Female Bond? The debate intensfies
As happens periodically, a number of prominent actresses have recently said that they wouldn’t be averse to playing James Bond should the iconic role be genderflipped and proffered to them.
Gillian Anderson approvingly tweeted a fan-made poster of her as the famous British spy. And “Quantico” star Priyanka Chopra told Complex that she had no interest in playing a Bond Girl, a role that has become as famous but rather more disposable than the spy himself, because “I wanna be Bond.”
Anderson’s and Chopra’'s comments are probably as much about a desire for a Bond-like role as they are an expression of a desire to don a Le Smoking tuxedo, strap on a Walther PPK and introduce themselves as Jane Bond. But predictably, their remarks have prompted the usual round of complaints that women can’t play James Bond because of tradition, or, as Johnny Oleksinski put it in the New York Post, a Bond movie is “a frivolous action flick, not a gender studies course at Oberlin.”
But as much as I am all for the idea that women should have equal shots at playing characters who have traditionally been played by men for no particularly good reason, and as loath as I am to agree with someone who defaults to canards that lazy in his writing, I fear I have to side with Oleksinski on this one. Women should get great spy roles. But they shouldn’t play James Bond.
James Bond isn’t required to be a man because only a man can carry off a credible action sequence, or only a man can romance a series of beautiful women, or only a man can credibly represent the British Empire, or any such similar nonsense. Women can do all of those things in real life, and we certainly should be permitted to do them on screen.
Instead, James Bond should be played by a man because the character is a study of masculinity in a particular context. Having a woman play the premier spy in the British secret service, a character who uses her sexuality to gain information and advantage without being judged for it, and who goes to great lengths in defense of her country, would be fascinating. A performance like that would challenge assumptions for what men and women can do. But it wouldn’t explore the thing that James Bond movies are designed to explore: what’s considered desirable and admirable in a man at any given moment.