For His Eyes Only Part 9

All representations of Bond, from Fleming's onward, are characterized by a tension between the agent's heroic individuality and his obedience to the government from whence his license to kill derives. The royal authority behind the famous license is never more than a dim presence in either the novel or films. Rather, the fullest visible embodiment of that licensing authority is M. Thus, the Bond/M nexus is the site where the s.h.i.+fting relations.h.i.+p between official authority and its secret agent has been most precisely defined, and where that inevitable tension comes most clearly into view, from the hints of unruliness apparent in Dr. No (Terence Young 1962) to the open conflict of Licence to Kill (John Glen 1989), in which M revokes Bond's "00" status, only to have him turn rogue and pursue his revenge plot anyways.

Fleming's M can be every bit as grumpy as his screen equivalents, but his absolute authority is never questioned, though his subordinates may inwardly rail against it. M bears a heavy burden of responsibility, and he does it well. He is firmly rooted in a pre-war world of Empire with a clear social distinction and deference to (masculine) authority, but it never occurs to Fleming's Bond that these inst.i.tutions and values are un-hip or that his superior is a bit of a fuddy-duddy. 007's relations.h.i.+p with M is severely strained at times, but it is arguably the most important love relations.h.i.+p in Fleming's books. In Diamonds Are Forever (1956)1 Bond explains to Tiffany Case that he is "almost married already. To a man. Name begins with M" (246). His greatest moments of satisfaction in his work come not from the royal or public recognition he avoids, but from seeing approval in "the weatherbeaten face he knew so well and which held so much of his loyalty" (Moonraker 1955, 15). The final chapter of Moonraker includes the following moment shared by the two men: "M gave one of the rare smiles that lit up his face with quick brightness and warmth. Bond smiled back. They understood the things that had to be left unsaid" (242). A similar moment occurs in the closing pages of The Man with the Golden Gun (1965), where Bond fails to conceal his pleasure at M's commendation (196). For Fleming's Bond, n.o.body does it better than M.

Fleming's novels and the early films are not far removed from each other: the first film, 1962's Dr. No, adapted Fleming's 1958 novel, and the next three films were based on books published in 1957 (From Russia, with Love), 1959 (Goldfinger), and 1961 (Thunderball). However, in bringing Fleming's 1950s spy to 1960s screens, producers felt the need to reconst.i.tute this relations.h.i.+p by placing some ironic distance between Bond and his boss. In the films, Bond's meetings with his superior have largely been comic scenes whose function is to distance 007, the "hero of modernisation" (Bennett and Woollacott, Bond 19), from the office-bound establishment man who sends him on his missions. The basic pattern was set in Dr. No: in the outer office, Bond is flirtatious with Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary, who is complicit in the game. Their playful moment is interrupted by a buzzer and signal light above the leather-covered door, an abrupt summons into M's (Bernard Lee) inner sanctum. From the start, M's tone is marked by a rudeness apparently licensed by his authority. Bond stands before his superior's desk until he is told to sit. M replies to Bond's polite "Good evening, sir," with a brusque "It happens to be 3:00 a.m.," never looking up from some important bit of paper on which he is scribbling. In the s.p.a.ce of minutes, M outlines the situation and informs Bond that he is booked on the next plane to Kingston at 7:00 a.m. Throughout the encounter, M's tone is authoritarian: he speaks in imperatives-"Take off your jacket. Give me your gun"-and feels no need to introduce a third man who enters carrying a new gun, a Walther PPK, which Bond does not want, but which M requires him to take in place of his preferred Beretta. When he is dismissed by M, Bond quietly retrieves his old gun, only to have his attempt thwarted by M-who, again, does not bother to look up as he calmly rea.s.serts his authority. Back in Moneypenny's office, Bond opens his mouth to continue their flirtation, only to be silenced by the apparently omniscient M, who calls through on the intercom instructing her to "forget the usual repartee." In a final rebellious gesture before he departs, Bond hands the unwanted Walther to Moneypenny and bids her "ciao."

Dr. No introduces a comic quality to the Bond/M encounter that becomes more prevalent over time. Connery's Bond is careful to appear respectful of M's authority, but he is inwardly playfully rebellious against it. The generational difference between the two men is emphasized, and viewers are invited to view that difference through the ironic perspective of the younger man, Bond, along with his co-conspirator, Moneypenny. By Live and Let Die (Guy Hamilton 1973), this comedy has come fully into view. Here, the initial meeting between Bond (Roger Moore) and M (Bernard Lee) unfolds as bedroom farce, with M arriving unannounced at Bond's apartment in the early morning, prompting Moneypenny to collude with 007 to spare M a vision of Bond's naked female companion-which might, presumably, finish the old fellow off. The scene flirts with the broad humor of Carry On Spying (Gerald Thomas 1964) or The Benny Hill Show (1955-89), and the joke unfolds at the expense of M and his implicitly delicate, Victorian sensibilities.

The defiance in these encounters between the government agent and his spymaster amplifies the insistent, heroic individuality of the literary 007, a quality that reveals something of the anachronistic nature of Fleming's portrait of a Cold War spy. As many have observed, Bond is something of a throwback to the early twentieth century world of the imperial thriller, a figure reminiscent of John Buchan's Richard Hannay or Sapper's Bulldog Drummond. Michael Denning and others have noted that the imperial thriller had its roots in the imperial adventure stories of the later nineteenth century, and it carried on the heroic tradition of those ripping yarns, featuring a lone man or an intrepid band of male adventurers whose secret doings change the course of history. In his study of the British spy thriller, Denning locates this recurring narrative pattern in a broad historical context. Borrowing from Georg Lukcs' account of the modernist novel, Denning suggests that the spy novel offers a magical solution to our sense as individuals that we are enveloped by historical forces too great to control or even comprehend. The spy becomes "the link between the actions of an individual [...] and the world historical fate of nations and empires [...] The secret agent returns human agency to a world which seems less and less the product of human action" (Cover 14).2 At the same time, "an incomprehensible political situation" is re-imagined in terms of "the ethical categories of masculine romance, the battle of hero and villain becoming one between Good and Evil, the forces of light and the forces of darkness" (14). The Bond mythos is rooted in the tradition of masculine romance. From time to time, Fleming explicitly equates his hero with England's dragon-slaying knight, St. George and the irony that is usually present at those moments does not quite undo the comparison. Bond battles monsters (Blofeld, Dr. No, Goldfinger) at nearly impossible odds, and he always wins.

However, Denning's yoking of the secret agent to the notion of "agency" also brings to light the potentially self-contradictory meaning of the word "agent." An agent may be an efficient cause, a prime mover, a significant and autonomous force in the world; this is clearly what Richard Hannay and his companions are, as is Bond in the guise of St. George. However, an agent may also be someone who acts on another's behalf ("agent" n.p.)-as a deputy, emissary or instrument of an absent figure who is the true bearer of power and authority, such as a real-estate agent, for instance. In short, the word "agent" may connote both autonomy as well as its effective opposite, instrumentality. For all his masculine heroics, even 007 cannot be entirely isolated from this threat of instrumentality-he is, after all, not only a secret agent, but a secret servant.

