From an object of desire to “someone who kicks ass” ... Here’s how the Bond girl became more than a love interest to agent 007...
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00:00I met you on UW. She's a disarming young woman.
00:04I get why you shot him.
00:07Yeah, well, everyone tries at least once.
00:12The Bond girl is defined as being the lead woman protagonist.
00:16She is the person that is there for the majority of the film,
00:19and she's the person who ends up in a romantic relationship with Bond.
00:23And she's defined by that romantic, intimate bond they develop at the end of the film.
00:28You get the typical O. James moment. That's typically the Bond girl.
00:42Women in the James Bond franchise certainly evolve over time,
00:46and these evolutions are often reflective of changes of women in society.
00:59When I look at the women of James Bond, nothing is more iconic than Honey Rider
01:04emerging from the sea in a white bikini with a knife attached to her belt and really,
01:10you know, giving it to Bond, being like, don't come any closer, right?
01:15And it is this iconic arresting image that gets replicated in subsequent films.
01:29In the 1960s, villainous women, who I think are far more interesting and delicious characters,
01:42are the ones who challenge Bond's libido.
01:45So in the 1960s, the swinging 60s, you see the influence of the women's movement,
01:50second wave feminism coming in that's really questioning the role and the function of women.
01:56In the 1970s, those women are being sort of pushed away.
02:00The challenges to Bond and Bond's libido are being pushed away.
02:04And I've read that as being reflective of the backlash
02:08to second wave feminism that was happening in the 1970s and the 1980s.
02:12I think Grace Jones is a fascinating character.
02:26First and foremost, the casting of a Black woman in a lead role in a Bond film.
02:32This is the first time that it happens in A View to a Kill in 1985.
02:36But I think it's also important because you have someone like Grace Jones,
02:41who is iconic.
02:43How do you contain someone like Grace Jones in a film?
02:46And I feel as though they looked at Grace Jones and said,
02:49you are so iconic, we're just going to take your persona wholesale
02:52and bring her into this film.
02:55And so I see Mayday as being Grace Jones or Grace Jones just playing herself.
03:01Now, is her representation perfect?
03:04Absolutely not.
03:04There's some problematic elements when it comes to racial stereotyping in this.
03:10But I do think it's important for us to see women of color
03:13and specifically Black women in lead roles.
03:26I feel that I am definitely the new type of Bond girl.
03:33One who has brought the Bond girl image to the 90s,
03:38past to the next millennium.
03:40Someone who's got character.
03:42Someone who kicks butt.
03:44Someone who matches Bond in every way.
03:51Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough,
03:53she is the first woman archvillain in a Bond film.
03:57She's the only woman archvillain in a Bond film.
04:01And she masquerades as a Bond girl, seduces Bond.
04:05Bond falls in love with her.
04:06Even Judi Dench's Em falls in love with her and is definitely taken in.
04:11And we as the audience are also starting to feel those feelings.
04:14And then it turns out that she's the one who's pulling the strings.
04:18And so Bond is blindsided.
04:20Em is blindsided.
04:21We are blindsided.
04:23And it's so nice to see a woman being represented as pulling those strings.
04:28Your Bond girl, it's a marked difference from what was expected 40 years ago.
04:34Yeah, and that was great.
04:36You know, the challenge was, you know, to stay toe to toe with him.
04:40And always while we were shooting, always pushing the envelope
04:43and always asking Lee and asking the writers,
04:45OK, how can she be even tougher?
04:47How can she be even stronger?
04:48How can she be even more his intellectual equal?
04:52It's Daniel Craig who's walking out of the sea in a bathing suit
05:06with women on the shore looking along, right?
05:09Bond is presented through the archetypical iconography of the Bond girl.
05:15We talked about Honey Rider already.
05:17He's presented like Honey Rider.
05:19And what that does is that opens up space for somebody like Vesper Linn
05:24to not have to fall into that box.
05:26He's somebody who always resists the typical qualities
05:29and characterizations of the Bond girl.
05:32For the first time, we're going to see that we have a Bond woman,
05:51as I say all the time, because Sam Mendes was looking for a mature woman.
06:02And now we get to see a strong, Black, vulnerable, quirky, comedic,
06:19sassy, you know, very, very skilled woman be right there in a lead role.
06:27I'm really proud.
06:28I would love to see greater diversity behind the camera
06:31for the people who are crafting this narrative.
06:34And when I say I want to see women behind the camera,
06:36I don't just mean white women.
06:38I also want to see women of color and women who differ
06:41in terms of their sexual orientation and abilities and nationalities
06:44and class-based elements and different parts of the world.
06:48I just want to see greater input from a greater amount of people.