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A review by kleonora
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
1.0
Verdict: I can’t. Honestly I just can’t.
When I last read Bond it was in Casino Royale where he spent equal amounts of time playing a card game and getting his nuts kicked in. As “Goldfinger” begins he’s back at the cards and his nuts have (sadly) recovered. Following a chance encounter with the titular villain Bond’s officially put on his trail. Bond and Goldfinger then play golf, have dinner and go on a drive through Europe. Bond’s nuts have another (un)fortunate escape and then he’s hired by Goldfinger as office administrator for the Crime of the Century. It goes as you would expect and Bond ends up with Pussy Galore (capitalisation optional).
Really, the story is beside the point. This is not my opinion, it is a literary analysis. The plot serves to move Bond from place to place and person to person where he can sneer or leer over everyone with an occasional break for golf and a poem about cars. Watches. Whiskey. You know, man stuff.
But I’m not going to beat this book down because the digressions bore me (honestly though; reading about golf). Ian Flemming cannot have known my personal proclivities at the time of writing and if he’s fascinated by written descriptions of two men playing 18 holes or dealing cards or shifting gears in a car he’s the author and it’s his right. It’s just a shame I could find nothing in this book to divert my attention away from the shrieking misogyny, racism and homophobia of our titular hero.
The misogyny begins on a foundational level. Women are rarely referred to by name, even when mentioned in a group with named men. They are NEVER referred to as women, only ‘girls’. That got very grating very quickly. There seems to be something of a pattern to it. Pussy Galore actually gets a fair few proper namings while a baddie (though maybe that has something to do with the name) until ::SPOILER:: she throws her lot in with Bond and then immediately she becomes “the girl”. Furthermore, both of Bond’s conquests in this book devolve into ‘childlike’ behaviour, which moves the charges from insulting to gross.
And Tilly. Poor Tilly. Tilly is not dressed for seduction, Bond tells us. She is merely wearing stockings, a mini skirt, corset belt and silk blouse. We are then treated to a description of the various methods of interaction between her breasts and said blouse (to whit; taut). Thanks Bond. He asks her to buy him lunch, which apparently initiates a complex “master/slave” negotiation of the eyes between them. If you’re following this logic please keep it to yourself as we probably won’t be friends. Possibly Tilly is a spy as she has the incredible “ability to walk unaided”. I wish I were paraphrasing.
Any way, it turns out Tilly is a big ol lesbian and is killed pretty much as a direct consequence of this. Bond’s words upon the occasion of her murder; “Silly bitch. Didn’t care much for men.” Aesop, eat your heart out. We seem to be segueing into the ‘homophobic’ element of this book so let’s just tackle that head on. Bond certainly does.
We are treated to an extensive inner monologue where he decides homosexual men and women aren’t actually attracted to the same sex, rather the emancipation of women has lead to a confusion of gender roles of which “homosexuality” is the direct result.
Pussy Galore is also a lesbian but only ‘cause she was raped as a child. True to Bond’s hypothesis, she was merely confusing a distaste for incestuous sexual violence with a distaste for men in general. We can only assume this condition was exacerbated by practising her right to vote. Luckily, observing the manly way in which Bond took notes at a meeting and rode a train before being rescued by co-workers cleared her confusion. Hump the gay away, hallelujah.
Which brings us to Koreans. They are mutant sub-humans held in distaste by even their employer. They eat cats and rape English women because they are Korean and that is what Korean do. This is completely self-evident to Bond. I’m pretty sure reading this book is a hate crime in Seoul.
Am I a humourless harpy? Am I making too much of Bond, a brand, a bit of fun, a product of its time? No. Shut up. I read Casino Royale a few years ago and came away with a fairly good opinion of it (Which is the highest opinion anyone not an ardent baccarat devotee can hold of the book). I remember it being more low-key than expected; Bond being more of a fallible everyman. I don’t recall dry-heaving whenever women (pardon me, “girls”) make appearances. There was once a better Bond. As the for the ‘of its time’ excuse, John LeCarre was writing parallel to Fleming and, while no one is going to mistake him for Germaine Greer anytime soon, he could at least conceive of a world wherein females come out the other side of puberty and humanity extends beyond Caucasians.
I’m sorry but if you enjoy or even excuse this book you are in too deep. This book is an ossification of the chauvinistic white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that has its tiny orange fingers in every pie of awfulness appearing in your news feed and if I sound like a Guardian reader it’s because I am. Possibly there was a time in my adolescence, when the world seemed to be getting safer and fairer and generally progressing in the direction Sesame Street had prepared me for, when this sort of thing could have stuck me as amusing. But it’s 2017 and I’m not laughing.