During a tense face-to-face encounter in Casino Royale (Martin Campbell 2006), M (Judi Dench) refers disparagingly to 007 (Daniel Craig) as "a blunt instrument," attempting to bring the unruly 007 to heel by emphasizing her authority over him. This phrase belongs to Fleming and points toward the author's own divided conception of his famous spy. Andrew Lycett suggests that Fleming had "not worked out whether Bond was a 'blunt instrument', as he had often claimed, or a mythical hero" (402). Fleming also described his intention to create "an ordinary character to whom extraordinary things happen," rather than "a paragon or a freak. I wanted him to be an entirely anonymous instrument and let the action of the book carry him along" (qtd. in Fishman 13). It is not surprising, then, that metaphors suggesting the instrumentality of her Majesty's secret servant recur in Fleming's novels. In the climactic scene of You Only Live Twice (1964), Bond's arch-enemy Blofeld taunts him with the accusation that he is "a common thug, a blunt instrument wielded by dolts in high places" (246). Related pa.s.sages from other novels indicate that Blofeld's insult is not entirely unfounded. In The Man with the Golden Gun (1965), M thinks, "James Bond, if aimed straight at a known target [...] was a supremely effective firing piece" (26). Earlier, in From Russia, with Love, Fleming's narrator describes M's telephone summons as "the signal that had fired him, like a loaded projectile, across the world to some distant target of M's choosing" (134). The phallic simile is particularly apt in this case, since Bond is about to be dispatched to Istanbul "to pimp for England" (148)-this is his own sardonic description of his a.s.signment, which involves seducing and escorting a Russian agent who has supposedly fallen in love with him and is willing to turn over a coveted Soviet cypher machine if Bond accompanies her. It is clearly M who is in possession of the phallus here-he is the big gun who fires the projectile Bond across the world. As if to underscore the point, as Bond departs, M remarks, "It's up to you to see that you do come up to her expectations" (143). Bond is a hero of romance, certainly, but his individual agency is always under pressure from the state authority that directs and licenses his actions, an authority represented throughout the series by M.

This phallic contest, which structures both the novels and the films, becomes complicated with the arrival of a woman, Dame Judi Dench, in the role of M beginning with 1995's GoldenEye. Dench enters the revived franchise-on hiatus since 1989 and also featuring a new actor, Pierce Brosnan, in the lead role-unable to fit into the established masculine dynamic in any of its forms (father/son, headmaster/schoolboy) and threatening to loosen state authority from its familiar, masculine moorings. Initially hostile to the s.e.xist ethos that has always been a defining feature of the series, Dench's M is a new figure of modernization and feminist critique whose presence reveals an attempt to accomplish a very difficult end: to balance continuity with change and secure a place for credible female authority within the insistently masculine mythos of Bond.

At the time of GoldenEye's release, much was made of the casting of a woman, and a highly regarded actor, in the role of Bond's superior, and the filmmakers followed through with a deeply ambivalent attempt to address some well-founded feminist concerns, most notably by having Dench's M blast Bond as a "s.e.xist, misogynist dinosaur" in their first private meeting. GoldenEye's explicit condemnation of Bond's s.e.xism is one of several features intended to bring the franchise into a more comfortable alignment with the contemporary world. The film self-consciously looks backward to the series' history, while also stressing its own novelty and currency. It begins in familiar territory with an expected cold opening, but the scene's spectacular quality signals the filmmakers' acknowledgment that the action-film game has intensified in the six years since Licence to Kill was released: Bond bungee-jumps his way into a Soviet chemical weapons facility, causes some impressive mayhem, and makes an impossible mid-air leap from a motorcycle to an airplane en route back to England.

A cl.u.s.ter of early scenes suggests a new interest in turning a critical eye on the series' uneasy relations.h.i.+p with feminism, but the resulting message is mixed at best. In the sequence immediately following the credits, Bond, behind the wheel of an Aston Martin DB5, tells a woman sent to evaluate him that he has "no problem with female authority," but his words are heavily ironic, and there is little indication that her authority poses any challenge to his own. Her evaluation of him gives way to his seduction of her: "James, you're incorrigible. What am I going to do with you?" Variations on this question have been posed repeatedly in the series, and the answer is well known. Arguably more interesting, in terms of this ambivalent attempt at feminist critique, is a conversation between Bond and Moneypenny, where their antic.i.p.ated flirtation takes an unaccustomed turn-into a joking suggestion by Moneypenny that Bond's conduct "could qualify as s.e.xual hara.s.sment." The remark is unmistakably ironic: the penalty, she adds, is that "someday you have to make good on your innuendoes." Still, the phrase is a remarkable one to hear in a Bond film, an indication, Tara Brabazon suggests, that "the power imbalance between them is narrowing" (494). Perhaps less cause for optimism is afforded, however, by the "playful" workplace hara.s.sment perpetrated by the considerably less suave Boris Grishenko on Natalya Simonova. The two are computer programmers at an isolated Russian s.p.a.ce weapons control center whose relations.h.i.+p is characterized by adolescent, s.e.xist pranks and comments on his part, and a mixture of patient indulgence and mild irritation on hers.

The introduction of Dench's M follows these scenes, which serve to establish a context of feminist critique, however partial-but the explicit critique voiced by M herself is also muddled in that it cannot be extricated from the film's ambivalent representation of other striking manifestations of change that invite a mixed-or openly negative-response. Of all the film's innovations, surely the casting of a woman as Bond's superior is the most dramatic, and its strongest claim to having embraced, if only tentatively, a more progressive stance with respect to women. When Russian gangster Valentin Zukovsky taunts Bond, he suggests that, in the modern world, 007 is an anachronism and the British Secret Service is poised somewhere between irrelevance and absurdity-adding, to his minions' amus.e.m.e.nt, "I hear the new M is a lady." Turning a spotlight on her gender, Zukovsky implies that the eccentricity of a "lady" M is symptomatic of a more general malaise at MI6, and his view is shared to a significant degree by Bond himself. Significantly, though, M's newness resides not only in her being a woman, but in her being a representative of the increasing bureaucratization of the secret service, in which clueless desk-jockeys now wield authority over knowledgeable and competent field agents such as 007. Paul Stock contends that the introduction of Dench is arguably less remarkable for the fact of her being a woman than for the character's make-over into "the evil queen of numbers," a bean-counting bureaucrat no longer bound in any obvious way to the pre-war world of the Empire. Gone is the old imperial flavor of "Universal Exports"; in its place is the new, hyper-modern SIS headquarters at Vauxhall Cross. Where M's office had always been a miniature naval museum-"a cluttered antique shop, and heart of Empire" (226), in Stock's words-it is now anonymously modern. "The Admiral," he concludes, "[has] been replaced by an accountant" (226).

