QUICK SEXUAL CONQUEST POST

I responded thusly to this KID post on CRIVENS regarding the scene of sexual conquest in the 1964 GOLDFINGER:

I tend to think that the "sexual conquest" scene in the movie is like many you saw throughout the history of sound cinema, and maybe silent as well (Rudolf Valentino anyone). The woman resists not because she's unwilling to have sex, but as a challenge to the man, defying him, as it were, to make herself seem more enticing. One can go back and forth on whether this trope is based on anything in real life-- but even if everyone agreed that it's pure fantasy, it's been grabbing both male and female audiences for decades. Check out 1942's BLACK SWAN. Power kisses Maureen O'Hara, and belts her when she bites him. Toxic masculinity, right? Well, despite his violence he keeps trying to conquer her with charm-- to which she responds, at least once, by cracking his head with a rock. She only relents when he acts heroically to save her and foil the villains.
Obviously it's a little different with Pussy Galore, even if her lesbianism in the film is less overt than in the book. I could be wrong, but I don't think the book has a scene in which Bond wakes up and beholds Pussy-- who is, incidentally, smiling coquettishly at him, rather than scorning him as a filthy breeder. In the book Pussy's not too interested in Bond until she switches sides to save herself some jail time, and at the very end she claims she turned lesbian because her uncle raped her and so she never knew what a "real man" was like. That tidbit probably didn't influence the movie, which is more in the line of sexual conquest fantasies from books and movies-- which is something the filmmakers knew would sell the movie better.