‘What DO you do?’ Asexual coding in the James Bond universe

“It might sound strange for an asexual person to be a Bond fan, given that sexual attraction is such a big part of the character’s world…” Fenna Geelhoed sets asexual representation in her sights and targets the best and worst examples from the Bond series.

I was talking with a friend a while back about my first time seeing a Bond film in the cinema as a twelve year old girl – it was 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies – and how it catapulted me into an overnight obsession with everything James Bond.

“Was it because of Pierce Brosnan?” my friend asked me, smiling knowingly. But I frowned back at her in confusion.

“No,” I said, “it was because some guy fired a bazooka and the thing went straight into Bond’s car and out the back end!”

Sure, Brosnan is handsome. I could tell that. Out of all the Bond actors he is maybe the most traditionally ‘pretty’, as far as Western beauty standards go. He’s also a good actor – I liked the way he played Bond, glimpses of vulnerability behind a nineties cool exterior. But sexy? I don’t think I was ever attracted to Brosnan’s Bond the way other viewers were.

Nor to any other Bond, for that matter.

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I have a hard time talking about my asexuality (or demisexuality, if I’m being precise). Not because I’m ashamed of it, but simply because I don’t think about it all too often. Sexual attraction is not a big part of my life, so what is there to say about something that isn’t there? I also don’t experience a lot of judgement from other people. To most of the outside world, I pass as a straight but single woman, and those that know me better never make me feel like there’s something wrong with me.

Asexual pride flag

The only times I’m confronted with my asexuality is when I consume media, and even then I usually don’t notice. I suppose on paper it might sound strange for an asexual person to be a Bond fan, given that sexual attraction is such a big part of the character’s world and I can’t relate to that very much. But I’ve never thought about it. Bond experiences sexual attraction, but so do 99.9% of the other adult fictional characters I know. Does Bond experience sexual attraction more than those other fictional characters? Of course. But I don’t know what a normal amount of sexual attraction is anyway, so it’s all foreign to me.

In case you’re not sure of the terminology…

Asexuality is an umbrella term for a number of experiences and orientations. It’s a spectrum: some people don’t experience sexual attraction at all, some people only experience it sometimes (greysexual or demisexual), some people are sex-repulsed, others merely indifferent to it. Some people are also aromantic – they don’t experience romantic attraction – others do and so they might engage in romantic relationships. Allosexual refers to people who do not identify as asexual—that is, people who regularly experience sexual attraction.

There’s simply too much to talk about here, but if you want to know more The Asexual Visibility & Education Network (AVEN) is a good place to start.

The moments that might actually stick out to me are those where there is asexual representation onscreen or on the page. But that doesn’t happen a lot – in fact, one of the only characters I remember that is overtly stated as being asexual comes from the Bond canon: Donovan ‘Red’ Grant, in the 1957 From Russia With Love novel.

Red Grant, as drawn by George Almond

Fleming writes that Grant is diagnosed as an asexual by doctors and psychologists, echoing the antiquated (but still frighteningly recent) idea that asexuality is a mental illness. To Grant, sexual attraction is ‘quite incomprehensible’. I might have related to that experience, were it not for the fact that it’s used as the reason for why he doesn’t also rape the girls he violently murders on a regular basis. Grant is a serial killer, a psychopath who experiences violent urges every full moon and only ‘feels better’ when he fulfils his gory fantasies. Nothing about that has ever made me feel ‘seen.’

That is of course historically the trouble with asexual representation: the negative stereotype that asexual people are somehow inhuman, cold, sick. (The masseuse who regularly tends to Grant experiences revulsion and wonders if it’s because he never once tries to sexually harass her – insert eye roll at Ian Fleming here). In the film Thunderball (1965) the SPECTRE henchman Vargas is characterised similarly:

“Of course. Vargas does not drink... does not smoke... does not make love. What do you do, Vargas?” – Emilio Largo, Thunderball (1965)

Lumping Vargas’s abstinence from sex in with his abstinence from other human pleasures like alcohol and cigarettes seems to be another way of saying that we can’t really consider him to be alive.