Owing to M's close a.s.sociation with a new order of accountancy, statistics, and inexpert "experts," the obvious hostility that greets her in her introductory scenes cannot be attributed exclusively, or even primarily, to her being a woman in a position of authority in the traditionally male-dominated world of espionage and counter-terrorism. What might otherwise be read as mere antifeminist resentment is instead mingled with a resistance to a dangerous, creeping bureaucratization. The first encounter between Brosnan's Bond and Dench's M bears some similarity to that of Connery's and Lee's in Dr. No in its pairing of an annoyed, older authority figure with a subordinate who is not entirely so. However, the differences, beginning with M's gender, are noteworthy: the encounter takes place not in M's private office but in an MI6 situation room whose other occupants, save one woman glimpsed briefly in the back of one shot, are male, and M must face the barely submerged disapproval of not one man but a like-minded pair, Bond and Bill Tanner, while other men in the room listen with clear interest. Also, M, though officially at the helm, is new on the job, not yet well established, and a.s.sociated with a suspect new order at MI6 of which neither of these seasoned agents approves. The narrative form undermines her as well: her entrance into the film is cued by Tanner's disparaging reference not only to "the evil Queen of numbers," but also to her having misjudged in not allowing Bond to play a "hunch" that turned out to be correct. She enters the room as Tanner speaks, out of clear view, and is revealed to Tanner and the film's viewers at the same moment, when Bond's subtle throat-clearing provides a late warning as to her presence-so the audience is invited to share with Bond some pleasure in the embarra.s.sing moment. The one person left out of the conspiratorial circle is the stone-faced M. Tanner, slightly disheveled, his collar open and tie askew, looks like a discomfited schoolboy, and the dialogue casts him as such and her as the humorless teacher who has overheard what the children say when she steps out of the cla.s.sroom: "You were saying?" is Dench's inauspicious first line of dialogue as M. Tanner sputters an incoherent reply, to which M responds, "Good, because if I want sarcasm, Mister Tanner, I'll talk to my children, thank you very much." This is authority, but of the sort that demands obedience in the absence of respect.

The antipathy that marks Bond's exchanges with M is barely suppressed in this first scene and erupts during their private conversation shortly thereafter. M voices both Bond's objection to her-that she is "an accountant, a bean-counter, more interested in my numbers than your instincts"-and hers to him: that he is, among other things, a "s.e.xist, misogynist dinosaur." Her accusation a.s.serts a hitherto unspoken feminist interpretation of the hostile atmosphere surrounding her at MI6, s.h.i.+fting attention from her offending a.s.sociation with "numbers" to the specifically gendered nature of the epithet "evil queen." While there is much evidence to support her interpretation, though, it is not one that the film itself is keen to sustain. After all, he is James Bond; his hunches are proved correct and her statistical a.n.a.lyses are not. A simple camera movement in their first scene together subtly but clearly indicates the film's affirmation of Bond as the necessary masculine hero in a troubled world, regardless of developments in either feminism or statistical a.n.a.lysis: as GoldenEye's electro-magnetic pulse is released and the surveillance screen goes blank, a shallow-focus close-up of M's concerned face gives way, via a pan right and an upward tilt that gradually moves her down and out of the frame, to a close-up of Bond, front and center. The diagonal movement is necessitated by Brosnan's greater stature, but it also conveys Bond's greater importance in the world of the film. Having registered her complaint, M bows out after these two scenes. The battle and the victory will be his, and the reward-in the form of another Bond girl, Natalya Simonova-will confirm once again that the "boyish charm" disdained by M is better appreciated by younger women.

Dench's role in GoldenEye as the new M-the "lady" M-is a thankless one that carries the burden of innovation in a series with over three decades' worth of beloved tradition. Brosnan was, of course, every bit as new to the series as Dench at the time of the film's release, but he wears the tuxedoes, wields the weapons, and espouses the traditional values of masculine heroism with an ease that she cannot match in her performance of her role. The M template is less accommodating to her than the Bond one is to him. Where Brosnan can prompt memories of his precursors, from Connery through Dalton, the unsmiling M recalls less favorable figures from the past: the aberrant female villains Rosa Klebb and Irma Bunt. Lisa Funnell's description of those characters as "short, stocky, middle-aged white women who are conservatively dressed and appear androgynous in their films," with their hair "cut short to emphasize age over aesthetics" ("Negotiating" 203) might well be applied to Dench's M in her debut.

Fortunately, none of Dench's six subsequent appearances in the series cast her quite so firmly in the trying role of the standard-bearer for innovation. The Bond/M tension remains, as it must, but her second film, Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode 1997), aligned her more closely with 007 in opposition to the clueless b.u.t.ton-pushers, represented in this film by Admiral Roebuck, and that pattern has generally repeated since. When the series was effectively restarted in 2006 with Casino Royale, Dench's M became the primary link between the old continuity and the new, and our first sight of her in that film is of a furious woman storming through the tall doorway of an elegant "Committee Room" in Whitehall where some unnamed committee ("a bunch of self-righteous, a.r.s.e-covering prigs," as M describes them) has apparently hauled her onto the carpet because one of her agents, Bond (Daniel Craig), has just killed a man and set off an explosion in a foreign emba.s.sy. Dench's final film in the series, Skyfall (Sam Mendes 2012) is nearly as much hers as it is Craig's, and it presents her as a venerable figure of authority-not only respected, but loved, especially by Bond, now explicitly cast in the role of surrogate son. This maternal role-embodying a wholly feminine form of authority-is paired with those of unlikely action hero, as she finds herself in the midst of one fire fight after another, and also spokesperson for the nation, as she delivers an eloquent defense of the shadowy work of the SIS in a post-imperial England. An odd little table ornament, a Royal Doulton bulldog draped in the Union flag, is the emblem of Churchillian resolve she bequeaths to Bond after her death, and which he recognizes as her directive to keep calm and carry on.

