How has James Bond survived the changing times, asks The Star

Daniel Craig has 007 fans excited again. But does it matter who plays the role? Why are there still Bond fans anyway?

Back in 1964, when the James Bond franchise was barely three movies in, agent 007 (Sean Connery) found himself strapped to a table and about to be split from crotch to scalp by a laser beam - reports The Star.

"Do you expect me to talk?" asked Bond coolly of his captor, the suave Germanic super-villain Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe).

"No, Mr. Bond," came the eloquent response. "I expect you to die."

He didn't, of course. Bond survived, killed Goldfinger and lived on — through 19 more movies, despite the murderous intentions of scores of evildoers; and through a period of history as turbulent as any the modern world had known. Since he first appeared on screen in 1962's Dr. No, James Bond has survived the Cold War, Vietnam, Watergate, the collapse of communism, feminism, Thatcherism, Reaganism and the War on Terror.

And that's just the real world stuff. Just as remarkably, Bond has survived countless imitators, spin-offs, rip-offs and spoofs (see sidebar on page C5). Somehow, he has remained both culturally and commercially viable while countless other pop whimsies have sputtered and disappeared.

Most remarkably, he has even proved unshackled by any earthly incarnation. With the debut of Daniel Craig in the 007 role in the much-anticipated Casino Royale this week, the official Bond will have been played by no less than six actors: Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and now Craig. Now that's survival: the idea of Bond even transcends flesh. Nowadays, no one expects him to die. Ever.

The question is, how does he do it? Unlike Tarzan, Mike Hammer, Captain Marvel or the Lone Ranger — all of whom have eventually conceded defeat to history — Bond stubbornly lives on. Why, despite all the compelling evidence and precedents to the contrary, does this pulp-fiction relic of the mid-20th century still compel our fascination?

If any figure would seem to belong to the last century, it would be James Bond, the licensed-to-kill MI6 agent who made his public bow in the novel Casino Royale in 1952. The character was created by Ian Fleming (1908-64), the academically underachieving son of a British Empire aristocrat who was killed serving in the Great War (his obituary was written by Winston Churchill).

A super-secret, humourlessly unemotional spy with a snobbish yen for brand-named food, cigarettes, booze and women, Bond was forged out of experiences that seem as remote from the present as to be the stuff of myth: Fleming's experiences as a Naval Intelligence Officer (including training at Camp X in Whitby, Ont.) during World War II; the communist threat of the 1950s; the arms and space races; the last vestiges of Great Britain's imperial ambitions.

Among the more ardent fans of Fleming's tales of high espionage was America's president John F. Kennedy, and it's not difficult to see the adventures of the virile spy (who blocks missiles and beds women with equal assurance) as a kind of idealized version of Kennedy-era diplomacy.

However the literary Bond, already 10 years old by the time the Jamaica-based Dr. No film was released, should not be confused with the movie Bond. (For one thing, Fleming's dour hero never utters a quip.) While the books were popular, it was the screen Bond who soared into the pop-cultural stratosphere. Initially played by the balding, coal-eyed Sean Connery (who got the role after Moore — later to be Bond No. 3 — turned it down), the first movie appeared in the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis — on a Caribbean island, yet.

Dr. No was shot largely on studio sets on a relatively small ($1 million U.S.) budget and was sufficiently successful to warrant a sequel. And this is how the Bond's run as an unstoppable pop phenomenon began. As each new film grew slightly larger in scale and preposterous in plot, as Bond's bedding of women and bludgeoning of international adversaries grew increasingly profligate, the spy transcended his human dimensions to become a cartoon figure, larger than life and branded as securely as the lifestyle products — Moorland cigarettes, Rolex watches and Smirnoff vodka — Fleming was wont to describe in such detail.

Bond outlived his fan in the White House. But it wasn't 007's steely devotion to the anti-communism that ensured his survival through the 1960s. It was his pop art dimensions.

