Does James Bond have to be played by a man? Helen Mirren seems to think so | Zoe Williams

‘I’m such a feminist,” Helen Mirren informed Saga journal, however there are some jobs a girl can’t do. To be exact: “You possibly can’t have a girl [as James Bond]. It simply doesn’t work. James Bond needs to be James Bond, in any other case it turns into one thing else.”Mirren is starring reverse Pierce Brosnan within the movie adaptation of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Homicide Membership, by which they each play beginner sleuths in a care residence. Fortunately, that could be a unisex job. Brosnan may additionally describe himself as “such a feminist” – he has by no means stated so explicitly, however in 2019, he stated a feminine Bond could be “exhilarating”. Nevertheless, he’s now again on workforce males, saying: “I’m so excited to see the following man come on the stage and to see a complete new exuberance and life for this character.” Exhilaration, pleasure, exuberance: all qualities I don’t assume I’ve ever seen in any Bond, throughout the nice gamut of maleness, from Connery to Craig. However who am I to evaluate? At any time when 007 will get a brand new pen that may poison somebody from 50 paces, the joys racing via his veins is perhaps implied by his barely much less stern visage. Really, masculinity is an unknowable frontier.A few issues, earlier than we hand the franchise over to Amazon, who purchased it for greater than $1bn earlier this 12 months. The important qualities of Bond are as follows: he can kill on command with out conscience, besides when he has a conscience; he’s patriotic; he’s irresistible to girls; he favours discreetly tailor-made, monochrome clothes; he can drink neat spirits with out changing into intoxicated; and he at all times introduces himself in reverse order, to individuals who are likely to already know his identify. None of this screams “man”, besides maybe the patriotism, for those who perceive emotionally charged nationalism as a drumbeat of the patriarchy. Having stated that, girls can serve the patriarchy simply in addition to males – have a look at Mirren. Sorry, that’s completely uncalled for: her feminist membership can’t be revoked, not less than not on the premise of her Bond opinions, since that may be handing 007 an excessive amount of energy within the realm of gender.On a separate level: is Bond a feminist, and if he’s, does that imply it’s fantastic for him to stay a person in perpetuity? It’s a tough one. His worth system has modified a lot over the 25 movies, from his early “lovable chauvinist” years to his late “anguished quester after the reality of the self” iteration, a lesser particular person than myself would possibly assume the masculine ultimate had itself gone on a journey because it first placed on a dinner jacket in 1962. That, nonetheless, is a fruitless line of research, since if we had been to take James Bond as too literal a illustration of the altering social expectations of males, we’d must conclude that they are often any which means, as long as they’re ready to take out a minor dictator with piano wire and have a disregard for due course of.Arguably extra vital than any of that’s what the Amazon takeover will do to the franchise, given the semi-recent historical past of the tech firm – it invented an AI recruitment device in 2018 that successfully educated itself to choose male candidates; it was proven to have embedded sexism in its sports activities protection, after Alexa didn’t know what a Lioness was; and, in keeping with workers, it has an workplace tradition by which you’re by no means not at work, which routinely excludes sane individuals – and are available on, numerous these are going to be girls. Does this sound like a protected pair of palms to take over the administration of a fictional character whose arc we might hope goes to proceed to bend in direction of gender justice? Probably not, however on the identical time, if Amazon did spring a feminine Bond on the world, and used that as feminist-washing, proof in perpetuity that not one of the sexist algorithms had been created intentionally, properly, that may be fairly annoying.No person overreact, however certainly what this second in historical past is crying out for is a gender-fluid Bond. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Do you’ve got an opinion on the problems raised on this article? If you want to submit a response of as much as 300 phrases by e-mail to be thought of for publication in our letters part, please click on right here.