Double O agencies: Femininity, post-feminism and the female spy in Casino Royale

Tincknell, Estella

Abstract

Casino Royale was widely marketed and received as a 're-booting' of the Bond franchise, with a concomitant reinvention of the Bond girl for a post-feminist world. This essay critiques this claim, identifying important continuities between the film's systematic destruction of the charater of the initially self-reliant female spy, Vesper Lynd, and the long tradition of the threatening and sexually untrustworthy female double agent in the triller genre. The essay explores the cultural history of the figure of the female agent, and considers the threat she poses both to the security of masculinity as a subject position and to masculine agency in its social sense.

• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2010
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale
• ISBN: 9781906660208
• Keywords: Post-feminism, film, Bond
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/978869
• Publisher URL: http://www.wallflowerpress.co.uk