Skyfall

I should preface this blog post by pointing out that I did really enjoy Skyfall - the new James Bond film.  Daniel Craig is hot, Javier Bardem was an awesomely camp bad guy and in general it was full of happy James Bond-y feel-good action excitement.
And I  can cope with the playful misogny that goes hand in hand with the James Bond ethos - shagging indiscrimanately, making sexist jokes, shrugging off the death of the Bond Girl - all these things are naturally occuring Bondisms which, although perhaps damagingly sexist, we have come to expect from the franchise.

What bothered me in an angry feminist kind of way was the total and complete degradation of any strong female role in the film.  Judi Dench's 'M' has been an awesome cinematic role to encourage young women that positions of power and responsibility (and ultimately the top job in the man-centric world of espionage) are not something that is beyond their means.  M is female, in control (mostly), authoritative, responsible and undoubtedly earning top civil service wages, all the things that young women should be able to aspire to.  In Skyfall, she is beginning to fail the service, and gets a grilling from a government committee.  Yes, the MP in charge of the enquiry is female, but when she starts to get a bit 'naggy' one of the 'boys' just tells her to shut up - good that she can be put in her place by the entirely male committee right?  Thankfully, poor old M has a strong male agent (Bond) to take her to safety and hide from the nasty bad guys.  OK, so she has incredible skill at making lightbulb nail bombs, but without the presence of some masculine types she would just be dribbling in the corner, unable to take care of herself, or dead already.  And, of course, as the head of MI6, with years and years of experience in counter-terrorism and espionage, she would be completely unprepared for actually defending herself, right?  She wouldn't be so stupid as to use a torch in the pitch dark when trying to escape from the baddies... oh no wait, that's exactly what she did, with all her years of training and experience.  Come on, Ms Broccoli, you can do better than that - killing off a strong female character via a series of her own ineptitudes, allowing a good old-fashioned man to take the helm, sort out all her silly mistakes (no doubt caused by those pesky hormones) and get the service back to its former strength (round about the Stone Age, it seems).

And what about Moneypenny?  A cool, exciting field agent zipping round the world taking on interesting missions and shooting people; "Cool" my 15-year old self yells "I want to be an MI6 agent and go around shagging catching bad guys!". She misses that vital shot and gets recalled to London where she spends the rest of the film (invisibly) at a desk job.  Sure, she doesn't succumb to Bond's wily charms and manages to remain chaste in such trying circumstances, but any semblance of equality is shattered.  By the end of the film 15-year old me is sighing and saying to myself "Oh, she gets to be a secretary after all... err... ace..?"

I was angry by the end: angry that the film-makers had two relatively good opportunities to promote a bit of sexual equality and general female awesomeness and both were dashed to bits on the chiselled torso of the patriarchy.  M ends up as a withering incompetent and Moneypenny is only fit to be a secretary in the gentlemens' club MI6 headquarters. 

Shame, 'cause otherwise it was a stonker. K x