We all have our secrets: the ‘other’ song of No Time To Die
Billie Eilish’s title song is not the only tune with a starring role in Craig’s final outing. Although this news has been overlooked in English-speaking media, the film prominently features a song from an artist whose own life of glamour mixed with sadness attracts legions of French-speaking gay fans. Queer Bond fan and Sexuality Studies graduate Läne Bonertz dissects how the song perfectly complements the ‘othered’ world of 007 and considers how its inclusion could foreshadow the fates of No Time To Die’s characters.
Please note that this article contains very minor spoilers (title of song, name of artist, where it allegedly appears in the film) but no plot points. Any speculation is pure conjecture.
The single element of No Time to Die that has me waiting most with bated breath is the news that “Dans la ville endormie”, a song by Italian chanteuse extraordinaire Dalida will be featured in the film. Largely overlooked, I admit I may not have noticed this detail myself if it weren’t for an Instagram post from Dalida’s estate, advertising a new vinyl release of the track in celebration of its use in No Time to Die. Translated to “In the city that sleeps”, the song has already taken on a new meaning for me living in Montréal, Canada, as the likelihood of moving into a fifth month of a province-mandated, evening curfew is on the horizon. Dalida’s influence and lasting mark on popular culture far too often goes unrecognized in strictly English speaking circles. However, her flair for drama, camp, and her illustrious – albeit devastating – personal life has solidified her as a queer icon of a certain generation. What might Dalida’s musical presence in No Time to Die signify and what are the connections between her, James Bond and the pursuit of love and happiness in the queer experience.
007 et les divas
As a franchise, Bond has never shied away from it’s appreciation and incorporation of women revered as gay icons; Tina Turner, Patti Labelle, Shirley Bassey, and Madonna being just a few whose voices have provided the soundtrack to many a Bond escapade. Dalida joins the rank in a way that is entirely unique; recorded in 1968, “Dans la vie endormie” is a song with a legacy that has existed long before its inclusion in No Time To Die. That said, Dalida’s impact as a phenomena is easy to look over by English-speaking audiences, despite her being one of the best-selling recording artists of all time and performing in eleven different languages.
In his exploration of “gay male culture”, queer theorist and professor David Halperin refers to Dalida by name, stating, “Dalida does not signify much to American gay men, despite being a doomed and tragic personage reminiscent of Judy Garland, and an equally classic figure in the eyes of many French gay men”. The “gay male culture” that Halperin theorizes hinges on the idea that certain icons, professions, and customs have become synonymous with gay male identity – regardless of whether gay men identify or engage with these artefacts and practices on an individual level. Halperin asserts “a culture is not the same thing as a collection of individuals”; although this theory and identification may be prevalent, it is no way meant to be taken universally and cannot account entirely for individual experience. It’s important to distinguish that this idea is not meant to hinge on stereotype, but the frequency in which queer people – and in this context, gay men – may engage with certain aspects of popular culture and develop customs that may be more familiar to queer people. Again, it is not to assert that every queer person has that relationship to the culture. Nonetheless, it is this very idea that allows so many queer Bond fans to appreciate, project, and infer queerness from a franchise that is often reduced to a celebration of bygone heterosexual machismo and misogyny. Our ability to read Bond as camp, and an exaggerated performance of gender and sexuality, partially depends on other aspects of popular culture we’ve already labeled as such – films, artists, and innuendo that speaks to a generalized notion of queer fascination and experience.
“Gay male culture” and, by extension, popular culture more generally, can exist in pockets. It is influenced by language, location, and era, among other things. Drag artists in places like France, Québec and Italy interpret Dalida’s vast catalogue nightly. However, you’d be unlikely to find a drag queen doing one of her disco hits in an Anglophone venue.
Mourir peut attendre
[French title for No Time To Die]
This isn’t the first time the Daniel Craig era has turned to the pillars of French music for peak dramatic effect. Charles Trenet’s 1938 track “Boum!” plays ominously over the loud speakers of Silva’s island in the moments leading up to Séverine’s death in Skyfall; a quick glance at the translated lyrics emphasise the unnerving quality of the song’s presence in the centre of the desolate, abandoned city.
Where “Dans la vie endormie” will appear in No Time to Die is not confirmed, although Dalida’s brother told radio station RTL: “The song is used [for] 2-3 minutes. It takes place in France, of course. So now, I don't remember if it is on the radio, or in a specific place." Wherever it appears and however it is used, the parallels between Bond and Dalida’s personal life offer a nuanced and complex look at societal constructions of happiness as they relate to queer experience.