If the promises of this most recent film are kept, he will carry on in a world that has restored many of the familiar landmarks jettisoned from the past few entries in the series, including Q and Moneypenny, who begins the film at Bond's side as a field agent and ends it situated behind a secretarial desk outside the office of the new M, Gareth Mallory. The adjoining door, with its leather padding, is immediately recognizable as a replica of the one Sean Connery and subsequent Bonds walked through en route to the old-fas.h.i.+oned, masculine sanctum of M prior to the innovations of GoldenEye- and that office has also been carefully restored, down to the wall sconces, fireplace, floor globe, and a naval painting that recalls Trafalgar and Britain's days as a great world power. Outside the story world, Bond's accentuated use of the t.i.tle "M" in the film's final moment is a revelation; within that world, it signals his warm acceptance of his new superior, a former SAS man still sporting an arm sling after being hit by a bullet while trying to protect his predecessor. The film's penultimate shot depicts the two men standing, facing each other across M's old-fas.h.i.+oned wooden desk with the old naval painting clearly visible in the background. After some brief, friendly banter that brings a rare smile to Bond's face, M turns to business, dropping a folder marked "top secret" on the desk as he says, "So, 007, lots to be done. Are you ready to go back to work?" Bond replies, his face now conveying a respectful seriousness, "With pleasure...M. With pleasure," as the familiar 007 theme introduces the end credits. The moment could not be more different from the initial encounters between Brosnan's Bond and Dench's M in GoldenEye. Rather, the tone is reminiscent of a Fleming portrait of the spy with his spymaster: "M gave one of the rare smiles that lit up his face with quick brightness and warmth. Bond smiled back. They understood the things that had to be left unsaid" (Moonraker 242). Among the things left unsaid in the final scene of Skyfall is that it marks the end of an extended experiment testing the possibility of a woman exercising authority over a man whose exploits embody a valued fantasy of masculine heroism and autonomy. The gradual revelations of these final scenes, capped by Bond's identifying his new, male superior as "M" in the film's final line, have the effect of bringing us back to a treasured, familiar, and unequivocally masculine place.

NOTES.

1 References are from the novels published by Penguin.

2 Emphasis in original.

CHAPTER 26.

"M" (O)THERING Female Representation of Age and Power in James Bond Lori Parks With the release of Casino Royale (Martin Campbell 2006), the Bond franchise has been effectively rebooted and the audience has been introduced to a darker and grittier Bond (Daniel Craig) who has just earned his 00 status. Bond's first mission is to investigate Le Chiffre, a banker for terrorists, and this leads to their confrontation in a high stakes poker game in Montenegro. During this time, Bond engages in a love affair with Vesper Lynd who has been sent to oversee the money bankrolling Bond's mission. The death of Lynd leads Bond into his next a.s.signment in Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster 2008) where, fueled by anger at the betrayal of Lynd, he attempts to track down the mastermind behind Mr. White's sinister organization.

Unlike Lynd, Judi Dench's M is a constant figure in Bond's life and her role offers an interesting contrast to the Bond Girl character. As a strong-willed matriarch, she provides a complex representation of female authority in a franchise that is known for emphasizing the s.e.xuality of its female characters. Although she is older and occupies a position of power, her authority is challenged in Skyfall (Sam Mendes 2012) by Gareth Mallory, the new Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. It is later revealed that the villain, Silva, has a personal vendetta against M and she is presented as a surrogate mother over whom Bond and Silva fight. M transitions from a secondary/supportive character in the earlier films into an important site of psychological and social conflict by Skyfall.

This chapter seeks to examine the roles and representations of women within the context of Bond's origin story in the reboot trilogy and explore how the female body is defined in the new framework of the Bond franchise. I am most interested in exploring the intersection of age and gender. I will discuss how the representation of M, an aging woman, contrasts with the typical representation of the Bond Girl and how the introduction of Eve Moneypenny as an inexperienced agent who trades fieldwork for a desk job influences the perception of Dench's M.

THE WOMEN OF BOND.

The Bond film universe taps into a prevalent theme within Western culture: the ongoing relations.h.i.+p between pleasure and violence through the objectification of the female body. The films have a 50-year history of spectacular staging that draws on a specific formula of espionage, technology and gadgetry, fast cars, memorable villains, and the protagonist Bond who is celebrated for his aggressive heteros.e.xual masculinity and power. Bond women are instrumental to the momentum of the storyline. There are always multiple attractive female characters that tempt, support, and hinder Bond over the course of his missions. Steven Woodward argues that Bond's relations.h.i.+ps are central to the creation of meaning, because "both Bond and his adversary have been carefully maintained as symbols rather than individuals, symbols that take their meaning from their relations.h.i.+p with each other rather than from any iconic or indexical ground of truth" (174). Not only is Bond symbolic, but so too are the women who interact with him. They are always presented superficially with their position being a reflection of their physical attributes. Thus, women are often portrayed as disposable characters in the franchise.

In his discussion of s.e.x and s.e.xuality in the Bond films, Jeremy Black posits that Bond's copulation with women functions as a tipping point in the narrative. It not only helps to guarantee the success of his missions but also works to validate his heroism by confirming his phallic masculinity (Black 109). However, Lisa Funnell makes an important distinction between the Bond Girl and other female characters: The term Bond Girl refers to a particular female character type of the Bond film. She is a non-recurring character and lead female protagonist, central to the plot of the film and instrumental to the mission of James Bond. However, the defining feature of the Bond Girl is the strong, intimate, and intense relations.h.i.+p she builds with Bond. ("From English" 63) Although Bond (s.e.xually) interacts with a variety of women, both good and bad, only one can be considered the Bond Girl. The others can be subdivided into other categories such as the Bond Girl Villain, secondary women, Moneypenny, and M.

Attractive female characters are central to the formation of the Bond fantasy world where the Bond Girl is a pivotal figure in the narrative and the secondary women contribute to the overall mise-en-scene of the film. In an unforgettable scene from Dr. No (Terence Young 1962), the viewer is presented with an exotic island where Bond first glimpses Honey Ryder, the original Bond Girl played by Ursula Andress, rising out of the surf in a white bikini. Ryder asks Bond: "What are you doing here? Looking for sh.e.l.ls?" Bond replies with: "No, I'm just looking." Between the lingering camera on her body and the dialogue between Bond and Ryder, this scene epitomizes the role of the Bond Girl who functions as a mainstay of the series along with the attending issues of gender and power through "the gaze." This iconic scene is replayed again in Die Another Day (Lee Tamahori 2002), this time with Jinx emerging out of the water wearing a similarly styled orange bikini as a homage to Dr. No.

Laura Mulvey has notably explored the gaze and its significance in film studies. Mulvey draws on Freud's reference to the infantile, in particular the notion of scopophilia (the pleasure one experiences by looking at other people's bodies as erotic objects), and applies it to the pleasure of viewing a film. The darkness of the theater creates a voyeuristic viewing situation where one can look without being seen by the figures on the screen or the other viewers in the audience. Mulvey argues, "in their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness" ("Visual" 837). This notion draws upon the way that film can both naturalize and manipulate through the gaze. For Mulvey, there is a "triple gaze" from the camera, the spectator, and the gaze between the characters within the film. In addition, narrative and editing work to reinforce an active male perspective as owner of the gaze. From that iconic moment on the beach, there is an overt nod to the gaze as an active and powerful form of exchange between Bond and the women he interacts with in the films. This interaction further reflects Mulvey's notion of the gaze by the implied male perspective of the audience as they actively look along with Bond.