Vargas is never actually called ‘asexual’ however, not by Largo and certainly not by himself. Maybe he’s not asexual at all! It is only stated that he doesn’t have sex, which is not the same thing as being asexual (plenty of asexual people have sex, plenty of allosexual people don’t – both for various reasons.) Who knows, maybe Vargas wants to drink and smoke and shag all the live long day, but he doesn’t allow himself to do so (perhaps in some sort of attempt to keep his mind sharp for his assassin duties?). It’s impossible to say without an inner monologue.

T-shirt design by Shayla Miller and produced by Spy Hards Podcast

However, the implication is certainly there: Vargas is asexually coded. We’re meant to understand that he doesn’t experience sexual attraction because he never displays certain behaviours, such as having sex or gazing at someone lustfully. But by that logic, isn’t there a whole plethora of characters in the James Bond films who are asexual? Isn’t CIA agent Chuck Lee from A View To A Kill (1985) asexual, since we never see him dip his sunglasses at a smokin’ hot piece of eye candy? Isn’t Desmond Llewelyn’s Q asexual, when for the 35 years we spend watching him, his only concern seems to be technology? But then, we only see a small part of a character’s life on screen – are these people actually asexual or do they just happen to be focused on very different things at the specific time the story takes place?

Again, my question is: how do you talk about something that is not there?

Perhaps Vargas isn’t asexually coded because of what he doesn’t do: have sex – but because of what he does do: in this case, abstain from sex. It’s a subtle difference, but it may be key: at least from the latter we can start to wonder about a character’s motivations and whether a lack of sexual attraction could be among them.

So are there any other such asexually coded characters in the Bond films? And are they all murderous villains or can I find some asexual good guys too? Well…

Hugo Drax

At first glance, Hugo Drax from Moonraker (1979) appears to be just one of many Bond villains who spends his time onscreen focusing solely on the completion of his evil plan and not on who he might like to sleep with. But to me he stands out, exactly because of the nature of that evil plan. He wants to eradicate all human life on Earth and then have it repopulated by a small group of his choosing, to create a ‘super race.’ He has selected several heterosexual pairs of impossibly beautiful people and he means for them to have lots of sex up in his space station.

It therefore feels like a conscious choice that he doesn’t partake in this arrangement himself. He is not part of such a pair, he doesn’t seem concerned with passing on his own genes to benefit his master race. Perhaps he’s only sexually attracted to men? I can’t rule out gay sex happening on the space station as well, of course. But then the film seems to take such pains to frame Drax as a wannabe God (a bearded man with a pet snake in his garden who goes to live in the sky) – and He may be the most famous asexual character of all.

God is also not human so, coupled with all the genocide, unfortunately we do fall into the negative stereotype again. It will take a lot more positive representation to combat it – let’s see if I can find any trace of that in the Bond films.

Paloma

CIA contact Paloma sure makes an impression during her brief appearance in No Time To Die (2021), and not just because of her incredible feats of ass-kicking in a slinky dress and heels. It isn’t her utter focus on the job (barely even stopping to have a vodka martini), but her reactions to James Bond’s innuendo that give me something to think about.

As Paloma leads him down the back stairway of their meeting spot and into a dark and quiet wine cellar, Bond asks: “Is this your room?” and she looks at him like she doesn’t even know what he’s implying – it’s like her brain is incapable of going there. “It’s a wine cellar,” she says, seemingly almost wanting to add: “Are you stupid or something?” It reminded me of the many times certain conversations have gone completely over my head because sex is something I think about so little I barely recognise the language.

When Paloma then proceeds to unbutton Bond’s shirt in preparation for a costume change and he quips that they should maybe get to know each other first, there is almost a flash of horror across her face as she realises her behaviour could be interpreted sexually. Even though she has already admitted that she’s a little scatter-brained due to her nervousness, to me this doesn’t look like embarrassment over making a faux-pas during her first big assignment. There’s a certain sound Ana de Armas produces here that nearly rings as disgust. She’s suddenly picturing what Bond is picturing and she doesn’t like it. “Oh, no, no, no,” she says, backing off and waving her hands as if to say: “No, thank you.”

