The Trouble with Bond, Pt. 1
Newsletter 7: Essay 3 of 6
I am obsessed with James Bond movies. If there is a listless night on the couch, I am usually in the mood for one of the oldies, one of the problematic ones. Connery, Lazenby, and Moore. It’s a bit of action, history, and absurdity that delights me without too much commitment to a complex plot. But it also means there are things I admire and things… that make me clench my teeth.
James Bond is a seemingly shallow man of hollow motivations, only acting for love of country or completion of a mission. He is untethered and anonymous, moving through lit rooms with men of influence and dark corners of shrouded secrets. It’s a paradox of the highly visible spy who still manages to infiltrate the kitchen staff and grab a silver tray of hors d'oeuvres.
We must remember that a British passport will get you all around the world and boy does Bond see the sights. He’s traveled to Bangkok, Istanbul, New Orleans, and Macau, among many other sites. In all these places, his presence is rarely a question. He belongs everywhere.
The most salient issue with Bond is how he moves through the world as a force of destruction on behalf of the British government and sometimes the US, to satisfy whatsoever sensitive commodity is in their sights.
Seek and Destroy
Because Bond can walk into any place in the world, he is permitted to encroach in any place, leaving toppled buildings in his wake. It is conceivable that whomever was economically, physically, or psychologically affected would receive no compensation. They would have to rebuild with no such luxury to skip town on a jet to the next exotic destination. An explanation for the calamity would likely be paltry at best.
Golden Eye is a pivotal movie in the series since it gives us insight into not only 007 himself, but the devastation wrought by an evil empire. Trevelyan’s character and information about him, provides a greater understanding of history, something we do not see in earlier movies. We learn from Bond’s friend Valentin Zukovsky that the infamous Janus is perhaps a Cossack. He tells of the British betrayal of the Cossack people, double-crossed and sent back to their deaths under Stalin’s regime. “Not exactly our finest hour,” Bond replies with a faint grimace.
Trevelyan’s parents survived the death squads but would not survive the oppressive mental anguish from being targeted people. His parents die in a murder suicide and he is left an orphan.
The history of the Cossack people is true. Anticommunist ethnic Ukrainians and Russians, many of whom fled before and during the Russian Revolution, fought with the Germans against the Allies. Theirs in a complex history which would be a disservice to elaborate at length here. The event tied to the movie is when Cossack leaders were taken by the British to an Ally camp near Leinz. On May 28, 1945, 2046 people were handed over to the Soviet Red Army as part of a repatriation effort, some of whom were immediately executed. Some Cossacks were never Soviet citizens, but were nonetheless charged with treason. Days later, the British sent 32,000 more Cossacks, including women and children, on trains and trucks back to the Red Army for repatriation. Most were sent to Russian gulags or forced labor camps, where they faced a grim future.
Up until this point, we believe the casualties of MI6 missions are purely villains and their accomplices, but the British government as a whole destroys lives, the survivors of which they must battle later. It is a frequent and powerful story throughout history, where a child left traumatized by loss spends their lives honing themselves into the perfect weapon to strike back.
When Trevelyan is revealed as the elusive Janus, he asks Bond if he ever thought about what they risked their lives for and how the principle could change on a dime. The empire was fickle and friends were soon enemies. The revelation then gives the viewer pause in subsequent scenes and even films in the Brosnan years as Bond asks women to trust him, that he’s on their side. One can imagine the echo of a long gone Trevelyan saying, “For now.” While we knew this before, we see now how utterly vampiric Bond’s sexual conquests are. The blood is secrets.
Armed Rebel Alliances
Another example of enemy seeds planted is in The Living Daylights, where Bond teams up with the Mujahideen to defeat the Russians. The backdrop of this story is the Soviet-Afghan War where a rebel force formed in 1979 to fight Russian occupation. The Afghan terrain and guerrilla style warfare of the Mujahideen, among other limitations, made it difficult for the Soviets to overtake the country, instead initiating years of strife before withdrawing in 1989.
Through much of the 20th century, the US, and by extension, its allies in the UK, have battled against a Russian enemy. Many Bond films focus on tangential threats and tenuous alliances with Russians, extending from the Connery era, all the way to Brosnan. In the Afghan conflict, the objective was ultimately to defeat Russian forces. There is a tangled legacy to that war for the entire region. It weakened the Soviet Union and contributed to its collapse, but also left a broken country at the mercy of whatever power would take over next. The Taliban eventually seized power in 1996 amidst the lawlessness during the Afghan Civil War.
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This brings me back to Trevelyan, who is rightly disgusted by the way the directive of the empire changes. The enemy shifts and time and time again, the interference energizes a new opposing force. Bond is a part of that. He destroys the monuments to government failure, the international turmoil it creates, buries the lies, and saves it from itself.
Stay tuned for part two of this essay in the next newsletter. Liked what you read? Share with a friend!
Catch up with the other essays in this series:
The Birth of a Spy
Building a Secret Agent