28
Popular Culture Review________________
Besides his undeniable courage, James Bond is also characterized by his
appetite for, and success with, women. Miller’s affirmation that “elsewhere in
the movies [besides Dr. No], however, the penis comes out of this protective
sheath, just as the literary Bond’s ambivalence about commodities bursts onto
the screen as joy through consumption” (236-7) is debatable, regarding sex as
well as “commodities” of consumption; James Bond in the novels is indeed
sensitive to both, as illustrated in the opening chapters of On Her Majesty's
Secret Service, or throughout the short story “007 in New York,” which
precisely follows Bond’s inner-monolog concerning consumption of food,
objects, and a woman, Solange. Although lan Fleming did not present Bond’s
sexuality as simplistically as the films do, the sexually attractive, sometimes
dangerous female, and her direct effect upon James Bond has been a constant
paradigm in the novels since the very first installment, Casino Royale, which
shows Vesper and Bond’s sexual activity in a most explicit manner: “The
succeeding days were a shambles of falseness and hypocrisy, mingled with her
tears and moments of animal passion to which she abandoned herself with a
greed made indecent by the hollowness of their days” (195).
Similarly, Tracy’s invitation to Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is
quite unequivocal: “Do anything you like. And tell me what you like and what
you would like from me. Be rough with me. Treat me like the lowest whore in
creation. Forget everything else. No questions. Take me” (38).
It should be noted, yet again opposing Miller’s position, that Tracy is far
from being as crude in the film, in which the scene’s sexual tension is
represented in a more spectacular, yet less mature fashion, and relies mostly
upon exhibiting the impressive bust of Diana Riggs in an undersized bra. The
film’s dialog does not reflect the notion of prostitution put forth by the text of
the novel with the same intensity, nor does it translate Tracy’s desperation
reflected in the quote mentioned above. As for making love, the camera moves
away during the first kiss to a bouquet above the protagonists before a quick
change of scene.
In the novels, sexuality is an integral part of the James Bond universe and
concerns more aspects of the narration than just the relationship between Bond
and the girl. A recurrent figure in the texts concerns the business of sex, which is
downplayed in the films but emphasized throughout the novels. It can be of a
collective nature, as in Dr. No, where the situation of the girls “imported” once a
month in order to fill the needs of the working crews is described at length:
They [the Chinese Negroes] too would have their drinking and
dancing, and there would be a new monthly batch of girls
from ‘inside’. Some ‘marriages’ from the last lot would
continue for further months or weeks according to the taste of
the ‘husband’, but for the others there would be a fresh choice.
There would be some of the older girls who had had their
babies in the creche and were coming back for a fresh spell of
duty ‘outside’, and there would be a sprinkling of young ones