She again seems oblivious to the presumption that there might be any sexual attraction on her part when she starts to look on as Bond undresses – he has to stop and ask her to turn around. Maybe she’s just gay, you might say. But there is another interesting moment during the SPECTRE bunga-bunga party where she watches a man sensuously kiss a woman’s hand. Paloma goes: “Wow…” – she seems slightly bewildered by the scene. Is this because she’s not used to seeing this sort of behaviour in public (she has however implied that she’s been to parties like this before)? Or could she be bewildered by the whole concept of wanting to kiss someone’s hand like that?

Paloma really only spends about fifteen minutes on screen, so it’s difficult to draw hard conclusions. But interpreting her as asexual would make me feel pretty good. She proves that her sexuality is not relevant to her worth, both as a professional (“You were excellent,” Bond tells her with genuine respect when he leaves) and as a person (she’s a joy to be around). To that I say: “¡Salud!”

Melina Havelock

I love For Your Eyes Only (1981). It’s my favourite of the Moore films, and maybe part of that is because it has a very non-sexual romance in it. James Bond and Melina Havelock don’t even kiss on screen until their very last scene together. Of course, for much of the film Melina’s mind is occupied with avenging her parents’ horrific murder. Bond has the good sense not to come on to her during this fragile time. He seems content to function as her emotional support (be it a tad patronising at times) and because of that, Melina has the wherewithal to recognize a friend in him. By the time the driver of their horse-drawn sled muses “Amore, amore,” when he looks at the pair, she may indeed be starting to develop romantic feelings.

But she’s still not in a rush to get physical. Could she be on the asexual spectrum? When she sees Bond leaving the Corfu casino with another woman, how many different ways can we read her eyes? Is she merely angry, hurt? Or could there be even more at play because Countess Lisl is willing and able to give Bond what Melina herself is not?

Her final scene with Bond is the most interesting to me. They’re smooching on the deck of her boat late at night and she stops him to say: “You know what I’d like?” Bond does a classic Roger Moore eyebrow raise. “I can’t imagine,” he answers, playing coy. And then she says: “A moonlight swim,” which takes Bond by surprise. When she drops her robe and tells him: “For your eyes only, darling,” it implies this is the first time he’s seeing her naked. What’s more, that line could potentially have a double meaning! Not only as in: ‘You are special to me,’ but also as in: ‘Look, but don’t touch.’ In my mind it seems perfectly plausible that Bond and Melina went for a moonlight skinny dip as the film’s credits rolled and then after that… nothing else happened. That Melina would have indulged Bond, but only up to a point: because some asexual people simply don’t want to have sex, no matter how much they’re in love with their partner. And so that would be shown to be okay – the romantic relationship can still be happy and fulfilling (even though, as Bond fans, we know that James Bond will probably be single again by the time the next adventure rolls around).

Of course, I’d be surprised if any of this was truly intentional on the part of the filmmakers. But an asexual read of Melina would certainly prove the negative stereotypes wrong: throughout the film she is nothing but human – devastated, furious, scared, compassionate.

That’s the kind of representation I would like to see in the franchise moving forward.

Would I ever want to see an asexual Bond?

I’m not sure. It depends on what it would look like exactly: would he still have sex? Would he lean more demisexual? I’m all for trying new things with the character (gay Bond? Bi Bond? Pansexual Bond? Yes!) but without any of his trademark sexual appetite, Bond might not really feel like Bond anymore. Besides, wouldn’t stripping him of his sexual attraction to others move him closer to the negative stereotype? He is an assassin after all, and he can be a pretty cold bastard. I think I would rather just have the world around him show a few more shades of ace.

Now that I feel a little better equipped to read the code, I think this time around I’d notice.

Fenna Geelhoed is a former James Bond fan fiction writer turned librarian. She lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

You can find her on twitter @FennaGeelhoed

Production photos featured here from Thunderballs

Fenna and David discussing asexual coding in Bond. Also available as a podcast: