Unless you've been away for six months in a world of no media, or have a blind spot that corresponds precisely with the dimensions of bus-side advertising, you'll be aware that the new James Bond film - The Quantum of Leap or something - is coming out this Friday. And as always happens when the name Bond, James Bond, comes up, people are asking: is it sexist? Is it not the case, they're saying, that Bond and his exploits are harmful and degrading?
I think there's no doubt that the films are misogynistic, but it'd be wrong to pick this out in isolation. They're also xenophobic, snobby and adolescent. You might make the case that they're not so much hostile to women and foreigners as just deficient - literally unable to imagine themselves into the world of anyone who's not a well-educated white man with his basest urges to shag, kill and be King of the world.
And the fact is, they're massively popular with all kinds of people, and in places quite fun. Maybe they've got more PC in recent years? How does Judy Dench fit into this? Dollymix needs your vote.
James Bond is fun. The less it takes itself seriously, the better the fun. Unfortunately, with the new run (Daniel Craig's), they've started trying to inject "realism" into it, making it an even worse muddle than it would have been otherwise.
If they had retained that detached we're-all-just-playing attitude that the series had with Brosnan (and Moore before him), it would have been much easier to love it. As it is, unless QoS is significantly better than Casino Royale had been, I'm just about ready to give up on the series.
im not sure why people even like james bond. EVERY movie is the same thing over and over. He meets a bunch of sex obsessed chicks and sleeps with all of them and magically he has not STD's and then he spends the rest of his time posing and shooting people. what is likeable about these movies? The only thing the women in these movies do is copulate like rabbits, what is so interesting about that?