Have the spy spoofs killed off the future of James Bond 007?

Moviegoers can thank Austin Powers for killing off the martini-quaffing sexoholic, writes Tanya Gold in the The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia).

There is trouble at MI6, minister: the martini-quaffing sexoholic is suffering an existential crisis and it can't be cured by an intelligent Rolex or a gondola that can drive on land.

Eon, which produces Bond, and MGM, which finances his capers, are bickering. It is rumoured MGM wants an action-movie franchise - Spiderman in a tux - that sprouts money. As Bond said to Dr No: "World domination; same old dream; our asylums are full of men who think they are Napoleon." Eon, however, is fighting for the Cold War relic, the "sexist, misogynist dinosaur" and gentleman spy who flowed from the pen of Ian Fleming.

Why is Bond in crisis? He is a corpse; the hero of a dead time and a dead place called postwar Clubland. Fleming was an Eton-educated journalist who worked in British naval intelligence during World War II, where his professional apogee was evacuating King Zog of Albania from Nazi-occupied Europe. Bond was his fantasy alter ego, a libidinous killer who thought women were "for recreation". Bond slapped bottoms and peered at his watch during sex; he killed women he had slept with and, worse, he told one dewy-eyed poppet: "I never miss."

This was acceptable in 1952, when Bond was born on the pages of Casino Royale; but feminism castrated Fleming's hero. Today, any responsible GP would refer him to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. We know, though Fleming didn't, that Bond won't be polished off by Soviet crocodiles, but by AIDS. He had a weird predilection for girls with silly names. He had an Electra, a Honey, a Christmas, a Pussy and an Octopussy. He probably had a Decapussy, or did I dream it?

Fleming created two villainous organisations to wound his baby Bond. The first was Spectre (Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), a gaggle of freelance megalomaniacs who wanted to take over the world for fun. Today they would be politicians. Spectre grins on the news every day. You voted for it.
Fleming's other nemesis, Smersh (aka Death to Spies), was a mutant strain of the KGB. Smersh is as frightening as eating toast. Bond always has a vodka martini and a chuckle with the Reds at the end, because, for Fleming, the Cold War was just a disagreement between Western gentlemen.

At the end of The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond escapes into a tented pod with a beautiful KGB agent. He boasts to M that he is "just keeping the British end up, sir". Recent Bonds have experimented with a psychotic heiress, a renegade British agent and a media baron. The authentic candidates for modern Bond villains are, of course, Islamist fundamentalists but it's hard to imagine even 007 peeling back a burka or keeping the British end up with an al-Qaeda operative.

Our tolerance for snobbery has withered. When we hear James musing to a baddie "Red wine with fish; that should have told me something" and explaining that "certain things just aren't done - like drinking Dom Perignon '53 above a temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit", we don't fawn and sputter onto satin sheets. Bond behaves like an ancient gay dress designer, clinging to his final (crystal) marble.

Everywhere, Fleming's fastasies are dust. We've seen the faces of intelligence operatives because they flog their books at literary festivals. We know from Spycatcher that the British secret service spends its time watching Irish grandmothers and destabilising Labour governments - and faking dossiers for Downing Street. The spying game has been demystified.

But Bond's final bullet didn't come from feminism, the government, or the poor entertainment possibilities of modern terrorism. In the end Sean, Roger, George, Timothy and Pierce were vanquished by just one man - Austin Powers. Bond's satirical twin, who danced and shagged and bit his way through three blockbuster Bond spoofs, finally achieved what Smersh could not. Austin's silly ruffled shirts, his encounters with Dr Evil and the Fembots and, most particularly, his plaintive cry, "Do I make you horny, baby?" did for the straight man. Some things just can't withstand satire, least of all a crumbling spy who puns badly. MGM will find a new aspirational hero for us, one who won't make us hurl into our popcorn: a gay Bond, a black Bond, a paraplegic Bond, an obese Bond, a Welsh bond. Any Bond but James Bond.

Thanks to `Kim` for the alert.

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