Is this the end of Bond, James Bond?

From the prospect of a Black, female or gay James Bond to martinis and back again

[Note to Readers: The James Bond movies represent the epitome of escapist entertainment, and I’m throwing myself into analyzing the less-than-earth-shaking future of the franchise because I really need some escapism right now. My big beautiful dog is going rapidly downhill, and I’m agonizing over what to do. I just visited a hospitalized friend whose future is uncertain at best. I’m still dealing with home and vehicular issues, certainly not matters of life-and-death but vexing nevertheless; even the small comfort of a warm house and reliable transportation is proving elusive, even despite money spent. And, in my part-time work, my new manager is on a mission to negate whatever fun the job might provide. ‘Sorry to kvetch, but Hey, only a handful of my subscribers are even reading this anyway.]

There’s a brouhaha going on between the producers of the James Bond film franchise and Amazon, which in 2022 paid $8.5 billion to acquire MGM, the entertainment behemoth whose portfolio includes the character created in 1953 by Ian Fleming.

The debonair yet roguish British spy was first portrayed on screen by Sean Connery, but has also been played by Daniel Craig, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Dalton, George Lazenby and even David Niven.

But Amazon seeks to “woke-ify” everything it touches, and so has expressed its intention to consider the next screen incarnation of James Bond to be non-British, non-white, non-heterosexual or even female.

The cinematic James Bond was the creation of Albert R. (“Cubby”) Broccoli, a movie producer who had started in the business working for Howard Hughes; in 1961 he partnered with Harry Saltzman to acquire exclusive film rights to the James Bond novels.

Those rights are still held by his production company, Eon Productions, now run by Albert’s daughter from his third marriage, Barbara Broccoli, and Michael G. Wilson, Albert’s stepson from the same marriage.

As I recall, James Bond first came to popularity when President John F. Kennedy allowed that Ian Fleming was his favorite writer.

Over the years there have been numerous parodies and sendups of James Bond, which is a bit ironic, given that the novels were never really meant to be taken quite so seriously, and in fact were intended as a sendup of the spy novel genre, in the same way that Don Quixote was a caricature of the tales of noble knights on horseback pursuing their quests. Real spies would never conduct themselves the way James Bond does.

So the idea of a gay or female James Bond strikes me as just another parody, although Amazon seems to be taking it quite seriously. It remains to be seen just how seriously, at least for the moment, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are resisting Amazon’s plan to cast James Bond as a woman. Barbara Broccoli has remarked that she is more concerned about keeping Bond male and British than with keeping him caucasian and/or “straight.”

Personally, I think that James Bond was ruined, albeit in a small way, when Bond’s preference for his martinis to be prepared “stirred, not shaken” (which is how it appeared in the books, “so as not to bruise the gin”), somehow morphed into the current “shaken, not stirred,” which may have better rhythm but makes no sense to a true aficionado of martinis, unless one actually prefers bruised gin and little flecks of ice in one’s drink.

The very idea of bruising the gin is regarded by many as a myth (like oenophiles who can tell, by taste, on which side of the slope the grapes were grown), but connoisseurs maintain that shaking breaks down the botanical flavors derived from juniper berries and sometimes ginger, coriander and citrus, making the drink less crisp and even bland. And shaking imparts a cloudiness to the drink, whereas stirring yields a drink that is crystal clear.

Shaking is also a convenience for the bartender, not for the imbiber. I say this even though another literary connoisseur of martinis, Nick Charles of “The Thin Man” motion pictures and TV series (based on the single novel by Dashiell Hammett), never allowed himself to get too far away from a shaker of martinis.

(Nick and Nora Charles were played in the movies by William Powell and Myrna Loy, and on TV by Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk.)

And W. Somerset Maugham, himself no stranger to novels about espionage, having written Ashenden: Or the British Agent, a 1927 collection of stories (which I read as a young teen, and in which I first encountered the concept of tradecraft) based on his own experiences with the British intelligence services, was also firmly in the “stirred, not shaken” camp. He stated that “Martinis should always be stirred, not shaken, so that the molecules lie sensuously one on top of the other.”

It may be said that there will never be agreement on the proper way to prepare a martini. Some wags have suggested that one should pour the gin and then merely walk past, or perhaps even just glance at the vermouth. That’s a bit ironic since the name of the drink likely comes from the Martini & Rossi brand of vermouth.

I’ve also heard it said that, should you ever find yourself marooned on a desert island, far from air routes and shipping lanes and despairing of any hope of rescue or human contact, you should immediately start to build a martini, because that will cause someone to pop out of the woodwork and tell you that you are doing it wrong!

Back to Bond, though: I'd have no problem with a Black James Bond. I'm a big fan of Kojak, and Telly Savalas's shoes are tough ones to fill, but I rooted for Ving Rhames to succeed as the Black Kojak and was disappointed that he didn't. And Rhames may now be making just as much intoning “We have the meats” for Arby’s as he might have made playing a Black Kojak.

As to a female James Bond, I can certainly be enthused over a woman playing an action hero, er, heroine; Kathleen Turner did a great job as V. I. Warshawski (not a spy but a private detective), I loved Gena Rowlands playing one tough old broad in Gloria, and what red-blooded guy doesn’t love Cote de Pablo as the Mossad agent Ziva David on TV’s NCIS? So I can see a woman in a Bond-like role, but that wouldn’t make her a female James Bond; would she drink, smoke and gamble, and bed every man in sight?

But a male James Bond who’s light in his loafers? A James Bond who’s unimpressed by Pussy Galore? (It still cracks me up that that particular character’s name made it past the Hollywood censors!) A James Bond who’s a poofter? That would be like a gay Kojak; it's beyond ridiculous.

ST