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https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/bond-novels-are-sexist-suggests-emma-thompson/ar-AA1OTsjV?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=68f8ad2b7c004cdab72bac6f9d013404&ei=9
Dame Emma Thompson has suggested that Ian Fleming’s 007 novels are sexist.
The Academy Award-winning actress said the James Bond books she read as a teenager told her that women should fall in love and get killed.
Dame Emma, 66, said other famous spy novels did not encourage readers to believe in “female power”, as they depict women seducing men and not showing what they are “capable of”.
Writing in the Radio Times, she said: “I read and re-read all of Alistair MacLean, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, John le Carré and Arthur Conan Doyle while a teenager, so it’s astonishing that I grew up into someone who believed in female power.
“By the laws of probability, I should still be looking for parts that require me to seduce and get killed, fall in love and get killed, be naked and already dead or manage a cigarette holder without burning myself.”
The Love Actually star is set to feature in an adaptation of Mick Herron’s Down Cemetery Road.
She said the writer’s work, which also includes the Slow Horses series, pass the Bechdel test – because they have at least two female characters who talk to each other about something other than men.
On Herron’s work, she continued: “Women get to do stuff and say stuff. His books pass the Bechdel test with lots of room to spare.
“You get the feeling he knows what we are capable of, and there were precious few thriller or spy writers doing that while I was growing up.”
Dame Emma’s comments echo those Dame Helen Mirren made earlier this year, amid speculation about who will be the next James Bond.
Dame Helen said the franchise was drenched in “profound sexism” and she never liked how women were portrayed in the film adaptations.
Although James Bond almost always escapes from dangerous scenarios unscathed, the same cannot be said for his female accomplices.
In February, creative control of James Bond was handed from American-British producers to Amazon MGM Studios.
It prompted an outcry that the franchise is now entirely in American hands, with Valerie Leon, a former Bond girl, warning it “won’t be [British] anymore”.
Yes, a lot of classic literature will fail the Bechdel test but that's because society in the past for the most part failed the Bechdel test. While women did work in intelligence and police (and Bond shows that) it is unlikely their work would not revolve around a man.
The Bechdel test also falls apart when there is a third-person limited or first POV of a male protagonist. It really should only be a general overview of many works during a time period: about half of works should pass and another half should fail because about half should have a female protagonist (and the other half a male one).'
I cannot speak for the others but I don't think Le Carre or Fleming necessarily fall into those traps either when they do feature female characters. Fleming certainly has girls that exist independent of Bond (Vesper, Gala, Tiffany, and Domino for instance) and I believe only three Bond girls get killed because of Bond (that is, excluding Vesper's suicide, which is a product of her life outside of Bond!). Women do get to do stuff and say stuff, just through the context and lens of the main character.
Le Carre is a bizarre mention as well because from what I've read his novels rarely involve seduction and death is used quite sparingly. They generally feature few female characters but they are not treated poorly or come across badly.
I have only read Deighton's Berlin Game, so I am not qualified to comment across his broader works, but yes there are few female characters and they exist only as wives to other characters but one of them is quite important to the overall story (perhaps that's what she means by the overuse of seduction?).
Conan Doyle is probably the most likely to fall into the trap. Holmes is kind to women but the stories perhaps don't think much of them in terms of agency or in terms of handling the truth at times. It's not a surprise considering he's the oldest author on the list, but then again there is Irene Adler who is a large subversion of the expected docile nature of women in the Victorian era. (Adler, who in the most popular Holmes adaptation to date does less and is sexed up more).
Her point is more about 'female power' in the books really, not just specifically about whether they survive, or are naked, or holding cigarette holders. And it's not like she doesn't have a point, as MajorDSmythe said, they're products of a different age. She's not even particularly criticising them, just pointing out a fact really.
This thread contains many people arguing on its earlier pages that we should accept the Bond books as being products from another time displaying old fashioned attitudes rather than trying to change them, and that does mean accepting it.
That's true. Several excellent works have been made in another time where standards were different. Pointing out that society has moved on is not a bad thing, that doesn't mean however these works lose their craftsmanship.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading GF, which I finished yesterday, it was very well written and full of energy and quirky characters, but Bond's thoughts about Koreans and homosexuals aren't quite, uhm, gentlemanlike.
Even then, an author should be able to put words in his characters' mouths, regardless of whether he agrees or disagrees with them himself. He should be allowed to insult, shock, and upset us. He should be allowed to reflect the times without fear of having his words "sanitized" decades later.
We can use Goldfinger as a starting point for a conversation about a problem, but we won’t solve that problem by “cleaning up” Goldfinger simply to avoid being confronted with what makes us uncomfortable.
Whenever I read Fleming, I often come across things that clash with my own morals, ethics, outlook, and way of life. Yet the Bond adventures, and Bond himself, are far more than the sum of the elements we might disapprove of in 2025. I still love, cherish, and enjoy them as much today as when I first discovered them. That’s because I don’t expect art to be spotless, sanitized, or free of controversy. It would be a dull world indeed if it were.
Indeed, if anything 'sanitizing' literature or film or music would do more harm than good. This is also true outside the world of Bond. How can society learn if we pretend something wasn't the case, right? I have had this debate also concerning the early Tintin comics, which will bring us off the Bond topic, but as a fellow Belgian you'd certainly be aware of that too ;).
As a Tintin fan, I know perfectly well what you're talking about. :-) And in that specific case, I'm also opposed to any form of censorship.
