Negotiating Shifts in Feminism: The “Bad” Girls of James Bond

Abstract

As the longest running film series in history, the James Bond franchise currently includes 22 films released across 48 years. Armed with a licence to kill, title character James Bond is routinely placed in situations which necessitate his use of deadly force. In order to obtain audience approval for these violent exploits, Bond functions within a clearly defined political space. Historically, then, the franchise has relied on gendered, racial, and sexual stereotypes in order to differentiate Bond’s “normative” heroic identity from the deviant attitudes and behaviours of his male adversaries (Black 96–97). Operating within a British heroic tradition that links masculinity with (heterosexual) romantic conquest, Bond’s serial seduction of women offers a “visual guarantee of the maleness of the Secret Service” and functions as a “tipping point” in the plot (107–09). By indiscriminately bedding “good” and “bad” women, Bond attempts to ensure the success of his missions by aligning his sexual conquests with his moral plight.