Spy

In addition to being hilariously funny, Paul Feig’s Spy is a brilliant feminist response to the James Bond genre. The opening scene, the exotic locales, the plot, the music, the character types, all evoke the Bonds which spawned a cycle of international bed-hopping suave heroes saving the world and the hinge-heeled beauties who crave him. This female spy turns all those male cliches into fresh female successes.

The title works two ways. It obviously declares itself a spy film but more broadly addresses “the male gaze,” the theory that films assume a masculine perspective and make the female the object of their vision, not their own subject. As watchers we are the espyers, the spy, safely ogling the characters from our privileged privacy. When we watch Spy we are spying from the traditional male perspective — but here the advantage is given woman. Susan’s camera contact lens is an emblem of scopophilia.

Melissa McCarthy’s Susan Cooper is not the genre’s usual woman. But her bulk does not deter her from intelligence, stamina, energy, imagination, effectiveness in physical battle, and even winning the desire of all the macho men in the film. Her ample bosom is not maternal but sexy. The men by reflex find reasons to grab and ogle it. In Bond’s world she’d be Boobs Galore. She’s no Modesty Blaise. The lecherous Aldo’s flirtatious routine expresses the emotional attraction both male spies discover for her. When she ends up in bed with the ridiculous Rick Ford, she confirms her right to the sexual liberty — even caprice — usually reserved for the male stars.

Susan was inhibited in her early CIA career by male authority. Now she has a chance to fulfil herself, as she steps from directing spy Bradley Fine by audio remote control to flying into the field herself. She fights through every possible restriction. She even ploughs her borrowed motorcycle through a furrow of freshly poured concrete — as tough as surviving the CIA’s prejudice against women and the western culture’s narrow prescription of feminine beauty. Susan saves the world, saves her beloved Bradley, wins the career she always craved — but even in her post-victory her new undercover characters remain consigned to boring cliche.

She’s also a woman with a voice — as independent, aggressive, witty, profane, as any man in that world. In fact her rapid-fire coarse wit evokes the Veep tv series (and its clear advantage over the stodgy old-fashioned Tomlin-Fonda warhorse on Netflix). The substantial wit of the plot is deepened and enhanced by the dialogue, which is off-the-wall, inventive, and always funny. That extends into the case histories chronicled behind the end-credits (stay for them). 

Susan’s blossoming from clerk to action hero contrasts to the other three woman. The CIA unit director is the familiar woman administrator, brusque, officious, eager to subordinate her women charges to the men’s needs. Susan’s colleague and best friend Nancy (a brutally deglamorized Miranda Hart) is a plain-Jane Miss Moneypenny, who under Susan’s example comes into her own, saving Susan’s life, killing a villain, and even seducing rapper Fifty Cent. That’s qualitatively more money than the money penny. The CIA’s dazzling perfect beauty spy proves as false as the genre’s feminine allure, proving herself a traitor. Our admiration and empathy are invested in the beauty that’s conventionally denied.   

The evil Rayna is as tough, heartless and dangerous as all the Bond master villains. She is as independent and foul-mouthed as Susan, as worthy an adversary as Dr. Noh and Goldfinger. Like the conventional heroine, Rayna runs for her life — tottering upon her silted heels. The CIA director, Nancy and Rayna have an image-consciousness that underscores Susan’s deeply inculcated — and reductive — humility.

The male figures also undercut the genre convention. The Bond figure is suave Bradley Fine (Jude Law), a ladykiller brutally insensitive to Susan’s ardor for him — except to exploit it.  As Rick Ford action star Jason Statham caricatures his persona, a macho, strutting, mysogynous “hero” who goes rogue to solve the case. Here he proves absolutely incompetent. Here this male action star plays the usual female bimbo. Susan saves both macho heroes and in turn is saved by Nancy. 

     As Ford is a comic exposure of Fine, Susan exposes both. Thus the film exposes the traditional assumption that men command the proper authority and efficacy in solving the world’s problems. That assumption is our cultural bias and weakness not a reality.