Although she is most recognised for her many hits in French, Dalida was raised in Egypt to Italian parents; her unique accent was a defining characteristic of her catalogue. An outsider from the very beginning, she was teased and labeled ugly by her peers, a consequence of an eye infection and subsequent surgeries that left her wearing glasses as a child. Her home life brought up traumas of a different kind; her father became abusive after having spent four years in a prison camp. Though she was able to trudge onward and not be limited by these earlier experiences, it would be the start of a life marked by tragedy that followed every triumph. She emerged the swan after winning Miss Egypt in 1954, which would soon be the start of a dynamic singing career that spanned more than thirty years. Her tracks varied across countless genres, from the sweeping ballads that introduced her full force in the 1950s to the disco dance floor anthems that defined the latter part of her reign. Her lyrical content dripped in melodrama, tackling themes of romance, death, and nostalgia with candour, lending to a pervasive melancholy that weaved itself into even her most upbeat tracks.
While her professional success knew no bounds, Dalida’s personal life was rife with tragedy. She talked openly in many interviews of her desire for love and family. However, the suicides of three of her most prominent lovers and an abortion that left her unable to have children of her own left an impact that culminated in her own suicide in 1987. Dalida’s passing does not detract from her resiliency in the face of adversity, and is one of many reasons why so many gay men embraced her with a fierce affinity. While she was awarded accolades and luxuries in excess, it was her success and alienation from a “normal life” that left some of her most fundamental desires unfulfilled and out of reach.
Bond’s life is similarly one of decadence; the exotic locales, expensive clothing, fine food and drink, and abundance of women is integral to the appeal of the Bond franchise. Despite her personal tribulations, Dalida always maintained a level of glamour one could only describe as astronomical; beautiful hair, gowns, and the handsome men that adorned her in live performances were all part of her appeal. Having even a rudimentary sense of Dalida’s life story allows us to see the obvious similarities with Daniel Craig’s Bond.
Nous avons tout le temps du monde
[We have all the time in the world]
Though Tracy’s impact on Bond’s life exists separate from the Daniel Craig universe, her name is often brought up in Bond circles next to Vesper Lynd as the only two women with whom Bond has ever really fallen in love. Both women were met with untimely ends, so as not to mess with the tried and true formula of the Bond “lone wolf” mentality, free from the suggested banality of domesticity at the expense of his unresolved grief. Madeleine’s story arc is still to be fully revealed, but her presence in the film suggests that she may be his third great love. If the trailer for No Time to Die is any indication though, it is possible Madeleine may meet a similar fate. At the very least, her “secret” may be enough for Bond to retreat back into his aversion to intimacy and prevent the two from having a true “happily ever after”. Three is a heavy number for both Bond and Dalida, as it represents a willingness to be vulnerable that offered nothing but pain in return. It also bodes (ill?) to mention that Craig’s Bond (born April 13th 1968 according to canon) is only one year shy of Dalida at the time of her passing – his fifty-three to her fifty-four. [Although if the film is frozen pre-pandemic, in 2019, when it was originally supposed to be released, this puts makes the character a couple of years younger].
For many queer people, loss, loneliness, and unhappiness looms over us merely because of who we are. Rejection, violence, and incarceration are a part of our history and continue to be a reality for many. Insofar as traditional milestones of happiness and success, such as marriage and family, were constructed and understood within a heterosexual ideal, queer people can be understood as effectively excluded from such aspirations. Even those who achieve either or both continue to be met with societal scrutiny, as they can be construed as being only an approximation of a reality that was never built with them in mind. It is not that our own path as queer people does not bring us feelings of joy, but that it has been firmly asserted that our choices as queer people are labelled unhappy because they defy heteronormativity.
Queer theorist Sara Ahmed explores the conflict that exists between queerness and notions of happiness in her book, The Promise of Happiness. For Ahmed, it is the very “expression of unhappiness about unhappiness” and that “happiness directs us toward certain objects as being necessary for a good life” that make queer folk “unhappy”. She suggests that there are very clearly defined, rigid measures in society that signal to others that we are happy; things such as a monogamous partner of the opposite sex, a family, and a conventional career that lends to a harmonious balance of work and home. It is not that we as queer people are not fulfilled in the absence of these things on an individual level; it is the idea that our path causes unhappiness to others for being unconventional, which in turn places an unavoidable burden of guilt, loss, and “unhappiness” on ourselves. It functions on the idea that even though our choices as queer people make us happy (the feeling), we are forever deprived of true happiness (the fulfillment) in that our formula for that fulfillment causes disappointment on a more societal level.
