http://www.thestar.com/entertainmen...archer-an-expert-on-james-bond-bad-girls?bn=1
Wilfrid Laurier University researcher Lisa Funnell’s passion for James Bond is more than academic. And her knowledge of what she calls the “bad girls” who kicked, punched and poisoned their way through 22 onscreen thrillers with 007 verges on the encyclopedic.
But what else would you expect from a PhD in English and film studies who is know as the Waterloo school’s “resident Bond expert”?
“It’s a great time to be specializing in gender in action films,” says the enthusiastic Funnell, who is hoping to land a full-time teaching job now that she has her doctorate.
Funnell, 30, has been studying the suave British superspy since 2003 and wrote her masters thesis on Bond girls (she did her PhD on Chinese female action heroes). She has two soon-to-be-published academic articles on 007, including one about feminism and the evolution of the female villain in Bond’s cinematic world. The university is proudly publicizing her latest academic achievements.
While the Bond girl romances 007 and usually ends the film by whispering “Oh, James!” as they fall into a torrid embrace, the Bond female villain has no time for those antics, Funnell says. She may happily bed Bond, but that’s only a prelude to trying to kill him.
“The Bond girl forfeits her identity to be domesticated by him. The bad girls refuse. They might sleep with him and tempt him with her body, but she’s a black widow killer and they refuse to be domesticated.”
Funnell says as feminism evolved and changed over the more than five decades of the franchise, so has the Bond bad girl. The only thing these women have in common is they usually meet a violent end, and it’s not Bond who does the killing — in the earlier films, anyway.
“You have these oversexed sirens (at first), women with red hair. The second wave had short red hair, they were gender neutral, lesbians, sexual competition with the Bond girl and a challenge to Bond,” Funnell explains.
She says the first true bad Bond girl shows up in 1963’s From Russia with Love — Funnell describes the 1960s as the golden age of the character. German actress Lotte Lenya played Rosa Klebb, a middle-aged, red-headed assassin who dispatched her prey with a poison-tipped shoe.
Next was Fiona Volpe, played by Luciana Paluzzi in 1965’s Thunderball. After a sexy romp in a bathtub, she sneers at Bond that he thinks he can seduce villains into being good girls, “but not this one!”
In the 1970s, the bad girls took a back seat, but came roaring back with Grace Jones as May Day, in 1985’s A View to a Kill, the “third wave feminist character” and a woman whose entire body was a deadly weapon.
“She is an enigma,” Funnell says of the six-foot-tall, Jamaican-American Amazon. “May Day was tough and sexy at the same time. She really challenged Bond. She beat him up and then challenged him in bed.”
With the 1995 movie GoldenEye came cigar-smoking Xenia Onatopp (future X-Men star Famke Janssen) and a sense of gender equality. Her enemies met their maker when she squeezed the life out of them between her powerful thighs.
“You have Xenia, who understands the power of her alluring nature, and she’s going up against Bond, and this is when he fights back and can kill women,” Funnell explains.
But with the newest incarnation of Bond, played by Daniel Craig, the bad girl has a lesser role, says Funnell, something she hopes director Sam Mendes will remedy with the as-yet unnamed Bond XXIII, due out in 2012.
Funnell is intrigued by the villainous lineup introduced in Quantum of Solace in 2008, the members of criminal organization Quantum. Two wealthy, middle-aged, power-mad women are among the group, she points out.
“These are women who are not stereotypes, who are not deviant,” says Funnell. “They are strong, ambitious women who are able to follow their desires. Daniel Craig is a new Bond character who is not defined by his sexuality, so maybe (the next bad girl) will be some superstrong action figure.”
Wilfrid Laurier University researcher Lisa Funnell’s passion for James Bond is more than academic. And her knowledge of what she calls the “bad girls” who kicked, punched and poisoned their way through 22 onscreen thrillers with 007 verges on the encyclopedic.
But what else would you expect from a PhD in English and film studies who is know as the Waterloo school’s “resident Bond expert”?
“It’s a great time to be specializing in gender in action films,” says the enthusiastic Funnell, who is hoping to land a full-time teaching job now that she has her doctorate.
Funnell, 30, has been studying the suave British superspy since 2003 and wrote her masters thesis on Bond girls (she did her PhD on Chinese female action heroes). She has two soon-to-be-published academic articles on 007, including one about feminism and the evolution of the female villain in Bond’s cinematic world. The university is proudly publicizing her latest academic achievements.
While the Bond girl romances 007 and usually ends the film by whispering “Oh, James!” as they fall into a torrid embrace, the Bond female villain has no time for those antics, Funnell says. She may happily bed Bond, but that’s only a prelude to trying to kill him.
“The Bond girl forfeits her identity to be domesticated by him. The bad girls refuse. They might sleep with him and tempt him with her body, but she’s a black widow killer and they refuse to be domesticated.”
Funnell says as feminism evolved and changed over the more than five decades of the franchise, so has the Bond bad girl. The only thing these women have in common is they usually meet a violent end, and it’s not Bond who does the killing — in the earlier films, anyway.
“You have these oversexed sirens (at first), women with red hair. The second wave had short red hair, they were gender neutral, lesbians, sexual competition with the Bond girl and a challenge to Bond,” Funnell explains.
She says the first true bad Bond girl shows up in 1963’s From Russia with Love — Funnell describes the 1960s as the golden age of the character. German actress Lotte Lenya played Rosa Klebb, a middle-aged, red-headed assassin who dispatched her prey with a poison-tipped shoe.
Next was Fiona Volpe, played by Luciana Paluzzi in 1965’s Thunderball. After a sexy romp in a bathtub, she sneers at Bond that he thinks he can seduce villains into being good girls, “but not this one!”
In the 1970s, the bad girls took a back seat, but came roaring back with Grace Jones as May Day, in 1985’s A View to a Kill, the “third wave feminist character” and a woman whose entire body was a deadly weapon.
“She is an enigma,” Funnell says of the six-foot-tall, Jamaican-American Amazon. “May Day was tough and sexy at the same time. She really challenged Bond. She beat him up and then challenged him in bed.”
With the 1995 movie GoldenEye came cigar-smoking Xenia Onatopp (future X-Men star Famke Janssen) and a sense of gender equality. Her enemies met their maker when she squeezed the life out of them between her powerful thighs.
“You have Xenia, who understands the power of her alluring nature, and she’s going up against Bond, and this is when he fights back and can kill women,” Funnell explains.
But with the newest incarnation of Bond, played by Daniel Craig, the bad girl has a lesser role, says Funnell, something she hopes director Sam Mendes will remedy with the as-yet unnamed Bond XXIII, due out in 2012.
Funnell is intrigued by the villainous lineup introduced in Quantum of Solace in 2008, the members of criminal organization Quantum. Two wealthy, middle-aged, power-mad women are among the group, she points out.
“These are women who are not stereotypes, who are not deviant,” says Funnell. “They are strong, ambitious women who are able to follow their desires. Daniel Craig is a new Bond character who is not defined by his sexuality, so maybe (the next bad girl) will be some superstrong action figure.”