Giles, I agree with some of the points you make about
Skyfall and disagree with others. It seems to me that you have fallen in to the trap of taking fictional female characters and trying to extrapolate messages and trends that tell us about how we view women in the 21st century. Female characters are never taken as just characters, they have to be viewed in terms of something beyond themselves, everywoman, as an explicitly female character. Why can't they just be a character?
I agree with your comments about the sex
worker-whisky-murder-William Tell-cheap gag-shower surpise. It was a weak, cringe-inducing point in the
film. If nothing else, downright creepy.
However, I don’t agree that Judi Dench’s M dying and being
replaced by a man sends a bad message. She is an incredibly "strong" female
character who has been in 7 Bond films and has challenged James Bond in
every one of them. If you actually examine the situation, she died heroically, wounded in 'battle' –
she refused to just be shuffled out the door.
Female characters dying is not, in itself, sexist – women die too... As for being replaced by a man, she
was going to be replaced by either a man or a woman. So it was a man. That, in
itself, is not sexist. Every time a man replaces a woman in a job, are we supposed to view that as a defeat for the female species? If you choose to watch Judi Dench’s M in terms of "gender politics", then why not celebrate her character for being the "strong" female film icon
that dragged Bond into a more modern age. She says it herself to Bond’s face in
Goldeneye, calling him a “sexist, misogynistic dinosaur”. She’s one of the 'strongest' female characters on the screen.
As for Moneypenny, is it sexist that she decided that a
career in the field wasn’t for her? What about all the women who decide that a
career as some sort of ‘licensed to kill’ Lara Croft isn’t for them? I’m sure most
secretaries don’t see themselves as second-raters, but you clearly do. Is her ‘settling’
for a desk-job a betrayal of feminism? A capitulation to the misogynistic
forces at work in modern Britain? Or just her decision? Plus, she’s M’s secretary, not Bond’s.
So there you go. Despite the Macallan and the shower, I thought
it was fantastic.
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