The casting of a female M is an interesting contrast to the Bond Girl and the stereotypical treatment of periphery females in the films. Dench was featured in GoldenEye (Martin Campbell 1995) and her character quickly makes a strong impression by a.s.serting that she regards Bond as little more than a "relic of the Cold War." As an older female in a powerful position, M is able to subvert the stereotypes a.s.sociated with the "aging female" who is often considered "sick, s.e.xless, uninvolved except for church work, and alone" (Payne and Whittington 488). Instead, M is presented as a competent professional woman who is the keeper of state secrets and holds the lives of many in her hands. She must make decisions that could potentially have major ramifications, not just for her agents, but for her country and its global position. The viewer does not question her ability to make the difficult decisions that are often at the expense of one of her agents. Through the characterization of Dench's M, the franchise offers an alternative representation of female ident.i.ty that is not subject to the "triple gaze."

REVISIONING FEMALE/FEMININE CHARACTERS.

In Casino Royale, M must contend with a new and more corporeal Bond, who exudes a chaotic, carnal, and barely controllable presence. Colleen M. Tremonte and Linda Racioppi argue that it is through the "hypervisibility of Bond's body-in motion, specularised, under threat [...that] helps reinforce the role of masculinity in the international and gender orders" (185). Craig's Bond has an edge that is still discernable when he is wearing his tuxedo. Instead of gadgetry he uses his fists and the sheer physicality of his body. And yet, he seems to defy many of the characteristics that have long defined the role. In one scene, his body is objectified as he rises out of the sea, using the iconography a.s.sociated with the Bond Girl. This body is symbolic of a masculine ideal and a prelude to more successful action for the benefit of Britain. Lisa Funnell makes an interesting argument for Bond as a hybrid of both Bond and Bond Girl. She a.s.serts that Craig's Bond [is] youthful, spectacular, and feminized relative to the gaze through the pa.s.sive positioning of his exposed muscular body in scenes where he is disengaged from physical activity. Moreover, through intertextual referencing of renowned Bond Girl iconography, exemplified through Bond's double emergence from the sea, Craig's Bond is positioned as a visual spectacle and aligned with the Bond Girl character type rather than with his Bond predecessors in the filmic franchise. ("I Know" 456) Character hybridity extends beyond Bond to Lynd, who is presented as a questionable ally. She does not easily fit within the past models of Bond Girls. She represents the British Treasury and as such has some control over Bond through the purse strings ("I'm the money"). Tremonte and Racioppi suggest that the women in Casino Royale, much like those who came before them in the franchise, "remain 'out of place' in relations.h.i.+p to the international security and gender orders and still need to be 'put in place' by Bond" (188).

Lynd is "out of place" because her allegiance is split between Bond and another man; as a result, she cannot entirely be considered a Bond Girl. She works as a double-agent for Quantum, a secret villainous organization, in order to secure the release of her lover, Yusef Kabira. As it turns out, Kabira is a member of Quantum who manipulates women with valuable intelligence connections. This renders Lynd more of a femme fatale than a devious villain or henchperson who willingly acts in service of the villain. As Elisabeth Bronfen astutely points out: To focus on the femme fatale, of course, also means introducing the question of gender difference into a discussion of tragic sensibility, in the sense that, while she comes to acknowledge her responsibility for her fate, the hero she involves in her transgressive plot is characterized by the exact opposite att.i.tude, namely, a desire to stave off knowledge of his own fallibility at all costs. (105) At the end of Casino Royale Bond resigns from the service to start a life with Lynd. During a phone call with M, he learns that the government money has not been returned and believes that Lynd has betrayed him. Bond tracks her down and engages in a dramatic gun fight with a group of armed men. During this encounter, Lynd becomes trapped in an elevator and ultimately makes the choice to not be saved by Bond; by drowning, Lynd takes personal responsibility for her betrayal of Bond and her country. As a femme fatale-Bond Girl hybrid, Lynd's suicide serves a key narrative purpose: it inspires Bond to recommit to his job as he channels his emotions towards attacking the next task at hand. Although Bond is clearly bitter towards Lynd, remarking that "the b.i.t.c.h is dead," M serves as a voice of reason when she explains to Bond that Lynd "must have known she was going to her death." It is M who recognizes Lynd's sacrifice within her betrayal.

Much like Bond and the Bond Girl who are revisioned in the Craig era, M is also reconceptualized as a character. This is most interesting given the fact that Dench continues on in the role. In the Craig era, M has her authority undercut numerous times over the course of three films. Bond breaks into her home in Casino Royale and hacks into her personal computer in his quest to pursue his mission at all costs, despite her directives. M is also depicted on a few occasions in a more intimate s.p.a.ce: she is presented in bed with a man who is presumably her husband, and another time is interrupted by the office as she readies for a bath. One could argue that these scenes work to humanize M, offering viewers the impression that she has a life beyond MI6; the Craig era, after all, presents the deepest and most earnest depictions of Bond. On the other hand, there has never been this level of personal revelation with her predecessors. The viewer's knowledge of this figure of authority is through the leather-padded door with Moneypenny overseeing external access to this inner sanctum. The bath scene has long been a visual trope for representing the female nude in art and became especially popular in the nineteenth century as a subject that reflected modern life through the ordinary or mundane. It is also voyeuristic as it presents the subject at their most vulnerable and private. Moreover, bedrooms in Bond films are typically s.p.a.ces where his seduction plays out. These intimate scenes focused on M are a reflection of the s.h.i.+fting power dynamics between age and gender, which culminate in Skyfall.

M as a figure of power is tenuous in the Craig era. This becomes explicit in Skyfall when her credibility and ability to command MI6 comes under scrutiny. The theme of aging and power is played out on the bodies of M and Bond. The significance of these personal scenes is revealed by the way they contrast with Mallory's backstory. Monneypenny defends Mallory to Bond by alluding to his past as something that makes him more than simply a bureaucrat. His past is not personal in the context of interior s.p.a.ces and bodily relations.h.i.+ps, but instead serves to reinforce his ability to be a credible leader. Moments like these also reference the direction that this reboot is moving towards: traditional gender roles. Much like Lynd, M is transformed into a tragic figure that has to die in order for Bond to reach his full potential as 007. This is a form of Othering that has an impact on establis.h.i.+ng male ident.i.ty and highlights the underlying fear of becoming Othered through age and loss of authority within the social structure. This is something that is highlighted in the "mothering" of M as her past (in the form of Silva) literally collides with the present (Bond) and she becomes the casualty-the body on which this is played out on. M is a complex figure that reflects the Bond Girl trope in that she and Bond share a close and emotional relations.h.i.+p; this is especially evident in Skyfall where she becomes the locus of the power struggle between Bond and Silva. M's fate highlights the instability of these various roles and their impact on her position as an older woman in power. Skyfall becomes a collision of gender, her professional position, and the choices she has made and must make, along with the secrets she keeps.

"TAKE THE b.l.o.o.d.y SHOT!"

