British actress Helen Mirren recently told a reporter that the long-running James Bond franchise is “born out of profound sexism”.
Oh, I think we know where this is going! Wag those fingers, clutch those pearls!
Let us first acknowledge that Helen Mirren has a point. But the more precise descriptor here would be laddish. If you read any of the James Bond novels (penned by Ian Fleming), you’ll find lots of action, clear lines of good and evil, and lusty femme fatales. It doesn’t get any more laddish than that.
James Bond was created in 1953, at the height of the Cold War. That was also more than 70 years ago. The James Bond novels were never meant to be highbrow, or even middlebrow. This was male escapist fiction, from a time when men still read fiction (more on that shortly). US President John F. Kennedy was a famous fan of the series; but he wasn’t alone. Many Cold War-era men, many of them World War II veterans, read the James Bond novels as a form of fantasy fulfillment.
And what was the stuff of those fantasies? Taking down the bad guys (usually the Soviets, in the context of the Cold War), and being admired by beautiful women half one’s age.
Oh, perish forbid. How is this any different from so-called “curvy girl fiction”, which casts overweight women as the sought-after sex objects of quarterbacks, billionaires, and even princes? Is one form of fantasy fulfillment more unlikely or pernicious than the other? (Isn’t that why it’s called “fantasy fulfillment” and “escapism” to begin with?)
I don’t begrudge the readers of curvy girl fiction their fantasy fulfillment. And I don’t begrudge our Cold War grandfathers their daydreams of saving the world and bedding scores of hot babes along the way. There are far greater injustices in the world, if one wishes to object to something.
I would rather object to the now decades-long trend of men avoiding fiction altogether. No one disputes the basic facts here; it’s been verified by study after study. Men will read nonfiction (though sparingly). Few twenty-first century men read novels.
I also know this anecdotally. I can’t convince my male friends to read anything more literary than a Tim Ferriss self-help book. (And even then, they’d really prefer the audiobook version!)
This wasn’t always the case. My grandfather, who barely had a high school education, compulsively read western, crime, and adventure paperbacks. I mean…the man read fiction all the time. He kept stacks of paperbacks lying around.
I’m sure that many of my grandfather’s novels were of the male escapist variety, too. Helen Mirren might have described them as “born out of profound sexism”. How feminist do you think the average Zane Grey novel was, after all?
But what she really means by that is: attuned to common male fantasies, relating not just to the opposite sex, but also to the sorts of derring-do that have long excited the male imagination. The kind of adventures that men used to find in novels, but now search for in professional sports and video games.
Why do so few men read fiction nowadays? Maybe it’s because most fiction published nowadays bores most male readers to tears. It isn’t written or published with them in mind, and they know it.
I repeat: my grandfather was an avid fiction reader. So was John F. Kennedy. Have men changed? Or has the publishing industry changed?
-ET