James Bond: Rapist

As a character, both literary and in film, James Bond has always been a bit of a gruff chauvinist, but a bizarre sequence in Spectre uncomfortably pushes the envelope from the usual power fantasy into rape. Was it intentional?

It should go without saying that everything below qualifies as a spoiler. Venture forth at your own risk.

Personally, I’m not one to throw around terms like “misogynist” loosely, and whenever I hear Laura Mulvey’s name mentioned, I cringe just a little bit as I roll my eyes. For me, sex and violence as a whole in film does little to raise my eyebrow except in the rarest of instances.

This qualifies as one of those times.

Spectre, the 24th film in the 007 franchise, isn’t a great film largely because of inconsistencies in the script, which set a rather erratic tone throughout the film, and in one series of scenes in particular, paints our hero as an opportunistic rapist.

In the pre-credits scene, Bond is on the trail of assassins who he learns are planning to blow up a stadium. One of the assassins, Marco Sciarra, escapes Bond’s initial attack, only to later be thrown from a helicopter by Bond, thus setting into motion the events that would follow.

Now, Bond killing a man is fairly routine, if not expected, what with having a License to Kill and all, and going to the assassin’s funeral in order to get more info on the octopus ring he took from Sciarra as he threw him to his death is OK too, but then he had to hit on the man’s wife.

During his funeral.

It’s one thing for Bond to ask Lucia Sciarra (Monica Bellucci) questions to find out more about the husband that he killed, it’s something completely different to essentially proposition her only feet from said husband’s corpse. The only thing that would’ve made this already eye-twitching moment more ridiculous is if he bent her over the man’s casket, and “kept the British end up”, as it were.

No, that would come later, of course.

In the following scene, the widow Sciarra is back at home, understandably looking a bit worn down and saddened by the day’s events. There’s a hollow look in her eyes as she saunters through her darkened home, pouring herself what looks like whiskey. As she walks further, we see she’s not alone, as two assassins quietly follow her outside.

While she never turns or makes a noise, the look on the widow Sciarra’s face indicates that she knows she is about to die. She flinches when she hears the muffled gunshots, turning only when she realizes that she’s not the one who’s been shot. Naturally, the first thing she sees is the peculiar, yet ruggedly handsome Englishman who basically tried to make out with her in front of her husband’s casket just a few hours prior.

The only thing that would’ve made this already eye-twitching moment more ridiculous is if he bent her over the man’s casket, and “kept the British end up”, as it were.

Now let’s pause right here for a moment.

After 50 years and 24 films, James Bond and sex are certainly tied fast at the hip, so much so that it’s become formula. And it’s something that we as the audience totally accept, for the most part. The idea and concept of the “Bond Girl” plays itself out consistently, and while there are a number of attractive Bond Girls in each film, there are always two primary Bond Girls: The Madonna and the Whore.

Bond generally comes upon the Whore first. Usually this woman is beset by some trouble, often the type of trouble that Bond himself will promise and almost always fail to help her out with, as the Whore almost always ends up dead, but not before she has sex with Bond.

The Madonna comes later, and while Bond will also have sex with them, that sex is usually portrayed as having some positive meaning, never feeling cheap and tawdry, and rarely comes with any level of promise, mainly because Bond is already in the act of helping/saving them. The Madonna, save for Vesper Lind in Casino Royale and Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, survives the film.

By her very situation, Lucia Sciarra is the Whore in Spectre. That’s not to call her an actual whore, mind you, but rather her unfortunate place in the trope itself. As the Whore, the widow Sciarra isn’t at all unique, however, her circumstances most certainly are.

After killing the assassins which effectively saves her life, the widow Sciarra doesn’t come off as all that grateful, likely due to her belief that more attempts on her life will certainly be made, to which Bond gives her the usual assurance that he will protect her, even if it’s indirectly.

You’d have to have never seen a Bond film not to know that this is the moment where the two have sex, but something just feels wrong about the entire situation, and it’s not something that’s really happened in these films before.

Clearly, the widow Sciarra is still in shock, not only from burying her husband — and it’s important to note that while she knew of his activities, she made no mention that she didn’t still love the man — but also from the fact that someone, two someones, tried to gun her down only moments before.

It’s been a bitch of a day, to say the least, so it would be safe to say that she was in a bit of shock. And it’s here where James Bond forces himself on a clearly vulnerable woman…who doesn’t give consent.

Watching the scene unfold, the initial thought is, “Are they serious?” Was it the plan of writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan and Jez Butterworth to craft a scene where 007 preys on a woman in shock? Did they think the only logical way for Bond to console the widow Sciarra was to wipe away her tears with his penis?

And if that was the case, if that was their intent, were they doing it to make some overarching commentary on Bond himself and his approach to women as a whole?

For as long as Purvis and Wade have worked on the series, it’s doubtful. So maybe this was a path director Sam Mendes decided upon, because the script only goes so far until the visuals take over. The framing of the scene itself, presenting Daniel Craig’s Bond as more aggressive than normal, backing the widow Sciarra into a mirror, almost smashing her into it and it’s hard not to look at this, with everything that came before, as an act of sexual violence.

And that surprised me.

It surprised me because this wasn’t my normal reaction to seeing Bond “at work”. Normally, the sex is played with a wink and a nod, and in that moment, 007 is the guy all women want, and all men want to be like, as the saying goes.

Did they think the only logical way for Bond to console the widow Sciarra was to wipe away her tears with his penis?

Instead, that feeling is replaced with one of revulsion as the realization comes that here is a man, a murderer with a badge, who days earlier killed a man, robbed him, went to the funeral that he himself caused and then hit on the wife of the man at that funeral that he himself caused, only to later force himself upon that woman while she’s still in shock from not only burying her husband but just surviving an attempt on her life. How could any woman feel any sense of sexual arousal after that?

Oh, and after he banged her, after he got what he wanted, he took off, leaving her with a piece of paper that had a phone number on it. It may as well have been a couple bucks left on a nightstand. We never see the widow Sciarra again.

And if everything you just read appeared in any other type of book or movie, you would likely come to the same conclusion as I did:

James Bond is a rapist.

And as I said at the beginning, I’m not one to use the term misogyny loosely, but what Bond pulled in that scene goes beyond the suave chauvinism we’re so accustomed to. In that scene, Bond didn’t even regard the widow Sciarra as a human being, much less a woman in mourning.

Should we expect more from a spy movie? Probably not, however, we certainly shouldn’t be treated to less. We shouldn’t have a beloved character be reduced to a lecherous thug in order to make said character seem more gritty. There’s nothing entertaining in seeing a man force himself on a woman who is treated as little more than a plot point.

Again, it’s nothing new, but everything about this scene is the very thing that feminists everywhere are fighting against, because scenes like this validate their arguments surrounding the callous portrayal of women in film.

Of all the Bond films, Spectre takes the Madonna and the Whore, particularly the Whore, and casts such a dark shade over the concept that it’s hard not to look at Bond and question whether or not beneath the winked eyes and snappy one-liners he’s never been more than an alcoholic, murderous rapist that we cheer only because he’s relatively good at his job, dresses impeccably and drives (and destroys) really nice cars.

If Spectre is what we call entertainment, maybe we’re the sociopaths.

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Hashim R. Hathaway (Uncle Shimbo) is the host of the Never Daunted Radio Network, and proud father to NeverDaunted.Net. You can reach him on Twitter @NeverDauntedNet