a wounded rabbit. condone violence or racism but is a recogni-
Moore to Daniel Craig, James Bond is a house- to ‘make a complete return to his previous ex- But even a man adept at every gadget fails tion that the representations of these attitudes
hold name. The films were spectacles, with ceptionally high state of physical fitness’. when he encounters the nuke, as Millard notes in literary-cultural texts spoke to that moment,
Bond’s Aston Martin racing around cities, ex- When he insists on how the martini has to be about Goldfinger. Millard argues that when the not ours.
otic locations, the slithering sexuality of the fixed (‘shaken not stirred’, in one of the most undefeatable Bond needs help defusing the Jeremy Wilson, Harvard faculty, speaks of a
women and the visceral violence. Every aspect popular Bond lines), suggests class quality, as nuke, it indicates Fleming’s anxiety about this ‘naïve presentism’ which ‘unreflectively us[es]
of the Bond film franchisee has been studied. the critic Suzie Gibson notes: apotheosis of technology. But, it can also mean the terms of the present to interpret the past’.
Its music alone, from the Bond theme music in The martini connotes the glamour, sophis- that Fleming is anticipating the kind of threat He proposes models like ‘analytical presen-
Dr No to more contemporary trends, has re- tication, and wealth of the fashionable and it poses even to a super-technologised world. tism’ (‘using an interpretation of the past to
ceived critical attention, in the form of Jon privileged. Bond’s partiality for this drink, cultivate an interpretation of the present’),
Burlingame’s The Music of James Bond. and indeed his strict instructions concern- ‘theoretical presentism’ (‘using particulars
ing its preparation, suggest that he is no Bond in Our Time from the past to create abstract schemes and
The Bond Formula slouch when it comes to fashion. He is the Clearly the racist, sexist and classist overtones ideas with the potential to elucidate the pres-
FORMULA ONE epitome of cool. are difficult for contemporary readers of var- ent and even the future’) and ‘political presen-
Bond’s persona as a cold, ruthless seducer of ied degrees of political correctness, height- tism’ (‘using applied research to draw parallels
women, spy, assassin was forged very early in ened self-critical consciousness and woke. between the past and present for a call to ac-
Casino Royale. In the novel, Mathis tells him: THE HISTORY OF BOND IS THE And there is no dearth of criticism of the Bond tion in the here and now’).
Surround yourself with human beings, my HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY universe. Take, for example, the regressive It remains for us to think through whether
dear James. They are easier to fight for than ITSELF, FROM SURVEILLANCE representations of women. Critics Tony Ben- our self-congratulatory, self-righteous critical
principles. But don’t let me down and be- TO MILITARY DEVICES nett and Janet Woollacott argued that Bond modes should be used to read the dead past and
come human yourself. We could lose such a films in particular suggest a ‘putting-back-into- find faults with the authors of/in their time, or
wonderful machine. place’ of women by ‘fictitiously rolling back see how the past can help emancipate our pres-
This ‘wonderful machine’ becomes set as the FORMULA FOUR the advances of feminism to restore an imagi- ent. Extending this presentist argument, one
Bond image. He is a man bored of peace and This has been neatly captured by the critic narily more secure phallocentric conception could speculate how terrible the readers of 2523
the ‘soft’ life. Fleming writes in From Russia Umberto Eco: of gender relations’, although James Chapman AD would find even our politically correct, all-
with Love: M gives a task to Bond; The Villain appears has proposed, not very convincingly, that the boxes-ticked literature, academic writing, his-
The Soft Life to Bond; Bond moves and gives a first check representation of women is simultaneously tories and stories.
The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond to the Villain or the Villain gives first check more conservative and progressive in the nov- James Bond is not Time-Bound. Seventy
round the neck and they were slowly stran- to Bond; Woman moves and shows herself to els than in the films. years later, the name is still Bond. James Bond.
gling him. He was a man of war and when, Bond; Bond consumes Woman …; The Vil- Entire books, such as Lisa Funnell’s For His
for a long period, there was no war, his lain captures Bond (with or without Woman, Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond, have (The author is Professor of English and
spirit went into a decline. In his particular or at different moments); The Villain tor- been devoted to the sexism in descriptions UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies at
line of business, peace had reigned for tures Bond (with or without Woman); Bond such as the notorious one from Thunderball: the University of Hyderabad. He is also
nearly a year. And peace was killing him. conquers the Villain; Bond convalescing en- Women are often meticulous and safe driv- a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society,
And later Bond thinks: ‘Those whom the Gods joys Woman, whom he then loses. ILLUSTRATION: GURU G
ers, but they are very seldom first-class. In and The English Association, UK)

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