When I last read Bond it was in Casino Royale where he spent equal amounts of time playing a card game and getting his nuts kicked in. As “Goldfinger” begins he’s back at the cards and his nuts have (sadly) recovered. Following a chance encounter with the titular villain Bond’s officially put on his trail. Bond and Goldfinger then play golf, have dinner and go on a drive through Europe. Bond’s nuts have another (un)fortunate escape and then he’s hired by Goldfinger as office administrator for the Crime of the Century. It goes as you would expect and Bond ends up with Pussy Galore (capitalisation optional).
Really, the story is beside the point. This is not my opinion, it is a literary analysis. The plot serves to move Bond from place to place and person to person where he can sneer or leer over everyone with an occasional break for golf and a poem about cars. Watches. Whiskey. You know, man stuff.
But I’m not going to beat this book down because the digressions bore me (honestly though; reading about golf). Ian Flemming cannot have known my personal proclivities at the time of writing and if he’s fascinated by written descriptions of two men playing 18 holes or dealing cards or shifting gears in a car he’s the author and it’s his right. It’s just a shame I could find nothing in this book to divert my attention away from the shrieking misogyny, racism and homophobia of our titular hero.
The misogyny begins on a foundational level. Women are rarely referred to by name, even when mentioned in a group with named men. They are NEVER referred to as women, only ‘girls’. That got very grating very quickly. There seems to be something of a pattern to it. Pussy Galore actually gets a fair few proper namings while a baddie (though maybe that has something to do with the name) until ::SPOILER:: she throws her lot in with Bond and then immediately she becomes “the girl”. Furthermore, both of Bond’s conquests in this book devolve into ‘childlike’ behaviour, which moves the charges from insulting to gross.
And Tilly. Poor Tilly. Tilly is not dressed for seduction, Bond tells us. She is merely wearing stockings, a mini skirt, corset belt and silk blouse. We are then treated to a description of the various methods of interaction between her breasts and said blouse (to whit; taut). Thanks Bond. He asks her to buy him lunch, which apparently initiates a complex “master/slave” negotiation of the eyes between them. If you’re following this logic please keep it to yourself as we probably won’t be friends. Possibly Tilly is a spy as she has the incredible “ability to walk unaided”. I wish I were paraphrasing.
Any way, it turns out Tilly is a big ol lesbian and is killed pretty much as a direct consequence of this. Bond’s words upon the occasion of her murder; “Silly bitch. Didn’t care much for men.” Aesop, eat your heart out. We seem to be segueing into the ‘homophobic’ element of this book so let’s just tackle that head on. Bond certainly does.
We are treated to an extensive inner monologue where he decides homosexual men and women aren’t actually attracted to the same sex, rather the emancipation of women has lead to a confusion of gender roles of which “homosexuality” is the direct result.
Pussy Galore is also a lesbian but only ‘cause she was raped as a child. True to Bond’s hypothesis, she was merely confusing a distaste for incestuous sexual violence with a distaste for men in general. We can only assume this condition was exacerbated by practising her right to vote. Luckily, observing the manly way in which Bond took notes at a meeting and rode a train before being rescued by co-workers cleared her confusion. Hump the gay away, hallelujah.
Which brings us to Koreans. They are mutant sub-humans held in distaste by even their employer. They eat cats and rape English women because they are Korean and that is what Korean do. This is completely self-evident to Bond. I’m pretty sure reading this book is a hate crime in Seoul.
Am I a humourless harpy? Am I making too much of Bond, a brand, a bit of fun, a product of its time? No. Shut up. I read Casino Royale a few years ago and came away with a fairly good opinion of it (Which is the highest opinion anyone not an ardent baccarat devotee can hold of the book). I remember it being more low-key than expected; Bond being more of a fallible everyman. I don’t recall dry-heaving whenever women (pardon me, “girls”) make appearances. There was once a better Bond. As the for the ‘of its time’ excuse, John LeCarre was writing parallel to Fleming and, while no one is going to mistake him for Germaine Greer anytime soon, he could at least conceive of a world wherein females come out the other side of puberty and humanity extends beyond Caucasians.
I’m sorry but if you enjoy or even excuse this book you are in too deep. This book is an ossification of the chauvinistic white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that has its tiny orange fingers in every pie of awfulness appearing in your news feed and if I sound like a Guardian reader it’s because I am. Possibly there was a time in my adolescence, when the world seemed to be getting safer and fairer and generally progressing in the direction Sesame Street had prepared me for, when this sort of thing could have stuck me as amusing. But it’s 2017 and I’m not laughing.