Licence To Queer

Despite me being British, sport has always bored me to tears. So imagine my surprise when I found myself bawling my eyes out with pride in our sportspeople twice in one day! Perhaps their Bond-like approach to overcoming adversity had something to do with it?

Running probably saved my life. It’s saved Bond’s more than a few times as well. Here, I look back at his running career - which was not exactly impressive until Daniel Craig brought more metrosexual physicality to the character - and compare it with my own, which started soon after my first viewing of Casino Royale.

More than shifting his gender or sexual orientation, surely the boldest way to reinvent Bond would be to make him care for something other than himself. A cat, perhaps? After looking back over 70 years of books and films, I’m convinced the idea has legs (four of them).

An award-nominated voice actor and filmmaker, Kathryn Vinclaire is also a massive Bond fan who identifies as bisexual. Like many of us - even gay-identifying men like me - she has a “massive crush” on Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. We discuss her Tracy Bond awakening moment and why the world of Bond is such an open space for queer people like us.

David and Antony rev up their engines, listen to her howlin' roar and play with the boys, lavishing praise on the Top Gun sequel they didn't know they wanted. They discuss their relationships with the 1986 original, homoerotic subtexts, their opinions on Tom Cruise and the rest of the cast, the music (Gaga!) and try to work out why it just works so well from start to finish. Also, they share what it was like to experience it in 4DX; right into the Danger Zone indeed!

Moore's Bond is the most 'Camp' but what does that really mean?

Anya's not the only woman on the scene. She's got tough competition from none other than the Queen!

A hairy Russian 007, a fishy megalomaniac and and a queerly horrifying man mountain with metal teeth.

The book's General Gogol equivalent is a far less lovely character than the film's. And there goes Moneypenny being over-efficient as usual.

For me, The Spy Who Loved Me marks the point where Bond edges closest to the ‘harder’, even hypermasculine end of the spectrum, potentially making it harder for some queer viewers to identify with him. It can sometimes feel like overkill, especially when it comes to his sexual conquests, as if Bond is trying too hard to prove something, perhaps even putting on an brave show of it. This performative aspect though provides a way in for those of us who spent portions of our lives trying hard to conceal parts of ourselves. Furthermore, several stylistic choices - as we shall see - encourage us to not take Bond’s hypermasculinity seriously.