In a scene from the 2006 version of Casino Royale, James Bond (Daniel Craig) is being held captive in an abandoned ship. In the shadows lurks Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), who is trying to reclaim the hundred million dollars he lost to the British secret agent at a high-stakes poker game. Bond is naked and strapped to a Bentwood chair whose seat has been ripped out, helpless as Le Chiffre taunts him with a length of rope that’s knotted at one end in a ball. The tension mounts as Le Chiffre starts swinging the rope towards the exposed underside of the chair. Suddenly he whips the rope into Bond’s testicles, and then again – harder this time. Bond screams as the rope strikes him once more. Le Chiffre comes close to Bond’s face and demands the money. Bruised and bloodied, Bond stares defiantly back at Le Chiffre: ‘I’ve got a little itch, down there’, he whispers, with a hint of camp insolence. ‘Would you mind?’ Angered, Le Chiffre lays into Bond again, who starts shouting through the pain: ‘No, no, no – to the right, to the right, to the right!’

The scene is shocking in its violence. But just as striking is Bond’s reaction to the torture. Instead enduring the agony through gritted teeth, Bond turns his predicament into a joke. This is a far cry from the wisecracks found in earlier Bond movies, such as sexual innuendos (‘Keeping the British end up, sir’) and puns about dead henchmen (‘Shocking, positively shocking’). In Casino Royale, Bond is rebooted as a different kind of character: intense, brutal, and deadly serious – save for this one moment of unexpected levity. How are we to understand the joke? Bond is utterly powerless, tied up and broken down. Yet Le Chiffre’s torture techniques are rendered useless with a twinkle of humour.

The torture scene from Casino Royale distils a contemporary myth about the relationship between jokes and freedom. The myth tells us that, even in the direst of circumstances, we’re still able to make jokes. In fact, we ought to make jokes. Making light of our situation, especially when we’re at the mercy of those who rule over us, is a way for us to claw back some of our dignity and autonomy.