Evening descends on Buckingham Palace. The flowers on the immaculately kept lawns stand bolt upright like the Queen's guards at the entrance, and the bridges over the Thames remain straight and tall, linking up the past and the future. A black cab slowly approaches the gates. With a light step a familiar figure jumps out. The camera draws closer, revealing Daniel Craig, the actor, or more precisely, it's Bond… James Bond, British intelligence's best-known spy, as any movie fan can clearly see.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
With his habitual swagger, he swiftly makes his way through the endless palace corridors to the boss's office. There, in the company of a pair of her faithful corgi dogs, Elizabeth sits engrossed in her work. She is finishing off some last-minute urgent affairs and then goes out with 007 for a quick flight above London. They pass over a captivated crowd in Trafalgar Square, over the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral exchanging greetings with the statue of the immortal Winston Churchill by Westminster Abbey, who waves back at them.
As the light fades and the gloom sets in, they fly over the Olympic stadium in Stratford. There, the elderly Queen leaves behind her companion and jumps out of the helicopter. She floats over the place where in a few moments the Olympic torch will be lit and she pulls the rip cord opening her parachute adorned with the Union Jack, her favorite flag of the kingdom which, by no coincidence, covered the same parachute used by James himself in the 1977 Bond movie "The Spy who Loved Me."
This scene, which deftly blurs and blends truth and fiction (and would later credit the Queen with the title of "the most memorable Bond girl ever"), marked the most dramatic (and perhaps melodramatic) opening ceremony of the Olympic Games ever, in London a decade ago. In one iconic moment, two figures were fused together, one of cinema history's greatest fictional heroes and the person who for decades headed the British Commonwealth. This ceremony generated an instant connection between the smoldering, ruggedly tough champion of justice and the Queen, possibly just as tough a character, and in doing so, it played a decisive role in rebranding her cultural image. Out with the grumpy old lady and in with the fun-loving, adventurous grandma. A monarch ready to leap from the sky as a sign of her commitment to her people and god. She might be an old lady, but she's still ahead of you.
The year of 2012 was the Queen's pinnacle year, a watershed for the cultural and public attitude towards her. The year in which the Queen celebrated her 60th jubilee, the box-office success of the newly released movie "The King's Speech," which portrayed both her and her family in a much more positive and sympathetic light, along with the writing of the new musical, "The Reunion," which hit the West End theaters and would later serve as the initial basis for the award-winning TV series, "The Crown." The ambivalent attitude towards her was now changing direction. Now, at such a ripe old age, she was ready for a genuine comeback. For her subjects both in the British Isles and abroad, the Queen "only lived twice".
Elizabeth has not always been the subject of sweeping popular adoration. During the first 50 years of her reign, she and her family were often portrayed in popular culture as a group of hedonistic stuffed dummies.
In the biting TV satire "Spitting Image" (which inspired Israel's own version, " HaChartzufim"), which won tremendous accolades between 1984 and 1996, the royal family was irreverently portrayed as a group of wizened, mummified buffoons, completely cut-off from its surroundings while sucking its bones dry.
Whoever had the occasion to see the crazy 1988 cinema comedy "The Naked Gun," will not readily forget the scene in which Leslie Nielsen leaps on top of an aghast figure of the Queen, straddling her and providing her, along with the other, lesser figures in the movie, with a genuine moment of vulgar humiliation. Even in the 2006 movie "The Queen," she is depicted as facing enormous difficulty in contending with the beloved ghost of her daughter-in-law.
At that time, the Queen failed to "get any joy" out of the music scene either. The chorus of the Sex Pistol's 1977 hit, "God Save the Queen", portrays her as a fascist ruler. The popular UK band The Smiths produced its third studio album in 1986 titled "The Queen is Dead", leaving no room to mistake the clear sentiment expressed in it. Queen Elizabeth would probably not have been much happier either at the choice of name Freddie Mercury and his friends gave to their chart-topping band, Queen, which turned the monarchy into a synonym for extroversion and pomposity.
The last song in their final album recorded in 1969, the Beatles chose to call "Her Majesty". However, in this very short track the Queen is the object of love of the alcoholic singer, who yearns for the monarch as "she doesn't have a lot to say." The Queen would later declare the Fabulous Four to be her favorite band, but this declaration of her admiration probably did not include the chorus bearing her title.
Of all people, it was the figure who forty years later was to become her faithful companion, who in 1969 awarded the Queen a most precious gift. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was one of the more successful Bond movies and its name was indicative of the latent connection between the institution of the monarchy and the unprecedented success of the literary-cinema hero. It is an interesting coincidence that Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel, "Casino Royale", was published in 1952, the year in which Elizabeth was crowned. Similarly to the young queen, the country in which the young special agent operated was that of post-colonial Britain.
From the empire "on which the sun never sets", all that remained were the British Isles, and of its rich heritage only the stories. Ian Fleming's pulp fiction novels offered their readers the chance to escape from their humdrum existence to a parallel universe in which Britain continued to rule the waves, and the cinema screens, and in which its fearless agents saved the world from terrible, existential threats on a daily basis.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Perhaps above all, it was the unclear future of the united nation that turned the romantic image of the Englishman, totally devoted to his homeland, to being so necessary and popular for the country's inhabitants, and it was responsible for the fact that in the last decade of her reign, the Queen too came to be the representative of equitable national devotion. In "The Crown," playwright and screenwriter, Peter Morgan, took pains to ensure that his queen is seen to be a woman who devotes all her energy and commitment, above all considerations, to the British crown and the values that this represents.
Throughout the five seasons reconstructing the years of her reign, Elizabeth was shown to be the only person who really understood the tremendous burden of wearing the crown. In the 2015 Netflix movie "A Royal Night Out," the Queen is depicted as the exclusive representative of "The Crown", just as its namesake.
In recent years, the Queen gained a degree of admiration and cultural importance that had previously been reserved for the spy who loved her. In many senses, she too became a legendary figure representing the British spirit at its best, and just like that spirit, lacking any tangible historical context. In an era in which Britain continued to be divested of its assets, to engage in a bitter argument as to the question of any genuine unity in the United Kingdom and to change governments just as rapidly as James disposes of his enemies, it was the Queen who provided a sense of apparent continuity. Some might say that fate chose the timing of the Queen's passing to coincide with that of Bond's demise himself. The King and the Queen no longer have a home or a crown. Who can tell along which path the new kings will lead us?