Referring to narrative depictions of queer life, Ahmed remarks that many queer depictions reflect that such “stories do not have a happy ending, as such an ending would “make homosexuality attractive”. In short, heterosexuality is synonymous with happiness as queerness is with unhappiness. Consider that most films representing queer relationships lack the positive resolution guaranteed of most works centred on heterosexual romance – the disparity is clear. For Bond, the ongoing narrative that links the films of the Craig era together have yet to offer a sense of resolution or triumph, adding a similarly queer element to his own journey.
Bond’s success as a franchise heavily depends on a suspension of reality; it is larger than life, but his role as a tragic hero warns that it is not meant to be something to truly aspire to. We’re often granted a closing scene with a woman in the arms of Bond, but can we really equate it to a happy ending? There’s a reason why so many Bond Girls are relegated to a “one and done” place in Bond history. His body count in bed may be enviable, but his inability to retire that behaviour omits him from any profound emotional connections – a warning to be heeded. Dalida’s life was not a work of fiction, but her success as a woman and subsequent loneliness was seen by some as a cautionary tale to ambitious women listening to her music in the 50s and 60s. Her career was the centre of her universe, whether she intended or not, keeping her from the “happiness” that comes with love and family.
Yes, both James Bond and Dalida are understood as mostly heterosexual; but it is their exceptional circumstances that remove them from accessing those pillars of “happiness” defined by Ahmed. As Bond quips in Thunderball, “you can’t win them all”, and it is the decadence of his profession – a glamour that appeals to queer and heterosexual fans alike - that ultimately deprives him of more traditional aspirations of love and family. It is the absence of these features of heteronormativity – these indicators of happiness – that allows us to contextualize both their experiences as queer.
‘Et la vie continuera’
(‘And life will continue’ - song performed by Dalida)
What then, are queer people to do, if the heart of who we are leads to unhappiness? If queerness is the impenetrable barrier to happiness, then it is also the tool that permits us to redefine sadness. It is our ability to find camp, humour, and glamour in even the most devastating of circumstances. It is our sadness that offers a different sort of joy that is inspiring and empowering, a reframing of happiness that recognises and defines itself from queerness instead of heteronormativity. There is agency in recognising that the “promise of happiness” for most will be unattainable in the same way for us as queer people and not be defeated by that realisation.
The very definition of something being camp or kitschy is the very way in which it defies convention and normalcy, almost to the point of absurdity. It is markedly different from what is expected or respected. Part of its appeal is that it can be a metaphor for the darker aspects of growing up and being queer, albeit a metaphor that realises that difference through glamour and humour instead of a more sombre conflict with the rest of society and its expectations.
Humour combined with glamour can be a powerful and cathartic means of coping with tragedy and loss, and has been an empowering, yet jarring, feature of the sort of ‘gay male’ or queer cultures I mentioned earlier. It is jarring in that both are contrary to more socially accepted (read: heterosexual) responses and methods of coping for such devastatingly intense emotions. Looking at queer cultural responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Halperin provides many examples of art that could be interpreted by many as heartless, vulgar, and deeply insensitive by lampooning a situation that carried a lot of trauma and devastation. Yet, these were pieces that emerged directly from people who were living with HIV, people who lost friends and lovers, and people who were simultaneously blamed for the virus as a “gay disease” and most prone to infection. In his example, Halperin points out that “many social minorities fashion a shared identity and a sense of in-group solidarity by extracting from the history of their persecution a number of defining tragic episodes and by transforming those episodes into sources of communal self-assertion”. There is a shared trauma for queer people that, when acknowledged and confronted, can empower individually. Instead of surrendering to those feelings, camp as a coping method actively confronts what is unbearable and – even if for a fleeting moment – renders it powerless. It is to - quite literally - laugh in the face of danger and adversity. It takes the ugliest moments in one’s life and finds a sort of brilliance or irony in absolute sorrow. We may be unhappy from society’s view, but it can grant us a resiliency and ability to cope in a way that recognises queer trauma as a tool of perseverance.