And I doubt many parents are encouraging their kids to read it as entertainment.
And I guess you could see some of these edits as keeping the books' original intentions alive. Once they become historical artefacts that a reader learns about the attitudes of times gone by, once Tintin in the Congo has moved to the adult section of the bookshop, then it's become something different, it's no longer a fun comic book which provides simple enjoyment for kids. Maybe you could say IFP are trying to maintain the Bond books as exciting thrillers to be enjoyed today rather than as historical textbooks from which to learn about racist attitudes of the past. They want to sell books, ultimately.
I think therein lies the problem. The fact is while Fleming’s books are still read by curious readers and Bond fans, they’re not the best seller airport novels they were in the 50s/60s. They’ve become, for better or worse, artefacts from a different era, albeit ones that are historically/culturally significant and have provided the foundations for films and video games that have continued to be contemporary and enjoyed today. I’d say the same about the books of Charles Dickens. Or the plays of Shakespeare. They’re never going to be read or viewed as they were in their eras.
That fine incidentally. I’ve said before a more preferable route to go down is to have critics write introductions to these re-releases and outline the context/contemporary interpretations of these stories. Some have suggested even adding footnotes to add context too. Many will continue to enjoy these books today (I do), and Bond onscreen doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon, but you’re never going to edit away some of the sentiments in these books that modern readers will pick up on, even if you change a word or two.
regarding those footnotes, I'm not too keen. I think anyone buying a comic or book from the last century or before knows at least a little about the change in mores. Is it really necessary to put so much attention to it? It, after all, does generalise ideas from the past. But let's be honest, if everybody liked slavery that much, the first American civil war would not have taken place. Even these days, or probably these days even more so, societies have polarised opposite views on a lot of items. The center of gravity does change, thankfully. But is it fair to 'contextualise' texts by generalising societies?
Let's be fair, Emma Thomson (as @mtm rightly pointed out) said nothing out of the ordinary. She pointed out that, when she was growing up, society was very different and books (and films, by the way) overwhealmingly, had male protagonists, and a male point of view. And yes, Bond may be viewed exactly in that way, as it was clearly Fleming's fantastic alter ego. It didn't stop her from reading those books, did it?
For better or for worse that's the way I suspect they'll go eventually. I don't think it's a bad thing - if anything it gives the sense that the books are being taken seriously as pieces of literature and history, as well as the idea that people want to preserve them as they are. And no, not everyone would immediately understand all the references in Fleming's novels. They are of their time, and I think footnotes would help contextualise certain things (I'm talking about brief explanations to, say, events that are referenced in the books that many of us might not immediately know about).
Introductions don't have to be negative or 'look how much better we are' in tone either. Critics who write similar forwards to classic novels usually have a love and respect for these books, and some insightful things to say from their perspective. Bond already has that with many authors writing whole books on Fleming - talking about his use of language, the tropes of the novels, the context of the time, his approach to certain ideas in individual books etc. I don't see anything wrong with getting a few of them to write forwards for future editions. Again, these books are no longer contemporary airport reads. They are likely going to be read by curious fans of the films. There's quite a bit in there that may well be baffling to modern readers or would at least benefit from a bit of context/understanding. I can only speak for myself but I think that would have helped me understand the books better on my first readings of them, and similar forwards were beneficial to me when I began to read classic novels when I was younger. And anyway, if there's this big an 'elephant in the room' when it comes to these aspects of Fleming's books, why not comment on it? Better than half hearted self-censorship in my opinion.
A disclaimer at the start of the book - if they must - should suffice. Though I suspect anyone reading an adult spy novel written in the fifties isn't very likely to be distraught at the contents anyway.
I can (just barely) handle a short disclaimer because I can (and will) skip it, but mid-text apologies or something like that would ruin the fun for me.
Why not stick a few pictograms on the cover, like the ones on DVD and Blu-ray boxes? Let readers know there’s some strong language, sex, or violence inside. That should more than cover it. If publishers want to lecture us instead, they should commission someone to write books on the subject itself.
That’s not what I’m advocating for at all. That’s a sort of ‘trigger warning’ and not common with new editions of older books from my understanding. I’m not in favour of disclaimers on books like that. Footnotes and forwards are very common with new editions of classic texts. When there’s, say, a reference to some sort of obscure event from the 50s that Fleming references, the footnote will explain it briefly. Or for those interested it might give a little background about what Fleming is talking about when he, for example, references Quarrel having ‘Cromwellian blood’ in him. The forwards are basically an academic extension of how a lot of us write on these forums when we critique a Fleming book we’ve reread. It’ll go through the story, characters, and yes, it’ll acknowledge and talk about those ‘elephants in the room’ with the writer giving their view and perhaps referencing what others have written about the novel in question.
I wonder if IFP have ever considered sort of expanded editions of the novels, a bit like DVDs with info text; with footnotes and little essays about historical context, the story behind writing the book etc.
My suspicion is it goes against their business ethos. Their recent output to me suggests they want to keep literary Bond relevant, even if it means a random literary spin off about a character from the cinematic series, or a sort of YA take involving new characters. Them slightly altering their own books suggests to me they want to mildly sanitise Fleming so that a minority of modern readers won’t grumble and they can sell more copies. In theory anyway…
When it comes to Fleming I think that’s a losing battle though. The books are what they are. New editions like that would probably appeal to those most likely to read and enjoy these books.