The Politics Of James Bond

The adventures and antics of James Bond have provided the world with many of the most gripping story lines of the last half-century. Fleming?s novels were bestsellers in their day, and the Bond films have been even more popular, becoming the most enduring and successful film franchise in history. By some estimates, half of the world?s population has seen a James Bond movie. A fascinating and accessible account of this global phenomenon, The Politics of James Bond uses the plots and characterizations in the novels and the blockbuster films to place Bond in a historical, cultural, and political context. ø Jeremy Black charts and explores how the settings and the dynamics of the Bond adventures have changed over time in response to shifts in the real-world environment in which the fictional Bond operates. Sex, race, class, and violence are each important factors, as Agent 007 evolves from Cold War warrior to foe of SPECTRE and eventually to world defender pitted against megalomaniacal foes. The development of Bond, his leading ladies, and the major plots all shed light on world political attitudes and reflect elements of the real espionage history of the period. This analysis of Bond?s world and his lasting legacy offers an insightful look at both cultural history and popular entertainment.

Shaken, not stirred--cultural critics look at the many faces of 007 and his creator.

The most current and insightful look at the politics and culture of the Bond world as the last Daniel Craig movie hits theaters. This book presents an insightful and thoroughly entertaining exploration of the political context of the Bond books and films. Jeremy Black offers a historian’s interpretation from the perspective of 2020 and the latest Bond film, assessing James Bond in terms of the greatly changing world order of the Bond years—a lifetime that stretches from 1953, when the first novel appeared, to the present. Black argues that the Bond novels—the Fleming books as well as the often-neglected novels authored by others after Fleming died in 1964—and films drew on current fears in order to reduce the implausibility of the villains and their villainy. The novels and films also presented potent images of national character, explored the rapidly changing relationship between a declining Britain and an ascendant United States, charted the course of the Cold War and the subsequent post-1990 world, and offered an evolving but always potent demonology. Bond was, and still is, an important aspect of post–World War II popular culture throughout the Western world. This was particularly so after Hollywood launched the filmic Bond, thus making him not only a character designed for the American film market but also a world product and a figure of globalization. Class, place, gender, violence, sex, race—all are themes that Black scrutinizes through the ongoing shifts in characterization and plot. His well-informed and well-argued analysis provides a fascinating history of the enduring and evolving appeal of James Bond. This updated edition explores new developments in the Daniel Craig years, looks to the post-Craig years, and considers the cultural significance of Bond in the modern world.

This book discusses the representational geographies of the Bond film franchise and how they inform our reading of 007 as a hero. Offering a new and interdisciplinary lens through which the franchise can be analyzed, Funnell and Dodds explore a range of topics that have been largely, if not entirely, overlooked in Bond film scholarship. These topics include: the shifting and gendering of geopolitical relations; the differing depiction and evaluation of vertical/modern and horizontal/pre-modern spaces; the use of classical elements in defining gender, sexuality, heroic competency, and geopolitical conflict; and the ongoing importance of haptics (i.e. touch), kinesics (i.e. movement), and proxemics (i.e. the use of space) in defining the embodied and emotive world of Bond. This book is comprehensive in nature and scope as it discusses all 24 films in the official Bond canon and theorizes about the future direction of the franchise.

“Bond. James Bond.” Since Sean Connery first uttered that iconic phrase in Dr. No, more than one quarter of the world’s population has seen a 007 film. Witty and urbane, Bond seduces and kills with equal ease — often, it seems, with equal enthusiasm. This enthusiasm, coupled with his freedom to do what is forbidden to everyone else, evokes fascinating philosophical questions. Here, 15 witty, thought-provoking essays discuss hidden issues in Bond’s world, from his carnal pleasures to his license to kill. Among the lively topics explored are Bond’s relation to existentialism, including his graduation “beyond good and evil”; his objectification of women; the paradox of breaking the law in order to ultimately uphold it like any “stupid policeman”; the personality of 007 in terms of Plato’s moral psychology; and the Hegelian quest for recognition evinced by Bond villains. A reference guide to all the Bond movies rounds out the book’s many pleasures.

The release of No Time To Die in 2021 heralds the arrival of the twenty-fifth installment in the James Bond film series. Since the release of Dr. No in 1962, the cinematic James Bond has expedited the transformation of Ian Fleming's literary creation into an icon of western popular culture that has captivated audiences across the globe by transcending barriers of ideology, nation, empire, gender, race, ethnicity, and generation. The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007 untangles the seemingly perpetual allure of the Bond phenomenon by looking at the non-canonical texts and contexts that encompass the cultural life of James Bond. Chronicling the evolution of the British secret agent over half a century of political, social, and cultural permutations, the fifteen chapters examine the Bond-brand beyond the film series and across media platforms while understanding these ancillary texts and contexts as sites of negotiation with the Eon franchise.

This volume brings fresh perspectives to the study of James Bond. With a strong emphasis on the process of Bond’s incarnation on screen and his transit across media forms, chapters examine Bond in terms of adaptation, television, computer games, and the original novels. Film nonetheless provides the central focus, with analysis of both the corpus as a whole—from Dr. No to Spectre—and of particular films, from popular and much-discussed movies such as Goldfinger and Skyfall to comparatively under-examined texts such as the 1967 Casino Royale and A View to a Kill. Contributors’ expertise and interests encompass such diverse aspects of and approaches to the Bond stories as Sound Design, Empire, Food and Taste, Geo-politics, Feminist re-reading, Tarot, Landscape and Sets.

Bondmania hasn't ebbed for 40 years and this book explains why Britain's most celebrated secret agent and the stories around him have enraptured the world for so long. Film stills.