The opening of Skyfall thrusts the viewer in the midst of a dynamic chase scene that ultimately has Bond on top of a moving train, fighting against an opponent as he attempts to retrieve an important hard drive loaded with a list of covert agents. This sequence is intercut with scenes of another agent, Moneypenny, who is also in pursuit. M is monitoring from a control room in Britain and making decisions from a limited perspective based on Moneypenny's reporting. The view switches between the dynamic s.p.a.ce of action and the inst.i.tutionalized s.p.a.ce that M occupies. M's command for Moneypenny to shoot even though it is not a clean shot leads to Bond's "death" and the subsequent failure to secure the hard drive. It also sets into motion overarching themes focused on age, power, and the maternal figure.

In modern society power is enacted through the body. Michel Foucault argues that the way we understand our bodies is through a series of disciplinary practices that socially categorize bodies and place them in hierarchal distinctions. For Foucault, the body occupies a central place in the historical configuration of power, knowledge, and society. His a.n.a.lysis highlights the location of the body within a political field of power relations, and, in particular inst.i.tutions, that seek to discipline the body and thus render it "docile" and ultimately productive and economically useful. What defines Foucault's work is the focus on the socially constructed nature of the body as it is lived, and its malleability because of the power/knowledge relations.h.i.+p (Discipline 136). In their a.s.sessment of the construction of female politicians in the European media, Iaki Garcia-Blanco and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen note: The representation of women in the highest political offices is not only a matter of political equality but also relevant to the general pursuit of a more egalitarian society. The low presence of women in positions of political power demonstrates the persistence of patriarchal power, perpetuating the secondary political role to which women have traditionally been relegated. Despite significant gains made in recent decades, gender still remains an issue when it comes to standing for office or being appointed to official positions. (422) Regardless of capability and positional gains within the societal hierarchy of power, the female is still connected to her gender in a way that the male is not. In Skyfall, M is confronted with a series of cyber invasions and the demolition of the MI6 headquarters that leads to a challenge of her authority by Mallory who is gunning for her position. Mallory admonishes: "Three months ago, you lost the computer drive containing the ident.i.ty of almost every NATO agent embedded in terrorist organizations across the globe. A list which, in the eyes of our allies, never existed. So if you'll forgive me, I think you know why you're here." Dench's M radiates an offended dignity as she refuses to explain herself or apologize except when she absolutely must. In one instance when it is suggested that she should get out of the game she angrily replies, "Oh, to h.e.l.l with dignity! I'll leave when the job's done!"

The dualist legacies of the past have been influential though limiting in the definition of the body. In her discussion of ident.i.ty in the western imagination, Margrit s.h.i.+ldrick writes, "To be a self is above all to be distinguished from the other, to be ordered and discrete, secure within the well-defined boundaries of the body rather than actually being the body" (50). The body is always socially formed and located. What it is to be a man or woman is a social definition, since even physiology is mediated by culture. One could argue that the aging body is subject to its own kind of disciplined activity quite separate from other aspects of adulthood. Thus, to age successfully can become a full-time job central to one's ident.i.ty, and for the female, who is already often viewed through her body, the female becomes the embodiment of aging. As Susan Sontag has argued, there is a "double standard of aging," where women suffer scorn and exclusion as they age, "a humiliating process of gradual s.e.xual disqualification" (102). Richard Leppert discusses the importance of the gaze: "The sense of sight is a fundamental means by which human beings attempt both to explain and to gain control of the reality in which they find themselves" (16). The power inherent in sight impacts how one is perceived as viable in powerful positions or weak and unproductive. M is typically presented in a neutral palette. There is even less variation in Skyfall when she is dressed in either black or grey. The most saturated color near her is in the form of the kitschy porcelain English Bulldog draped in a brightly painted Union Jack flag. This costuming washes her out, emphasizes her age, and makes her appear overly tried and burdened by the crisis at hand. It contributes to the impression that M's ability to manage and maintain secrets and secure Britain's safety has been compromised.

"MUM'S" THE WORD...

In Skyfall, Bond makes his way back into the fold of MI6 when he hears about the attacks on the news. He reveals himself to M by breaking into her home yet again. "Where the h.e.l.l have you been?" she barks out as a haggard looking Bond sarcastically replies "enjoying death." There is an undercurrent of tension between the two that seems to speak volumes. Bond is a returning ghost from the past and this will be referenced many times throughout the film. Bond, we are told, is past his prime-he cannot shoot straight, he's hooked on pills and booze, and he looks weak and haggard. During a word a.s.sociation test at MI6 the doctor says "M" and Bond quickly replies "b.i.t.c.h." Herein lies another major theme within the film: the mother/son relations.h.i.+p between M and Bond. This becomes more complicated as we learn that the reason for the attacks on MI6 is because of a past 00 agent who also has a problematic relations.h.i.+p with M and is acting out feelings of abandonment and vengeance.

When Bond finally meets Silva, it is at the expense of Severine. Bond's initial interaction with her at the club reveals her entanglement as a s.e.x slave who is now indebted to Silva of whom she is very afraid. He nevertheless makes a promise to a.s.sist her for her help in leading him to Silva. Bond's use of her body by slinking into her bathroom while she is taking a shower and seducing her (a nod to the s.e.xualized horror of the shower scene in Hitchc.o.c.k's 1960 film Psycho) does not really serve any narrative purpose as he is already on the boat making its way towards his adversary. She is a disposable female much like Solange in Casino Royale; they are simply a means to an end in Bond's missions. In both cases, Bond's reaction to their deaths indicates a detachment that is further emphasized by his lover Lynd, who suggests that Bond sees women as "disposable pleasures rather than meaningful pursuits," which would render him a "cold-hearted b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Silva takes great pleasure in taunting Bond, much like he has been doing with M and MI6. During their initial meeting, Silva strokes Bond's upper thigh as he tells a story about rats. He taunts Bond by stating, "She sent you after me, knowing you're not ready, knowing you would likely die. Mommy was very bad." In another statement he boasts that he was a better agent than Bond and when Bond responds "Are you sure this is about M?" Silva snaps back that "it is about her, and you and me. We are the last two rats." The dynamic that Silva sets up between himself and Bond is of compet.i.tive brothers vying for their mother's attention and affection. The actual and implied violence within the film serves as a signifier of masculinity-Bond's in particular-because Silva is presented to us as deranged, broken, effeminate, and ultimately second best (this is even referenced in his name Silva/Silver). Silva's masculinity is questionable and becomes a way for Bond's character to put to rest the rising doubts that he (like M) was simply an embodiment of a traditional model of international espionage; one that is premised on national borders and reflects white-Western ent.i.tlement through excessive consumption of alcohol and women. Underpinning the relations.h.i.+p between Bond and Silva is the contrast between whole vs. broken and hero vs. monster. For Rosi Braidotti, "the monster is the bodily incarnation of difference from the basic human norm; it is deviant, an a-nomaly; it is abnormal" (62). Violence serves as a signifier of masculinity and is also integral to the formation of social ident.i.ty. Violence and the ability to be violent has been one of the main ways that the male and masculinity is differentiated from the female and her femininity. As Rene Girard astutely puts it, "only violence can put an end to violence, and that is why violence is self-propagating. Everyone wants to strike the last blow, and reprisal can thus follow reprisal without any true conclusion ever being reached" (26).

