Transmedia characters and storytelling across multiple platforms

¶ … James Bond's penis" author Toby Miller writes that after the 1960s: "masculinity is no longer the exclusive prominence of men, either as spectators, consumers or agents of power. And Bond was an unlikely harbinger of this trend" (Miller 233). Bond, rather than being a 'sexist dinosaur' and relic of the Cold War era (as he was once called by Judi Dench's M) actually an innovator in terms of the way he legitimized male sexuality on film. Miller sees Bond as questioning the male-centered gaze of desire presumed by the camera. It is Bond who leaves his women in a state of desire, never fully fulfilling their fantasies, even though he was viewed as exemplifying 'imperial decline' in the way he ruthlessly purses his self-interest in an amoral fashion as an agent in Her Majesty's Secret Service.

In the books, Bond is often shown burning with desire and having to put aside that desire to do his work. His masculinity is constantly threatened as he is tortured by a wide assortment of villains. This could suggest that Bond is objectified, much like a female, and the source of his masculine power is under constant threat. When Sean Connery embodied the Bond character, he was often portrayed in 'beefcake' shots with his shirt unbuttoned and the gun which Bond constantly clasped in the films could be seen as a surrogate penis and a method of compensating for male insecurity, rather than a sign of raw, masculine power. The 'laser castration' scene from Goldfinger could be used to support this idea (Miller 240).

However, it worthy of note that even if Bond's penis seems 'endangered' in the films and books, this is no less true of the villains -- particularly of the films. In Dr. No, the mad scientist of the title has prosthetic hands, and Bond explicitly says during his first meeting with Dr. No that No is compensating for the lack of his -- hands -- by launching a large rocket. No's loss of hands are seen as a symbolic castration, and his torture of both the hyper-masculine Bond and the voluptuous Honey Rider (who looks nothing like the boyish character with the disfigured nose of the book) seems to be a way of compensating for a perceived lack of masculinity. In contrast to the book, in the film Dr. No even dies because he has no 'true' hands -- unable to grip and pull himself to safety, he slides into the ooze of the nuclear reactor he created. Similarly in To Russia With Love, the chess master Kronsteen is killed by Blofeld with a phallic poisonous spike for hatching a failing plot. The phallic spike is located in a shoe, a traditional object of fetishists.

For the villains, unable to engage in 'normal' sexual intercourse with a penis, using villainy and symbolic phalluses to hurt, rather than engage in copulation is a common theme. Blofeld, a running villain in a number of Bond films is often shown stroking a cat. Cats are often used to symbolize female desire (indeed, one Bond hero is named 'Pussy Galore'). Because Blofeld cannot have normal relations with a woman, he can only stroke a real-life pussy. This desire to use weapons as a method of penetration when denied a 'real' penis is also shown in the persona of Rosa Klebb, a lesbian villain in To Russia With Love who tries to kill James Bond with a spike from her shoe.