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The real James Bond
01/07/2006 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
In a recent conversation I referred to James Bond as a super-hero, at least in the films. Not everybody agrees with me that Bond is a super-hero. He is supposed to be just very proficient at doing whatever he does. It has been a while since I have read the books. I am not sure what I say here applies to the books, but in the films I think that Bond is a super-hero and that his powers are luck and coincidence. Buy James Bond in the USA - or Buy James Bond in the UK  I am not just talking about at cards. Though of course he almost never loses at cards. (He lost only once and that was to make a joke on "unlucky at cards, lucky in love.")
Also, his enemies are surprisingly stupid and that too is part of his power and his luck. Let's take the most popular of the James Bond films GOLDFINGER. The villain is planning a huge coup against the West but Bond gets involved with him just to find out why some poor sucker keeps losing at gin rummy. What are the chances?
Later Goldfinger has a laser ready to cut Bond in half from his crotch up. What saves Bond? He happened to have heard the words "Operation Grand Slam" by spying at the right place at the right time, a location and time he could not have possibly known in advance. So what happens? Goldfinger spares him to find out what he knows and then forgets to interrogate him. Bond escapes from his cell and what does he stumble into but Goldfinger telling a bunch of hoods all about the Fort Knox job (and then killing them for reasons never explained)? Again it is sheer luck. It seems contrived to give Bond the plot.
Now you would the writers would say this is getting a little hard to take. You would think they would be saying they were hitting luck and coincidence just a little too hard. So how does the next film start? Bond goes to a health farm and there he just happens to run into someone involved in a plot to steal a nuclear bomb from NATO and use it to extort huge sums of money on a threat of destroying Miami. He is in the right place at the right time. Things just seem to fall into his lap the way women do.
What happened at the end of DR. NO? He flicks the right switch or something and without even realizing he is doing it he manages to blow up Dr. No's island. I mean, c'mon.
Ever notice the gadget thing. He needs just the set of special weapons Q has given him. Whatever Q has given him is just what he needs. He never needs the tools that Q gave him the last film.
Now admittedly Bond uses some skill also. (He only twice in the films uses his license to kill when it was not a matter of self-defence, speaking of use.) But he does use some skill. Well, yes, he does--too much in fact. He skis like a world champion, shoots skeet like he has been doing it all his life, etc., etc., etc. And I suppose luck favours the prepared mind. Still, it doesn't just favour him, it gives the game away to him.
These films have become classics of sorts, but if you really look at them the plots are about as believable as children's television.
Well, you know there is a reason for that similarity to children's television. At one point early in his career Ian Fleming really did want to write a children's television show. This was in the post-war years when he had spent some time in British Intelligence but now was at loose ends and was not sure what to do with his life. It struck Fleming he could write a children's TV series. He wrote a script for it.
The series was to be called Captain Jamaica. Captain Jamaica was to live in Jamaica, where Fleming wanted to live. This way he could make living in Jamaica part of his work. Captain Jamaica would fight evildoers who come to Jamaica. He wrote (I believe) one half- hour script but could not sell anybody on the idea. Well, it seems a little cornball, when you think about it. He had this dynamite story in which his comic book hero fought a comic book villain. The name of the villain was Dr. No. (This anecdote is repeated from an article several years ago in "Variety".)
Obviously what he did was to take Captain Jamaica and wrote a bunch of stories sold not on the plot value really but on the sophistication of the character. He was writing in post-war Britain where it was still taking a while for the country to get past rationing and onto its feet. People wanted to read about this super-hero who lucked his way out of situations the way that other children's heroes did. And who lived in luxury. And because they were nominally no longer children's stories he could put in an element of sex. He decided that instead of the flamboyant name of Captain Jamaica he would give the character a tasteful and bland name. If you are a Bond fan you probably have heard that he found the name James Bond on a birding book.
He wrote a few novels about this character and had moderate success. In the United States John F. Kennedy liked to read them to relax and mentioned this to the press. And that was that.
In any case astounding luck makes for bad fiction and good non- fiction. If you want to read about heroes who also had amazingly good luck, read about the Battle of Midway.
Mark R. Leeper
© 2006 Mark R. Leeper
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