• He is #2.
• He belongs to a powerful and secretive organization.
• He overshadows his boss so much, we think HE is actually in charge.
• He is willing to do anything, ANYTHING, to achieve his goals.
• He has personally conducted enhanced interrogation techniques to extract information about his enemy.
• He is an angry man.
• He is all business; he even wears his coat jacket over his scuba wetsuit.
• He likes sharks.

I never read Dostoevsky's Crime & Punishment in high school. Our teacher assigned it as summer reading and once fall came around and school started, it was the first book we discussed. For an entire week, I cowered behind B, hoping that the teacher wouldn't ask me any questions about the book. (Thank goodness that B, a girl, was nearly a foot taller than me, sitting.)

The only thing I remember about those hour-long discussions in class was the symbolism of the color yellow. It represented decay. Well, yellow and its fraternal twin gold are everywhere in the movie Goldfinger. Old Auric had the following yellow/gold items:

1. shirt
2. hair
3. ring
   
4. shorts
5. sandals
6. watch
7. miniature radio
8. blonde Jill Masterson (later covered with gold paint)
9. golf bag
10. sweater
11. putter
12. car (albeit two toned)
13. Oddjob (yes, I went there)
14. hat
15. gloves
16. vest
17. cheap labor (I went there again)
18. generous Chinese ally with nuclear know-how
19. gun
    

In the movie, yellow and gold symbolize greed, shallowness, amorality, and materialism. With the twin colors in virtually every frame, it does not take an evil genius (or a 10th grade honors student) to figure out the symbolism.

Bond villain ranking:
1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Dr. Julius No (Dr. No)
3. Rosa Klebb (From Russian With Love)

CKY

Misogyny in James Bond films has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere. But what about misogyny and homophobia? Bond fans quickly assume that Messrs. Wint and Kidd were the first gay Bond villains. In fact, it was Rosa Klebb.

First, the evidence of Rosa's sapphic tendencies. She had short, parted hair. She wore very unflattering and drab clothing. When Red Grant's trainer touched her elbow, she flinched and shot a look of disapproval at him. When she met Tatiana, she ordered her to take off her jacket and to turn around. She touched Tatiana's knee. She brushed her hand against Tatiana's shoulder, neck,.... Well, you get the picture.

By portraying Klebb as a villain, the movie demeans lesbians, feminists, and strong-minded women. The 1963 film lumps all of them into one frumpy and shrill category. The link is made expressly with Klebb's name. In Russian, khleb i rozy means "bread and roses", a slogan for the international labor movement with a strong feminist bent.

And just what is wrong with strong women like Klebb? Well, they have a mind of their own (she defected from Soviet counterintelligence), she is serious (she is not a ditz), she is unattractive aesthetically, and worst of all, she is sexless (at least in the sense that 007 could never successfully seduce her.)

It is interesting that at the end of the movie, it is Tatiana, another woman, who kills Klebb. Tatiana, as a slave in our patriarchal society, re-affirms her allegiance to that very system by eliminating a figure capable of disrupting, if not toppling, that system. Tatiana killed women's rights.

Bond villain ranking:
1. Dr. No (Dr. No)
2. Rosa Klebb (From Russian With Love)

CKY

This crazed villain is a complete mystery to us. Few outsiders have stepped foot in his domain. Even fewer have come out alive to tell about it. He is an anomaly even among his fellow "Orientals". The East, and especially China, should be allied with him. Yet it has rejected him. Because of his outward, exotic appearance, the West has likewise rejected him. He has nuclear ambitions and is interested in weakening America's long range missile capabilities. He desperately wants to fit in, but is only accepted by a loose confederation of fellow tyrants and pariahs.

Was that a description of Dr. Julius No or Kim Jong-Il?

We in the West have been afraid and distrustful of "Orientals", the Other, since time immemorial (see the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan). Dr. No, played brilliantly in a stereotypical late 50s/early 60s Hollywood manner (see Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's) by Joseph Wiseman, fits the fear-inducing role perfectly.

I am by no means defending No and Kim. They are bad men. But because we do not understand the cultures and families in which they were raised, we automatically pigeon hole them one-dimensionally, without more. They are complex people with unique emotions, temperaments, experiences, and hang-ups, just like the rest of us. No's motives and personality have much to do with being raised in China by a German missionary father and a Chinese mother. He was never accepted by the East and rejected by the West. For Kim, he did not rise to power through ruthless cunning and charisma. He was handed the throne on a silver platter by his father, the even Dearer Leader.

Under Bush, we saw Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad, and Kim as equally maniacal, insane, and non-sensical. They became caricatures. But they could not be more different from each other. If we are to make this world a safer place, we must deal with these people. But before we talk to them, we must understand them.

Bond villian ranking:
1. Dr. No

CKY