On a Mission for Change: How International Women’s Day Appropriated James Bond…
‘Every film is political’, wrote Jean-Luc Commoli and Paul Narboni, ‘inasmuch as it is determined by the ideology which produces it’[1]. By their analysis, so long as films are produced by economic systems, their images will be embedded with and serve to reinforce the dominant ideology of those systems—some films, however, display their ideology more blatantly than others. It would be hard to think of an intellectual property that wears its ideological underpinnings more obviously on its sleeve than the James Bond series, a literary and cinematic institution whose pleasures (or repulsiveness, for some viewers) lie primarily in staunchly traditional models of maleness, Britishness, and class.
The overtly political nature of the Bond series and its concurrent iconography has made said character and his associated tropes potent tools for articulating ideology in other media, with an especially complex and effective example being James Bond Supports International Women’s Day (Sam Taylor-Wood, UK, 2011)[2]. A co-production between various charities and Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, the film uses the Bond character and his associations satirically to deliver a message about gender equality. James Bond Supports International Women’s Day provides a particularly striking example of ideological argumentation through images, and through analysing its rhetorical methods we can learn much about deployment of images to ideological and persuasive ends.
Analysing the different ways in which films reflected and related to the ideologies which produced them, Commoli and Narboni described the category of films which seem ‘to belong firmly within the ideology…but which turn out to be so only in an ambiguous manner.’[3]. These films ‘start from a non-progressive stand-point’ but ‘work, in such a real way that there is…a dislocation between the starting point and the finished product’[4]. This film works within this model of internal subversion to deliver its message, operating inside the institutional apparatus of the infamously conservative James Bond film series—only to use it to articulate a feminist message. The opening image of a well-dressed Bond, portrayed by his current actor Daniel Craig, striding toward the camera against a dark background could have been taken from one of the series’ own opening title sequences, comfortably situating the viewer within the familiar context of the Bond series. However, the expectations this establishes are soon shattered by a voiceover by Judi Dench—implicitly in character as Bond’s superior, M—who asks “We’re equals, aren’t we, 007?”.
The film gives additional impact to this question of gender inequality through playing on Bond’s cultural connotations of unreconstructed masculinity to make the incursion of a feminist message into this milieu more potent for going against expectations. Dench’s voiceover goes on to list several gender-based inequalities—including the pay gap, unequal representation in politics and business, stigmatisation of sexual expression, the prevalence of sexual violence, and the lack of job security for new mothers—in solemn tones. Having jarred the audience with the surprising appearance of the matter of gender equality against the backdrop of a character associated with chauvinism—an uncanny ‘dislocation’ between form and content, to return to Commoli and Narboni’s terminology—the film takes advantage of the audience’s presumed intrigue to deliver its sobering facts and figures.
The film encourages an identification with Bond as protagonist, both through his position as the only on-screen figure and our presumed prior knowledge of the character, which is then exploited to convey the message by rendering him a completely passive figure. He stands still and silent as a powerful woman’s stern voiceover addresses him, thus putting the viewer in his position as the recipient of Dench’s lecture, turning the grim facts outlined into a direct address to the spectator. Throughout this section, Dench’s voiceover makes oblique reference to Bond’s prolific on-screen sex life in order to illustrate gender double standards (“you’re less likely to be judged for promiscuous sexual behaviour—which is just as well”, “there would be virtually no risk to your career should you choose to become a parent—or became one accidentally”), thus further playing on and subverting the franchise’s tropes in order to deliver its message by turning Bond’s sexual proclivities from part of a fantasy into exemplifications of real inequalities, again using a subversion of our expectations of the character to make its message more impactful as well as using familiar pop-cultural examples to tangibly illustrate the inequalities discussed—and point up how such hierarchies are reflected in entertainment.
Bond is then asked “For someone with such a fondness for women, I wonder if you’ve ever considered what it might be like to be one?”, which, as director Sam Taylor-Wood notes, uses the audience’s—particularly the male members—identification with Bond to ask them the same[5]. Further, by posing this question to Bond and ergo suggesting this icon is someone who has not considered what it is like to be a woman, the film questions (and encourages its audience to question), why mainstream culture rarely considers a female perspective. The film’s twisting of Bond’s typical gender dynamics then reaches its culmination, when Bond walks off-screen then returns in a dress, high heels, and a blonde wig.
Much like the Barbie Liberation Organisation’s infamous switching of the voice boxes in Barbie and GI Joe dolls, the film subverts an icon of gender normativity to challenge gender stereotyping in popular culture and the inequities it breeds[6]. Dench’s voiceover reads out further facts regarding the inequalities facing women, before posing the opening question again: “So, are we equals?”—now even more challenging considering the film’s content—before Bond exits, signalling the end of the film’s somewhat satirical device, the screen fades to black, and Dench offers some final, galvanising words: “Until the answer is yes, we must never stop asking”.
The film’s final image offers a website address for the charity WeAreEQUALS, which serves as a kind of call to action, the film urging the viewer to put into practice the awareness of gender inequality it has worked to instil in them through the aforementioned rhetorical strategies, by visiting the website and joining the campaign.
James Bond Supports International Women’s Day, then, provides a particularly fascinating case study of the ideological potential of images. The film delivers its message in favour of gender equality by cannily evoking the particularly gendered connotations of James Bond to subvert them, communicating its politics all the more effectively by presenting them in this unexpected context, and also prompting its audience to interrogate the gender dynamics of dominant culture—be that politics, education, or spy movies.
[1]Jean-Luc Commoli and Paul Narboni, “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism” in Screen, Vol. 12, Issue 1, March 1971, pp.28-36, p.30
[2]James Bond Supports International Women’s Day, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood (2011; We Are Equals, UK)
[3]Jean-Luc Commoli and Paul Narboni, p.32
[5]“James Bond video for International Women’s Day shows 007’s feminine side” by Esther Adley in The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/07/james-bond-video-womens-dayAccessed 16/10/2018
[6]“Case Study: Barbie Liberation Organisation” at beautifultrouble.org http://beautifultrouble.org/case/barbie-liberation-organization/Accessed 16/10/2018