10. Global Agency between Bond and Bourne : Skyfall and James Bond in Comparison to the Jason Bourne Film Series

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-226
Keyword(s):  
James Bond ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Global Agency

Global Agency between Bond and Bourne : Skyfall and James Bond in Comparison to the Jason Bourne Film Series

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seung-hoon Jeong
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cognitive Mapping ◽  
First Century ◽  
Global System ◽  
James Bond ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Survival Test ◽  
Global Agency

Skyfall (2012) signals a crisis in global espionage in a post-9/11 era of schizophrenic digital terror. James Bond and his enemy are both internally excluded from their agency—MI6—and this “abjection” leads to terrorist revenge and sovereign reaffirmation. The latter involves a survival test for 007’s vulnerable body while simultaneously recovering a national identity for the United Kingdom. In this sense, James Bond mirrors Jason Bourne, the ex-CIA agent in the Jason Bourne film series. Bourne undergoes a similar abjection yet becomes neither terrorist nor sovereign but instead a symptom of perpetual mind-games. This chapter compares Bond to Bourne to enable a cognitive mapping of the twenty-first-century espionage genre and its global system of sovereignty and abjection.

Racializing heterosexuality: Non-normativity and East Asian characters in James Bond films

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mie Hiramoto ◽  
Phoebe Pua
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
East Asian ◽  
White Masculinity ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
Film Series

AbstractThis article investigates how naturalized models of hegemonic masculinity affect race and sexuality in the James Bond film series. Through close analysis of film dialogue and paralinguistic cues, the article examines how the sexualities of East Asian female and male characters are constructed as oversexed and undersexed, respectively. The analysis therefore affirms Connell's (1995) conception of white heterosexual masculinity as exemplary: East Asian characters are positioned not only as racial Others, but as bodies upon which Bond's heterosexual masculinity is reflected and affirmed as normative and, by extension, ideal. In this way, race is curiously invoked to ‘explain’ sexuality, and Bond's unmarked white masculinity becomes the normative referent for expressions of heterosexual desire. By showing how the sexuality of East Asian characters is typecast as non-normative, the article gestures toward the possibility of theorizing racialized performances of heterosexuality as queer. (East Asia, James Bond, sexuality, race, masculinity, femininity, normativity, film)*

Saturday Afternoon Blockbuster: James Bond‘s Serial Heritage

Film Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Scott Higgins
Keyword(s):  
James Bond ◽  
Saturday Afternoon ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Studio Era

Just six years after the last American sound-era serial, Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman brought James Bond to the screen, launching the longest-lived and most influential film series of the post-studio era. This article considers how the first Bond films adapted the regular imperilments,and operational aesthetics of sound-serials. Early Bond films benefitted from a field of expectations, viewing strategies and conventions planted by the over 200 B-grade chapter-plays produced between 1930 and 1956. Recourse to these serial strategies conferred tactile immediacy and ludic clarity to the films, and facilitated engagement with the Bond beyond the cinema.

scholarly journals Penny Powers, Covert Hero of the Twentieth Century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Molly Pollard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Government Funding ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Syrian Civil War ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Pedro Pan ◽  
Private Donations

Ms. Penny Powers, a covert British Intelligence Officer during most of the twentieth century and (perhaps) memorialized as Miss. Moneypenny in the James Bond film series, was one of the most unrecognized saviors of children in danger in modern world history. Ms. Powers covertly organized and ran the Kindertransport and Operation Pedro Pan, two shining examples of the British intelligence service's efforts to save thousands of children from danger. Ms. Powers used the same repeatable model twice to save children in danger. Specifically, she helped save 10,000 Jewish children in the Kindertransport and 14,000 Cuban children in Operation Pedro Pan by transporting the children to a safe location, organizing temporary care for the children, planning to reunite the children with their parents when the danger had passed, and using private donations instead of government funding to help the plan appeal to the host countries. In 2016, US Representative Mike Honda proposed to replicate her model to help save children in danger in the Syrian civil war. Now, 25 years after her death, it is high time for Ms. Powers to be recognized for helping save 24,000 children.

The Dead Are Alive : The Exotic Non-Place of the Bondian Runaway Production

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melis Behlil ◽  
Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado ◽  
Jaap Verheul
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Tax Incentives ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Cheap Labor ◽  
Runaway Production ◽  
Film Series ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Colonial Imaginary

This chapter dissects the opening sequences of Skyfall (2012) in Istanbul and Spectre (2015) in Mexico City in order to argue that Eon’s predilection for runaway productions has begun began to influence the textual composition of the James Bond film series. Eon Productions often modifies the narratives and settings of its Bond features in order to exploit the increasingly global availability of funding schemes, tax incentives, and cheap labor, and to secure, on a global scale, profitable distribution deals, enhanced visibility, and greater revenues from merchandizing. In the process, the Bondian runaway production fashions a colonial imaginary of exotic non-places, which has since long been a staple of the brand of Bond.

scholarly journals Stawka i konflikt jako mechanizmy budowania suspensu w filmach o Jamesie Bondzie. Raport z badań

2020 ◽  
Vol 12(48) (4) ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
Stanisław Dunin-Wilczyński
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Reaction ◽  
Target Audience ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Political Economic

The stakes play an important role in intensifying the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist, and thus, the emotional reaction of the target audience. The James Bond film series often follow a plot pattern of „preventing atrocity”, in which the main character is supposed to stop the villain from implementing a morally evil plan. Stakes modification is done through various techniques: by masking the actual stakes, by increasing the negative consequences of a failure, by increasing the positive consequences of winning and by reducing the possibility of achieving the goal. Moreover, these films are characterized by the global nature of the conflict, which is emphasized on two levels. At the level of the threat scale, where public goals (political, economic, social, humanitarian consequences) are more important than private goals (emotional, moral consequences). And at the level of the form of the threat, where the stakes of the conflict are embedded in fantastic fear. The absurdity and caricatural nature of threats is realized by presenting them in the context of a conflict of values (e.g. good versus evil).

scholarly journals The Cultural Life of James Bond

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Literary Creation ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Secret Agent ◽  
Bond Phenomenon

The release of No Time To Die in 2020 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.

James Bond and Art Cinema

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Holliday
Keyword(s):  
Art Cinema ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
Secret Service ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Post War ◽  
European Modernism

The James Bond films are an enduring example of “escapist” popular cinema seemingly at odds with the filmmaking traditions of European modernism. However, this chapter offers the 007 film series as a candidate for Britain’s contribution to the European Art Cinema tradition. From Maurice Binder’s opening credits for Dr. No (1962), reminiscent of experimental filmmaker Len Lye, to the discontinuous editing patterns and jump cuts of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), 1960s Bond cinema formally registers the violation of the classical norms and stylistic traits upon which art cinema was predicated. This chapter accordingly identifies how the stylistic transformation of the early Bond films can be woven into the art cinema traditions and political modernism of post-war European filmmaking.

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