Bond and Dalida’s experience functions on a more individual level; isolated by their experiences, the responsibility for self-assertion and expression is entirely their own. That said, it is their ways of coping with isolation and tragedy that make them relatable and fosters an allegiance with queer audiences.
Mourir sur scène
(Dying on stage)
Towards the end of her life and career, Dalida’s outfits were at their most outlandish and flamboyant. Sequins, tassels, big hair, and experimental couture were part of her mass appeal; yet, this may have been when she was at her saddest. Some of her most dance-centred tracks dealt with mortality head-on, foreshadowing her own death. “Mourir sur scène” (translated: “To die onstage”) expresses her desire to determine when and how she dies, to create one final spectacle that is the pinnacle of camp morbidity. Oddly, the recorded English version of the song was rewritten as “Born to Sing”, with lyrics that expressed she was “born to sing forever” and omits any mention of death. Another track, “Gigi in Paradisco”, tells the story of Gigi, a man who dies and goes to a disco heaven. In this track, death is a reprieve, a thing of beauty. Death and grief were a constant in Dalida’s life; yet, she was able to redefine her relationship with it through her art by choosing to create a beauty and celebration in spite of her sadness.
Bond’s response may not be as overt as disco and sequins, but humour is often used by Bond to bring levity to the violence and perilous situations he faces. It is a formula that weaves its way throughout the series, as Bond confronts danger with one-liners beginning with Dr. No (“I think they were on their way to a funeral”) up and into the Craig era (“I’ve got a little itch down there. Would you mind?”). Such quips cut the tension of these gruesome moments, almost as if to reassure the audience that it is okay for them to be entertained by the violence onscreen. If such lines were uttered in any real-life situation, the response would certainly bear more consequence. Recognising that humour is instinctive of Bond in these moments, regardless of who is watching, shows that Bond is acutely aware of the chaos and tragedy that is bound to follow by nature of his occupation. It may be “all in a day’s work” for Bond, but to any “normal” person, the ability to move on with the same cool ease would be a more daunting task.
Bond recognises that being 007 prevents him from normalised constructions of happiness and often invites tragedy. It is this self-awareness and willingness to find lightness in these dire circumstances that allows him to dust off, adjust his cufflinks, and make the swift transition from stone cold killer to globetrotting playboy. He may be deprived of conventional notions of happiness, but it doesn’t hinder him from revelling in the indulgences his life does allow. He might even appreciate these moments even more than “happier” folk, as the contrast that manifests from one moment to the next between the happy and sad are more pronounced. Even for Bond, it is his exclusion from mainstream constructions of happiness that allow him to redefine his unhappiness and derive moments of joy in the face of tragedy.
While we often focus on the celebratory elements of the Bond franchise and the icons we adore, there is an equally empowering element in our consumption when we recognise the other ways in which media speaks to our lived experiences: Joy is not devoid of sorrow, company is not a stranger of loneliness, and indulgence does not mean we don’t also have to live without.
Society can impose the idea that happiness is to be pursued, with a marked, deeply heterocentric, straight path by which to follow. We deviate from that route as queer people by the very essence of who we are; external pressures of how to live and what to aspire to are the burden of unhappiness that prevents us from achieving this reality. However, queer people have the ability to challenge unhappiness by confronting and redefining the experiences that are meant to hinder us. By centring queerness, new coping mechanisms and cultures are able to emerge that are capable of evoking joy in spite of the limitations and gatekeeping that society may impose upon us. Camp and glamour are among those techniques, developing cultures and uniting many people through such shared experiences. When that paradox of beauty or humour finds itself in tandem with tragedy or pain in popular culture, those characters, films, and artists are often adopted into queer cultures as symbolic of queer experience. Bond and Dalida resonate with queer people in that their circumstances capture that negotiation of happiness and unhappiness. Bond’s assignments show him the darkest sides of mankind, but offer him experiences and luxuries impossible to fathom. Even when his life and body are pushed to the absolute limits of survival, there is space for humour that allows him to persevere. Dalida’s life was rife with loss and loneliness, but her legacy is also one of unrivalled flair, capturing audiences with her honesty, allure, and spectacle. Understanding Dalida’s impact as a queer icon and the parallels between her and Bond make the presence of “Dans la vie endormie” in No Time to Die more than worth the wait.
Läne Bonertz is a Bond fan living in Montréal, Canada. With a degree in Sexuality Studies, Läne’s work often explores the intersection of language and sexuality. You can find his nostalgic take on all things Bond on Instagram @liveandletlane