Steven Woodward identifies the presence of a female M as "unsettling the Oedipal dynamics of the narratives," which for Bond means "trouble orienting himself" (184); this is played out between the "brothers" and through the inst.i.tution of MI6. The female defined and limited by her reproductive function is not a new concept. Society has historically viewed the female body in relation to patriarchal ideology. Where she was once valued for her reproductive ability she is now devalued as a product. This reflects the impact of consumerism and social constructions as applied to the body. Although M is past her reproductive prime she is reduced to a reference of Mother when she becomes the p.a.w.n between Bond and Silva.

Yet, it is through the damaged body of Silva, the aging body of M, and the road-weary body of Bond that psychological and social conflicts are played out. Bond fails to protect M, much like he fails to protect Lynd in Casino Royale. Lynd chooses not to be rescued by Bond, and his dramatic attempt to protect M at the decrepit ancestral home on barren land in Scotland is laughable at best. Silva seems to have a never ending supply of henchmen and guns to come after them, while their a.r.s.enal consists of homemade bombs and other diversionary tactics found around his mostly empty home. Are we to be convinced that this is the best course of action, given Bond's prowess and previous interactions with villains along with his remarkable skill for breaking into M's home? Silva has been one step ahead of M, Bond, and the whole agency from the beginning. He has infiltrated and attacked MI6 from within. His deformity and dexterity place him as the Other and as such he enjoys a certain level of freedom. Silva represents a destabilizing force that disrupts the status quo only for it to be firmly re-established again. Bond provides the climactic release of re-establis.h.i.+ng the status quo by taking the battle against Silva over M (who is experiencing a profoundly professional Othering of her power and position) to the desolate outer world of Scotland. Bond's battle is a literal enactment of Freud's oedipal complex as it has s.h.i.+fted between "brothers." M becomes a sacrifice that allows Bond to re-establish his masculine prowess within the established framework of MI6.

CONCLUSION.

The reboot of Bond began with a number of complex and multi-dimensional characters that do not easily fit into the previous templates of Bond, the Bond Girl, Moneypenny, and M. The body is a presence that can be symbolic in many ways, and for M it ultimately becomes a signal of limitation and vulnerability, and her demise is directly related to Bond and his power struggle with Silva. While M is not completely disempowered, she is perceived as different (Other) and thus a hindrance because of her so-called "advanced" age. Ultimately Skyfall is not a reboot but instead takes us full circle back to the Bond of the past. The audience is left with a new and mysterious location of MI6 where Mallory is the new (male) M, who is ensconced behind a leather padded and studded door, and Moneypenny has given up fieldwork to take over as his secretary and occupy a s.p.a.ce that is on the periphery of power while re-establis.h.i.+ng the precedent for flirtatious taunts with Bond. Bond nostalgia is not just a reference or an echo within the film, it is the standard from which Bond is reincarnated at the expense of the female M. M now stands for male.

CHAPTER 27.

MOTHERING THE BOND-M RELATION IN SKYFALL AND THE BOND GIRL INTERVENTION.

Christopher Holliday The casting of Judi Dench as M, the high-ranking government official and administrative Head of MI6, in the Bond franchise helped revise the character; M s.h.i.+fted away from the curt, cold, and crusty admiral of Ian Fleming's original novels, played by Bernard Lee and Robert Brown in the official Eon films, and was presented as an explicitly maternal figure. A successful stage actress, but with few cinema credits, Dench was the first female performer to be cast as Bond's inst.i.tutional authority, upturning the male-dominated tradition by grafting new familial dynamics onto the hitherto all-male Bond-M relation. Tony Garland observes that in Dench's debut in GoldenEye (Martin Campbell 1995), "M combines condemnation that extends beyond the criticism of a senior manager with an almost maternal concern: after telling Bond she has no compunction to send him to his death, she tells him to come back alive" (184-5). The matriarchal coding of M consolidated throughout the Pierce Brosnan era (1995-2002) has accelerated since the Irish actor's departure from the role. The reboot of the Bond franchise with Casino Royale (Martin Campbell 2006) has continued to spotlight the maternal vicissitudes of the Bond-M relations.h.i.+p. Since Daniel Craig inherited the role of Bond, 007 has emerged as a greater conduit through which the maternal qualities of M have been rendered visible. As a result, M lives up to "the connotations a.s.sociated with her initial M, [and] has officially become Bond's mother" (Savoye 55).

With Dench being the only cast member carried over from the Brosnan era, M has been envisaged through an increasingly maternal lens across this contemporary revisionist Bond period, perhaps prompted by the greater age gap between Dench and Craig (34 years) than the actress shared with Brosnan (19 years) during his tenure. The increased agency and mobility of M across the Craig era films has further contributed to her textual figuration as a surrogate mother to Bond. Paul Stock argues that in Bernard Lee's portrayal of the character, for example, M "seldom leaves" the confines of the office in his defense of the boundaries of the nation (217). Being relocated away from the secure, stable office s.p.a.ce diminishes ex-admiral M's authority and ability to successfully partic.i.p.ate in the preservation of the Empire. In comparison, Dench's M is rarely protected by the leather-padded, soundproofed door behind which lies the "administrative core of the British secret service" (Stock 215). In Casino Royale, and again in Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster 2008), it is Bond's unsanctioned access into M's private sphere and their verbal jousting away from the office s.p.a.ce that provides a glimpse into his female boss's domestic milieu. Increasingly marked by her home s.p.a.ce, Dench's M has been repeatedly a.s.sociated with the trappings of domesticity. Glimpsed in her nightgown and shown sleeping alongside her husband, it is Craig's second outing as 007, Quantum of Solace, that most forcefully awards spectators unprecedented admittance into M's "motherliness."

The more substantial engagement in the Craig era with M's home s.p.a.ce (not seen since On Her Majesty's Secret Service [Peter Hunt 1969]) counterpoints to the fleeting glimpses of Bond's own domestic context across the franchise. Yet the increasingly frequent visits to M's home by Craig's Bond also recall those moments whereby M has interfered into Bond's personal sphere, not least M's nocturnal house-call to 007's flat in Live and Let Die (Guy Hamilton 1973) that inadvertently catches Bond in a romantic tryst. But in both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, it is now Bond who actively collapses the distinction between domestic and administrative s.p.a.ces in ways that strengthen Bond-M's familial dynamic. Discussing Bond's infiltration of M's modern penthouse in Casino Royale, Katharine c.o.x notes that "Like a mother, she scolds him for his arrogance and immaturity, and chastises him for flaunting the boundaries of the relations.h.i.+p" (6). If M's intervention into Bond's personal s.p.a.ce cements his fatherly relations.h.i.+p to Bond, then it is the reverse intrusion of Bond into M's home in the more recent Craig era films that renders her connection to Bond as increasingly motherly.

