What's so special about James Bond's "Special 00 designation". The 00 stands for "Agent with a license to kill". He has the authority to accomplish his missions by any means necessary, including killing other 00 agents.
James Bond is called James Bond 007 because initially he was on a mission to Russia and the ISD code for Russia is 007.
I know what the 00 License to Kill is. What I do not know is why an MI6 agent without a 00 License to Kill is expected to do when someone is shooting at him?
What I don't get is what that License gives him that anyone else doesn't already have? Think about it. If you start killing 00 agents in Zimbabwe; you can literally do that shit. Where's the benefit of having a License?
I'm asking rhetorical questions because I know what the creepy shit is all about. British Imperialism.
But in Reality, outside the UK the License to kill for the British government ceases to exist. And inside the UK, it's not like he can just go killing chavs riding around on the Underground right?
So having that License is an insulting conditioning mechanism; it's for young boys who they want to condition to grow up wanting to be Special enough to kill for the British government (i.e. be exploited).
But it's a very Special designation. Literally everyone has the same License.
The high/low point was perhaps Octopussy, where Moore, faced with a large angry tiger, says, ‘Sit,’ and the tiger does. That’s the way we ran the empire: Carry on up the Khyber meets Gunga Din. By the time we got to the Dalton and Brosnan films even fantasy politics seemed left behind, and we were in an alternative universe, a cinema version of Playstation, although of course not without all kinds of charm. The high point here was Brosnan in Tomorrow Never Dies driving his BMW out of a German garage while lying on the back seat and using a remote control – literally as if he was engaged in a thumbs-only computer game.
Englishness in all these cases connotes a certain unflappability, whatever the differences in style and relation to any known historical world; an effortless superiority, experienced as a sort of inheritance rather than a skill; a worldliness that means the exotic never seems exotic to Bond himself; and a sense that Bond doesn’t really care about any of this, he might be in it just for the entertainment.
We see how different Daniel Craig is as Bond. He is not flappable, but his superiority is full of effort; he is not worldly, and he is not enjoying himself. Bond has changed in Skyfall. Whatever his manner, he is serving his country now instead of his own self-regarding virtue. This is certainly a quaint old fantasy of Englishness – I would have thought the reigning fantasy had more to do with robbing the country – and I had better end before I start quoting Henry V.
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