Abstracts & Papers
Elektra-Assassin.
Bond-girl sacrifices and an action-hero reborn
"The new Bond: Now he also kills women", is the title of an online review on the latest Bond movie The World is not Enough. The title refers to the execution of Elektra King by James Bond in that movie. Within the review the mentioned phenomenon is read, not without gloating, as a consequence of the increasing status of gender-equality, that could be witnessed in the last Bond movies. The underlying argumentation is that if you want to be respected and taken seriously as a female character in this male-dominated action movie series, you have to take the risk of being shot by the protagonist, just like everybody else. But Bond movies, even the ones made in the nineties, are far from having negated gender-differences. In Bond movies, women are killed for different reasons than men, and those reasons are defining elements of the Bond-formula. They do not change by changing the actor that plays Bond.
My paper will take a look at the motive of women being sacrificed in Bond movies. Women with intimate contact to both villain and Bond usually do not live to see the end of the movie. I will take into account the gender-related changes the last three Bond movies have undergone, how an unchanged Bond faces new circumstances, how he copes with different MI5 structures and a movie-industry that tries to meet the requirements of pc and feminist theory. Under those circumstances, what happens to the balance between charm, sex and violence, which defines Bond´s routine of interacting with women?
THEY LAUGHED AT HIS CHARMS, THEY THREATENED HIS SELF-RESPECT. BUT YOU CAN PUSH A MAN ONLY SO FAR!
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