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In CR is Daniel Craig the Bond girl?
Bear with me here.
CR was a clear an deliberate reboot for the series opposed to some of the previous attempts to revive the franchise.
It's interesting to consider that as a 'Bond film', CR essentially breaks many of it's many rules. This is clear not just from the very self-conscious opening (the re-positioning of the GB sequence and the final moment where Craig stares straight down the camera after the MTS) but also in the way the film treats Daniel Craig.
Typically Bond films objectify and sexualise the female characters but in CR it is Craig who is presented in a highly sexualised manner by the filmmakers. Every opportunity to present him in such a light is taken whether it be small moments like the tennis girls turning to get a better look at him or the cooing receptionist at the Ocean Club, etc. It all culminates with Craig going shirtless on the beech - what we are seeing basically in CR is the opposite of misogyny. Daniel Craig is the Bond girl.
By presenting him like this Craig ups the ante in regards to returning the 'sex appeal' to Bond. Sean Connery was the perfect example of the man who made James Bond sexy but the doughy Roger Moore really wasn't all that great and Pierce Brosnan was maybe a little too male-model perfect to have people coo over.
CR was a clear an deliberate reboot for the series opposed to some of the previous attempts to revive the franchise.
It's interesting to consider that as a 'Bond film', CR essentially breaks many of it's many rules. This is clear not just from the very self-conscious opening (the re-positioning of the GB sequence and the final moment where Craig stares straight down the camera after the MTS) but also in the way the film treats Daniel Craig.
Typically Bond films objectify and sexualise the female characters but in CR it is Craig who is presented in a highly sexualised manner by the filmmakers. Every opportunity to present him in such a light is taken whether it be small moments like the tennis girls turning to get a better look at him or the cooing receptionist at the Ocean Club, etc. It all culminates with Craig going shirtless on the beech - what we are seeing basically in CR is the opposite of misogyny. Daniel Craig is the Bond girl.
By presenting him like this Craig ups the ante in regards to returning the 'sex appeal' to Bond. Sean Connery was the perfect example of the man who made James Bond sexy but the doughy Roger Moore really wasn't all that great and Pierce Brosnan was maybe a little too male-model perfect to have people coo over.
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Comments
I understand my argument isn't quite so complex so I'll post this link where I got my inspiration from:
http://www.reverseshot.com/article/casino_royale_and_new_james_bond
I feel this writer much more eloquently makes the point maybe then I did by condensing it down.
Yes, a very good alternate take on things there, @doubleoego.
Very true. What the writer (and I agree with) is saying is that Craig is very sexualised throughout the film. In the same way for instance that Michael Bay in the 'Transformers' movies lets his camera linger all over Megan Fox in any given situation (I'm not comparing CR to 'Transformers' before everyone jumps down my throat). What I'm saying is that the intent of those sequences in these types of movies is to make a specific section of the audience say 'phwoar'. It's a very highly charged piece of sexualisation.
I'm not saying Craig is the Bond girl because he's feminine (far from it) but because typically in Bond films it is the women who are objectified but in CR it's instead Bond.
Nope, didn't see him in either a bikini or a dress (well, at least I didn't see him in a dress in this film, there's a certain commercial for that).
In all honesty, while we did see quite a bit of Craig's physique here, I don't see this as emphasizing Bond as the "Bond girl". Even if it was, Bond has always, from 1962 onward, been seen as a sex symbol. There's always going to be badass action for the men to enjoy, and then quite a bit of Bond's ass for the women to enjoy. I seem to remember quite a bit of Connery's bare chest in YOLT (even a scene with dialogue drawing direct attention to it), and as for the ladies checking Bond out on-screen, how about the ending of the PTS for TLD?
If anybody's the "Bond girl" in CR, it's all the damn fans (like us) watching it in the first place.
I get what your saying.. and I could see it. I think the filmmakers definitely intended to sort-of flip the Bond-Bond girl relationship around.
Vesper Lynd is a very masculine woman. She feels she has to wear business suits and minimal makeup to be successful.. and it has sort of worked for her.
James Bond, on the other hand, is being portrayed as this sort of rough-and-tough suave in a runs-through-walls kind of way, with an 8-pack, arms the size of basketballs, and enough thigh to take up two seats on an aircraft and flaunts his sexuality in a way the Bond girl normally does.
This reversal of roles in CR is even directly brought up in conversation when Vesper first meets Bond, and they evaluate each other:
Vesper: I'm the money.
Bond: Every penny of it.
--
Vesper: ...What else can you surmise?
Bond: About you?….Well your beauty is a problem. You worry that you won’t be taken seriously….
Vesper: Which one can say of any attractive woman with half a brain.
Bond: Tue, but this one overcompensates by wearing slightly masculine clothing and being more aggressive than her female colleagues, which gives her a somewhat prickly demeanor and, ironically, makes her less likely to be accepted and promoted by her male superiors, who mistake her insecurity for arrogance. I would normally have said only child, but by the way you ignored the quip about your parents I would go with orphan?
Vesper: All right….by the cut of your suit you went to Oxford or wherever and actually think human beings dress like that. But you wear it with such disdain, that my guess is you didn’t come from money and all your school chums rubbed that in your face every day, which means you were at that school by the grace of someone else’s charity, hence the chip on your shoulder. And since your first thought about me ran to orphan, that what I’d say you are.... Oh you are? And it makes sense since MI6 looks for maladjusted young men who’d give little thought to sacrificing others in others to protect queen and country. You know former SAS types with easy smiles and expensive watches. Rolex?
Bond: Omega.
Vesper: Beautiful. Now having just met you I wouldn’t g as far as calling you a cold hearted bastard.
Bond : Of course not.
Vesper: But it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that you think of women as disposable pleasures rather than meaningful pursuits, so as charming as you are, I will be keeping my eye on our government’s money and off your perfectly formed arse.
Bond: You noticed.
Vesper: Even accountants have imaginations. How was your lamb?
Bond: Skewered. One sympathizes.
Instead of Bond taking the girl and opening her eyes to the world of espionage, Vesper takes Bond and shows him what a normal life would be like.
Instead of Bond rescuing her from peril, she ends up rescuing him.
And then there is the more obvious stuff in the film, like the whole day-time Bahamas sequence where he's in a not-quite-a-speedo the entire time getting drooled over by every woman in town.
Not sure about that.
Other than his 'Honey' moment it's typical Bond fare and, unless I'm mistaken, even his emergence from the sea was never an intentional reference.
This short whas made for jJames Bond international women's day 2011, produced by Eon/James Bond movie producer Barbara Broccoli.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1858469/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
Oh, contentious. Which prophet pray tell?!
A false one from Arabia.
Peter O'Toole?
Come on, its obviously Craigs '' Ursula Andress '' moment.
But it was not intended to be. Craig has said it himself, he just carried on walking because the water was so shallow. The camera kept on "rolling", thus it was unintentional.
Thankyou quote of the day !
With respect to legal affairs PBUH asks for two women because women are emotional beings, affected by pressure, intimidation by their male counterparts and brute force. They can easily be persuaded to change their minds...especially if coming form a male. So if you have two women at least the other one will be able to tell the truth without fear of intimidation. It's for protection against being persecuted.
and for me, No, Craig is not the Bond girl, by any stretch of the imagination.
Why looking at a beautiful woman because she is beautiful "misogyny"?
That's how I saw it too, especially since Craig seems not at ease at all at the tennisgirls scene. There is nothing relaxed in the way he returns their gaze. Actually he doesn't seem relaxed in any of the scenes in which he has to interact with an attractive woman.