The Politics of James Bond

The Politics of James Bond PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803262409
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
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.

The Politics of James Bond

The Politics of James Bond PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803262409
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Ian Fleming and James Bond

Ian Fleming and James Bond PDF Author: Edward P. Comentale
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253217431
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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

The World of James Bond

The World of James Bond PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538126370
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
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.

Geographies, Genders and Geopolitics of James Bond

Geographies, Genders and Geopolitics of James Bond PDF Author: Lisa Funnell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137570245
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
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.

James Bond and Philosophy

James Bond and Philosophy PDF Author: James B. South
Publisher: Open Court
ISBN: 0812698169
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
“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 Cultural Life of James Bond

The Cultural Life of James Bond PDF Author: Jaap Verheul
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789462982185
Category : James Bond films
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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.

For His Eyes Only

For His Eyes Only PDF Author: Lisa Funnell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231850921
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The release of Skyfall in 2012 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the James Bond film franchise. It earned over one billion dollars in the worldwide box office and won two Academy Awards. Amid popular and critical acclaim, some have questioned the representation of women in the film. From an aging M to the limited role of the Bond Girl and the characterization of Miss Moneypenny as a defunct field agent, Skyfall develops the legacy of Bond at the expense of women. Since Casino Royale (2006) and its sequels Quantum of Solace (2008) and Skyfall constitute a reboot of the franchise, it is time to question whether there is a place for women in the new world of James Bond and what role they will play in the future of series. This volume answers these questions by examining the role that women have historically played in the franchise, which greatly contributed to the international success of the films. This academic study constitutes the first book-length anthology on femininity and feminism in the Bond series. It covers all twenty-three Eon productions as well as the spoof Casino Royale (1967), considering a range of factors that have shaped the depiction of women in the franchise, including female characterization in Ian Fleming's novels; the vision of producer Albert R. Broccoli and other creative personnel; the influence of feminism; and broader trends in British and American film and television. The volume provides a timely look at women in the Bond franchise and offers new scholarly perspectives on the subject.

Bond Girls

Bond Girls PDF Author: Monica Germanà
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350124702
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Since Ursula Andress's white-bikini debut in Dr No, 'Bond Girls' have been simultaneously celebrated as fashion icons and dismissed as 'eye-candy'. But the visual glamour of the women of James Bond reveals more than the sexual objectification of female beauty. Through the original joint perspectives of body and fashion, this exciting study throws a new, subversive light on Bond Girls. Like Coco Chanel, fashion's 'eternal' mademoiselle, these 'Girls' are synonymous with an unconventional and dynamic femininity that does not play by the rules and refuses to sit still; far from being the passive objects of the male gaze, Bond Girls' active bodies instead disrupt the stable frame of Bond's voyeurism. Starting off with an original re-assessment of the cultural roots of Bond's postwar masculinity, the book argues that Bond Girls emerge from masculine anxieties about the rise of female emancipation after the Second World War and persistent in the present day. Displaying parallels with the politics of race and colonialism, such tensions appear through sartorial practices as diverse as exoticism, power dressing and fetish wear, which reveal complex and often contradictory ideas about the patriarchal and imperial ideologies associated with Bond. Attention to costume, film and gender theory makes Bond Girls: Body, Gender and Fashion essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, media and cultural studies, and for anyone with an interest in Bond.

Licence to Thrill

Licence to Thrill PDF Author: James Chapman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231120487
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
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.

James Bond Uncovered

James Bond Uncovered PDF Author: Jeremy Strong
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319761234
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
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.