Eps 16: James Bond Just Ended the Cold War
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Vickie Pearson
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In addition, Ian Fleming created references to the Cold War as a base for certain villains in 007, as well as parts of James Bonds plot. Bond films prior to 1995 used the Cold War as backdrops, but were loosely Cold War-based. The James Bond movie series, produced from 1954 through 1965, provides an interesting examination of how closely political events and atmospheres in the Cold War and corresponding pop culture were connected.
Although not all of the films had plots that focused on the Cold War , the fact that James Bond had his beginnings in 1953, when he was sent to a casino in southern France to defeat a Soviet agent at the Baccarat table in Ian Flemings novel Casino Royale, established him as a public enemy of the Soviet Union. There is little doubt that Soviet state officials, particularly the Soviet Unions KGB, saw the stories in Ian Flemings James Bond as dangerous anti-Soviet propaganda. To their credit, Cold War-era James Bond movies were not obsessed with Russia, serving up stateless supervillains instead of Soviet opponents in many of Daniel Craigs adventures. Russians have played only occasional roles as the primary antagonists of James Bond movies. Individual Russians opposed James Bond, but could also have been his lovers, as well as his allies.
One of the fascinating aspects of No Time To Die is that the de facto final boss of the series, Lyutsifer Safin, played by Rami Malek, is the only major Russian character throughout the entire Daniel Craig rebooted pentalogy - his earlier villains were, respectively, Albanian, French, Portuguese, and Austrian, and James Bonds love interests were British, Greek, Bolivian, and French. Some might argue that having Bonds first Russian lady be an English turncoat is not a positive depiction of Russia. I would say the portrayal of her as a competent professional willing to sacrifice for love is positive. Regardless of whom Daniel Craig is fighting next, however, there is something universal about a covert agents pull.
Between a brooding contemporary Bond who has little to say, and the sharp-suited Roger Moore who grins and banters his way through peril and exotic locales, I am tempted to go for the latter.
Either way, GoldenEye serves as a send-off, a final journey into the nostalgia of James Bonds days fighting Russians, and this is underscored by the story, which leans heavily into the present and pays attention to this archetypal depiction of James Bond as the number-one foe of the Soviet Union. As the Cold War heated up, both Dr. No and From Russia With Love diluted the political resonance of Flemings fiction, changing the enemies from the Soviet SMERSH spy agency of the novels to SPECTRE, a private crime empire led by Ernst Stavro Blofeld, a character Fleming did not establish until Thunderball, the eighth novel. Mr. Flemming decided to create SPECTRE, but with one distinction. Flemming suspected the Cold War was going to be over very soon, and James Bond needed a new adversary in order to remain relevant.
So, once again, Ian Flemings using elements of his Second World War knowledge, mixing that in with things that he is discovered, or knows, about the Russian Soviet threat, anything. Of course, this was after the war, the Rationing was still going on in the UK, so that was one of the hot things in the books, as Ian Flemings was starting to write the books, was that James Bond was flying, something people did not do very much back then, regular people. There is a lot in there about luring James Bond into taking over this Russian cipher machine, which Fleming calls a SPECTRE, which is of course entirely based on German cipher machines of the second world war.
Against the evil, yet bland, Soviets, Fleming gives us an underfunded, yet kindly, character in MI6. When people thought of Bond, they also thought of JFK - and so, the spys heroic qualities were going to be conferred upon the President. John F. Kennedy was a vocal fan of Bond, and the media loved drawing parallels between the fictional spy and the real-life president -- so much so, that their personas became entwined in the American cultural subconscious. Unlike John le Carre , Fleming saw the Cold War in black-and-white terms, and had no compunction about writing books demonstrating Western moral superiority.
The first thing to know is that literary Bond, who, in 1957s From Russia With Love, pined nostalgically for the excitement and commotion of the Hot War, as opposed to his own clandestine escapades after war turned cool. Literary Bonds The War is quite a bit more ideological than the films jilted boondoggle.