Die 007, Die!

Ian Fleming's James Bond

Thanks to the tragedy of the current pandemic and the miracle of modern technology, I’ve been watching a lot of old and new shows, with The Prisoner being the next candidate for binge-watching. Among the myriad choices is another long-running franchise brought to us by EON (Everything Or Nothing) Productions and many others and starring the baddest-assed Straight White Anglo Saxon Male this side of where the planet Krypton used to be: James Bond, MI6 Agent 007.

A few years ago a friend asked what I did over the weekend, and I made a confession of sorts. I admitted that I watched a bunch of movies; the kind that I don't normally watch, but once I watched the first, I got hooked and watched several more. She looked on with an increasingly disturbed expression forming as I continued; movies that are made primarily for men, although some women are known to enjoy them; men run the show and have all the power and all of the fun, while women are as much of a prop, plot device or special effect as a rubber gun, a remote control, or an exploding grass hut; according to Joe Bob Briggs, if you see a grass hut in any movie, it's probably going to explode.  

Dayyim, Joe Bob was right!

Although women are almost invariably depicted in a negative way and are shamelessly exploited, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of very hot women who try to act in them in any, and I do mean ANY, capacity they can...in James Bond movies!

When I was a kid, there were no shortage of 007 fans, so I got to see a lot of them one way or the other, usually via the trunk of someone's car in the days where drive-in theaters were still around, but in my teen years I simply lost interest as I found other real-world, alcohol, sex, drama, destruction, and violence laden activities to enjoy. Most of these earlier films I haven't seen since, so they were immediately added to my list of the funniest, most unintentionally funny movies ever made, like Sudden Impact, The Exorcist, or Rambo: First Blood Part 2. A tried-and-true formula that seems to work very well, but dude, whenever you have tense and terse meetings with a giga-trillionaire who cheats at EVERYTHING and seems to be the world's premier employer of beautiful and scantily-clad PhD holders and taciturn Orientals in funny little uniforms, this guy's probably up to no good.

Like many great fictional characters, James Bond was based on, and a composite of, real-life figures including his creator, the late Ian Fleming. Luckily for 007, Fleming didn’t depict him as smoking several packs of cigarettes a day, as Fleming himself did, and what contributed to his relatively early death. It’s hard (but comical) to imagine James Bond wheezing and coughing up green, yellow, and brown phlegm while fighting off multiple bad guys, or while boning one of many treacherous and traitorous beauties while taking shelter in a cave conveniently discovered while climbing a sheer cliff, and after being pursued by a small army and being shot at by enough aircraft and helicopters to make the entire Middle East quiet for at least a week.

All of the “actors” who played Bond were a lot like John Wayne in the sense that in they were essentially playing themselves, but in Bond’s case, an ass-kicking, womanizing, vodka martini-gulping, Renaissance Man and English gentleman who did more than his share of ridding the world of deadly, dangerous and megalomaniacal malefactors who were hell-bent on extorting and destroying it, usually in the most spectacular, sadistic, and grotesque manner that imagination, the MPAA, and the budget would allow for. The fact that there are still many real-life villains seemingly trying to accomplish the same goals as Blofeld and Dr. No seems to be lost on many people, but what else is new.

Here’s a series of strictly hypothetical situations that 007 could possibly be found in, which, unlike the movies, no Q-produced gadgetry could extract him from: In practical terms, the 21st century and all of its various realities would not be very kind to him. The lifestyle takes its toll; there's a very heavy price to be paid, and payment is long overdue. All of the illnesses and injuries usually sustained by a world-class secret agent are having their effects; the numerous STD's and more broken bones than Evel Knevel has confined him to a wheelchair and life support, where he is lucid for approx. 45 seconds a day, usually in the morning. Speaking of support, he has been served with paternity suits from the approximately 5,000 children he allegedly fathered in his hedonistic heyday. Numerous women have come forward with harassment suits. An alphabet soup of public and private organizations are interviewing witnesses and gathering materials. Due to the negative publicity, Walther, Aston-Martin and makers of vodka, vermouth, cocktail shakers, and olives have reported record losses and have severed all contacts with the franchise. 007, welcome to modern times. Rather than have your character replaced by a homosexual transvestite from Senegal with a bad accent and a pronounced lisp, die 007, please die.