No time to lose sex-appeal

Abstract

The James Bond films have had great impact in society from the first one to the most recent one (1962-2021). Much research has been conducted on them, particularly about masculinity and femininity representations. Bond habitually embodies a model of masculinity that disdains women in repetitive dynamics in each film disguised as a halo of seduction. It is identified that this masculinity model has changed in the last films towards a more sensitive and less sexist one. However, the audience’s perception of Bond’s attractiveness according to this change has not been analyzed in depth. This paper aims at studying people’s perceptions of Bond’s attractiveness as the character’s way of treating women changes, particularly in the last film No time to die. To that end, film reviews and user comments in digital platforms were revised. Then, 6 interviews have been conducted. Results show that the language of ethics is used mostly to refer to the correctness of Bond’s changes. The language of desire is mainly used to express a preference for the attractiveness of the traditional model of Bond’s masculinity. A discussion about the language of ethics and the language of desire related to the coercive discourse is made proposing further research.