‘Bonding, Male Bonding’

On the importance of James Bond to multiple generations of men.

By guest author Ryan Howard.

On a recent episode of the Old Glory Club’s Pony Express Radio, host and OGC President RedHawk and company talked about the James Bond franchise which stirred up quite the conversation among the panelists. The idea of an OGC Stream focused on James Bond was very appealing to me, and it made me think about the importance of Bond in my life. I would consider myself to be a superfan of the franchise. I own the movies and have seen all but one of them (No Time to Die) multiple times. My fandom did not stop with the films, though, as I read the Ian Fleming novels, played the video games, and even played a few sessions of the James Bond 007 role-playing game published by Victory Games in 1983. Bond has been ever-present throughout my life, but what stands out to me most about the franchise is how I was first exposed to it.

The first time I heard the name James Bond was probably 2001–02 when I was five years old. I was putting on a suit for the very first time, and my father said to me: “You look cool, son. Just like James Bond.”

My father then took me over to the family computer and did a Google search for James Bond pictures so that he could show me what he was talking about. Immediately, he pulled up pictures of then-current Bond Pierce Brosnan as well as those of the Bonds of his childhood, Sean Connery and Roger Moore. My father explained to me that James Bond was a secret agent, 007 of the British Secret Intelligence Service. He carried a gun under his jacket in a shoulder holster, he had an array of gadgets to help him on his missions, and he fought diabolical madmen with odd gimmicks like a mouth full of metal teeth, a bowler hat that decapitates people, or a golden gun assembled from a pen, lighter, and cigarette case. Just a few short years later, my father deemed me old enough to watch my first Bond movie on TV. He and I turned on AMC for one of their innumerable Bond marathons and watched Goldfinger, which he taped so that I could finish it the next day (as the film ran past my bedtime). Goldfinger was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The Aston Martin DB5 was surely just as cool as the Batmobile. The Walther PPK became an iconic weapon in my imagination, complete with suppressor for covert work. The beautiful women, the wicked Auric Goldfinger, the brutish mute Oddjob, and, of course, the swaggering, self-assured masculinity of Sean Connery all came to life in my imagination. Bond had me for life.

A hallmark of the male experience is the sharing of hobbies, activities, and media from father to son. Just as generations past recall the first times they went fishing or hunting with their dads, I remember watching favorite movies and TV shows with my dad. The men of my generation, mostly raised by core and late Boomers, were introduced to the Platonic ideal of masculinity when our fathers sat us down to watch the men of action who had captured their young imaginations in the films of Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, John Wayne, and, of course, James Bond. My father, born in 1961, was a part of the first generation to grow up with true mass media. My dad speaks fondly of seeing classic movies with his father and grandfather as a young man, and his generation felt empowered by the advent of cable movie channels and video stores to share those same experiences in their living rooms with their sons. I imagine when the first Bond VHS tapes hit the market in 1989, a dad immediately saw the display in a Media Play or Blockbuster, grabbed Dr. No, turned to his young son, and said: “When I was your age, this was my favorite movie. Let’s watch it tonight.”

007 has been a multi-generational tradition, passed from father to son at least once in the lifespan of the franchise. With the series now over 60 years old, it’s possible that it could have even passed to a third generation, although I’ve found that appreciation for Bond comes to a sudden stop among men born after 1999. Maybe it was the disastrous reception of Die Another Day in 2002, the shift in direction for the franchise following 2006’s Casino Royale, or the steady decline of youth-focused Bond media over the years, with James Bond video games declining in frequency and quality after 2005. Unfortunately, the decline in quality does not end with just the video games.

While Daniel Craig’s first outing, Casino Royale, is undoubtedly a masterpiece, 2008’s follow-up Quantum of Solace was met with a somewhat mixed reception. Bond had gone from a fun, ultra-masculine power fantasy made up of self-contained adventures to a dour, ultra-serious set of interconnected movies à la the Bourne franchise. 2012’s Skyfall was well received, but the franchise again hit the rocks in 2015 when Spectre was released. The film was a confused mess, trying to harken back to the Bond of old with gadgets, one-liners, and even the classic villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his SPECTRE organization returning for the first time since 1971 (Diamonds Are Forever). The movie was still tied to the continuity of the previous three Daniel Craig-led films, meaning that even if it was a return to form, it was still tied to its straight-faced predecessors. Then along came a little film called No Time to Die in 2021.

This film is infamous for two reasons. First, it was one of the first movies to be delayed from its intended release date in February 2020 due to the oncoming rush of Covid hysteria. Second, it was Bond’s turn to be hollowed out and worn as a skin-suit for the progressive agenda. It presented Bond as a broken, over-the-hill relic despite that being the exact premise of Skyfall, but it added insult to injury by literally replacing him with a girlboss diversity hire, making the whole plot of the movie hinge upon his relationship with a previous Bond girl and the daughter who resulted from that union, and it ended by killing off the intrepid character.

Almost four years hence, the Bond franchise shows no sign of recovery. There’s no news as to when Bond will return, only vague threats of making another movie. There’s a video game in the works from Hitman producer IO Interactive, but, again, no solid news has been released for multiple years now. This is not a surprising turn of events, as No Time to Die was only a modest box office success and a highly divisive film. The fact of the matter, though, is that James Bond has no place in the current media landscape. This isn’t to say that Bond is irrelevant; a true-to-form Bond film with a masculine, white James Bond, a beautiful woman or three, and a megalomaniac villain threatening the world would be a welcome change of pace from the Marvel-style slop served up by most blockbusters. A Bond film in the vein of GoldenEye would be quite a welcome change. No, the problem is that James Bond stands in stark contrast to the morass of the film industry. Bond is a celebration of masculinity that brings generations of men together, and this is a big problem for an industry that routinely pushes the feminization of men and the conflict between generations.

Bond is a figure of masculine strength that celebrates nationalistic service, physical beauty, and all things valuable to the sane, red-blooded Western male of any era other than the current one. It is the antidote to the modern desecration of masculinity. Until such time as Elon Musk purchases all of Hollywood and replaces the iconic sign on Mount Lee in Los Angeles with a giant white X, however, Hollywood will not be making something as masculine as a classic James Bond movie. Luckily, we still have 23 movies to share with future generations of men. That is what we should do. Men who have sons ought to be sharing Bond with them, as Bond is a timeless icon of ideal masculinity. He is a self-actualized man acting in defense of Queen and Country. He is tough, suave, well-groomed, well-dressed, fearless, and cunning. His iconic depiction of unadulterated manliness is apparent even to the eyes of a young man not yet in puberty. Every man innately knows that James Bond is the pinnacle of what we can be. We would be doing our descendants a disservice if we allowed Bond to become yet another victim of progressive character assassination. Bond will never die, and he shall always be a point of bonding between generations of men.