With that indelible high-twang musical theme (composed by Monty Norman but sharpened by John Barry), thrilling pre-credit sequences and indelible mass-market graphic iconography, Bond meshed perfectly with the hip consumer culture of the 1960s. His Englishness represented another form of British pop invasion as the fame of the Beatles grew; his gadgets fetishized new technology; and his womanizing expressed the so-called "permissiveness" of a new era. (Never mind that he was a sexist boor, or that Playboy couldn't get enough of him.) Even his lone-wolf nature — though it was employed in government service and was more than a bit psychopathic — fit with the rebel-worshipping times. He was, not to put to fine a point on it, cool.

But Bond was also empty: a vessel into which all manner of fantasy projections could pour, a one-size-fits-all shell of masculine wish fulfillment. We know almost nothing of 007's politics, background, friendships or quirks. Bond has very little by way of signature personality traits — compared to other literary pulp heroes such as Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Len Deighton's Harry Palmer or even Spider-Man, he is a cipher. When George Lazenby, who played 007 only once in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, broke into sobs after his bride (Diana Rigg) was murdered by the arch-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), director Peter Hunt called "Cut!" and explained: "George. James Bond does not cry."

But of course he doesn't. How could he?

With such impertinent ideas informing his reading of 007, it may be for the best that the Australian ex-model hung up Walther PPK shoulder holster after only one movie. (Lazenby allegedly left because he believed Bond could not survive the countercultural insurgencies of the late 1960s. Like Goldfinger, Lazenby spoke too soon.) For the most part, and with really only minor variations on the theme, the actors signed to play the superagent have stuck with the program. Thus, while certain people profess fervent attachments to certain Bonds, that would have to do more with generational affinities or matters of personal taste than nuances in dramatic interpretation.

You can say, as very many have and still do, that Connery was and will always be the ideal Bond, but that's really only because he got there first. Certainly Roger Moore is a glibber and more self-consciously cartoonish 007, while Timothy Dalton marked a return to a certain glowering Connerian machismo. Then Pierce Brosnan, easily the prettiest, most commercially successful and best-haired of Bonds, yanked the franchise once again cartoonward, with Craig's appearance reportedly representing yet another attempt to bring Bond back down to earth. Or at least as close as any of us want him to be.

If Bond were really earthly, the movies would have situated him in real-world situations. Imagine how Commander Bond might have fared in Algeria, Cuba, Vietnam, Beirut, Chile, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. Imagine if Tony Blair, besieged by criticism of his pro-Iraq War policies, had dispatched his top agent on the trail of bin Laden.

But as tempting as such imaginings might be, they also miss the point of James Bond: he is not and cannot be of the world, for the world is not enough. To survive, he must inhabit the realm of pure pulp. Real history — messy, complicated, unrelieved by tidy endings and morally contentious — is a bog that threatens to suck him under.

That is why ultimately Bond is Bond and the casting changes are mere cosmetic shifts — at most matters of star persona and mechanisms for sure-fire attention-getting publicity campaigns. If anything, Bond tries on the actors who play him the same way he samples Morland cigarettes (or used to), Rolexes and double-cuffed, wrist-buttoned shirts.

Indeed, if there's one thing both the literary and cinematic Bond share, it's the fact that they are defined less by their character than their accessories. For Fleming, Bond existed in relationship to his gastronomic tastes, snobbish brand affiliations and habits of elite behaviour. Likewise, in the movies, Bond is less Bond for who he is than what he is associated with: certain cars and clothes, exotic settings, predatory heterosexuality and virtuoso deployment of deadly force.

This, combined with the fact the advances in movie technology will always serve his franchise well, helps us to understand why Bond is with us still. It also lets us understand why — apart from certain requirements to be handsome and not American — it doesn't really matter who plays him.

Therein lies the reason for his longevity. He is a brilliantly adaptable brand; a product that exists independently of whatever flesh may fleetingly fill those precision-tailored Savile Row suits.

Expect him to die? Not a chance. For that he'd have to be human. And what a letdown that would be.

Thanks to `Brokenclaw` for the alert.

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