The plotting of the Bond-M relations.h.i.+p from professional to familial has, however, gained particular momentum in Skyfall (Sam Mendes 2012), a film that relocates the orphaned 007 to the center of such mounting (M)otherly att.i.tudes. Not only does Bond once more intrude into M's domestic realm, but he also actively brings her to his childhood home, the eponymous Skyfall Lodge. The narrative of Skyfall leans heavily on Bond's origin story, with a p.r.o.nounced emphasis on 007's lack of biological parents as the film recalls the events leading up to Bond being orphaned. The stress placed upon Bond's ancestry allows the film to further develop the Bond-M relations.h.i.+p in son/mother terms, as M is strongly positioned as his adoptive mother. M becomes symbolically rooted within Bond's personal history; she is a.s.sociated both with his deceased mother, another "M"-Monique Delacroix-and father, whose ident.i.ty, like the Head of M16, is manifest through initials-A.B. Yet Bond is not the only character in Skyfall who lays claim to M as his mother, as she is subject to the threats, matricidal in nature and tone, of ex-MI6 agent Raoul Silva. Silva refers to M as "Mummy" and "Mother" throughout the film, and he competes with Bond like a jealous brother for the attentions and affections of their surrogate mother.

While M is increasingly presented as a maternal figure, her character is far more multifaceted and complex. This chapter aims to interrogate the Bond-M relations.h.i.+p by exploring how M also functions as a Bond Girl in the Craig era films. Central to the ideology of the series, the Bond Girl character type has been strikingly absent, or at least notably decentered, in the reboot trilogy, as Casino Royale focuses predominantly on the early career of Bond and the acquisition of his double-O status. But Skyfall's portrayal of M seems to evoke Umberto Eco's structuralist a.n.a.lysis of Bond women in Fleming's novels, where the narratives end as 007 "rests from his great efforts in the arms of the woman, though he is destined to lose her" (qtd. in Bondanella 63). This chapter argues that the narrative agency and formal presentation of M throughout Skyfall develops her affiliation with Bond in a manner traditionally reserved for 007's female conquests, in particular the secret agent's ill-fated monogamous relations.h.i.+ps with the Bond Girl and especially Tracy di Vicenzo (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) and Vesper Lynd (Casino Royale). Skyfall cues a terminal exchange of M's characteristics (dominant, knowledgeable, moderated, recurring) with several Bond Girl qualities (dominated by villain, rescued, possessed, transient). M's alignment with the Bond Girl archetype ultimately works to overwhelm her matriarchal coding, conflating and collapsing the Bond-M and Bond-Women relations.h.i.+ps that Eco argues structure the Bond narratives. It is this irresolvable tension between M's maternal weight and her iconography as "lover" that instigates the character's demise in Skyfall, and marks the culmination of Dench's seven films and 17 years in the role.

M AS "ENGLISH PARTNER"

Framed by the s.h.i.+fting cultural att.i.tudes towards women and s.e.x, contemporary Bond films have been enlivened by a cycle of increasingly progressive female protagonists. Jeremy Black acknowledges how "the women in the recent films have been achievers, rather than the emotional victims of the novels," adding that there is a "wider sense that att.i.tudes to the role and position of women had changed" (160). Despite Vesper Lynd's accusation that Bond merely views women "as disposable pleasures rather than meaningful pursuits" in Casino Royale, the franchise has paired him with visibly empowered allies as the series has progressed.

In their examination of gender in series, Colleen M. Tremonte and Linda Racioppi argue that the presence of Dench's M is foundational to this pantheon of new Bond femininity as the series maneuvers away from discourses of misogyny and chauvinism (195-6). They discuss the characterization of Bond Girls Natalya Simonova in GoldenEye, Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode 1997), Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough (Michael Apted 1999) and Jinx in Die Another Day (Lee Tamahori 2002) directly in relation to M: like M, each of these women "possesses official or professional capabilities that not only help Bond defeat the enemy but that reflect contemporary gender politics" (ibid. 187). Tremonte and Racioppi identify a connection between Dench's M and the Bond Girl archetype developed in the Brosnan era, a blueprint founded on M's service as a government agent (in the mold of Lin and Jinx) and a sustained techno-literacy (shared by Simonova, Lin and Jones).

The revisionist trilogy-Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall-reintroduces, reworks, and at times even conflates many of the generic Bond conventions, not least within the mobilization of familiar Bondian ident.i.ties. In her examination of Casino Royale, Lisa Funnell notes a displacement of the Bond Girl as the locus of "visual spectacle," arguing that the muscular body of Craig's Bond becomes the object of desire implicated firmly within a scopic regime usually reserved for Bond's heteros.e.xual desires ("I Know" 456). c.o.x has similarly elaborated on what she sees as the merging of Bond with Bond Girl iconography, spotlighting Casino Royale's "mannish women and womanish men" (8). She argues "it is Bond's physique that is being viewed and evaluated, at the expense of the Bond 'girl'" (9). Such feminization of a heroic male taps into the lack of a "hegemonic masculinity," and the pluralizing of male ident.i.ties, within a contemporary postfeminist culture, which manifest in a Bond franchise shaping 007 to be polysemous in his gender signifiers (Hamad 1).

Within the self-enclosed world of the Bond series, however, M's occupation of Bond Girl territory brings into relief how character signifiers are altogether more s.h.i.+fting and s.h.i.+fty in Craig-era Bond. M represents another merging of typical Bondian roles, and the conflation between traditional Bond characters (in this case the heroic ally and romantic interest). Indeed, the characterization of M in Skyfall is heavily informed by Bond Girl iconography. M is located squarely at the center of the narrative as Bond's primary female relations.h.i.+p. Bond does not develop a deep emotional attachment to any of the women who appear sporadically throughout the film: an unnamed s.e.xual conquest who appears briefly on screen, Severine who dies at the hands of Silva midway through the film, and Moneypenny who disappears from the narrative for prolonged periods of time. In Skyfall, then, it appears as though many of the Bond Girl characteristics, which have been fragmented and redistributed in the Craig era, have been (re)a.s.signed to the figure of M. If, as Funnell argues, the Bond Girl is defined by the deep and intimate relations.h.i.+p she develops with Bond ("From English" 63), then M (and not these other women) is positioned as the Bond Girl of the film.

The emergent status of M as a potential hybrid figuration of Mother and Bond Girl is further borne out by Funnell's a.n.a.lysis charting the tra