Bond... James.. you know the rest.

This weeks readings were on none-other than the “phenomenon” known as the Bond Series by Ian Fleming. I, personally, never understood what the hype was about. With that being said, I have actually never even seen the movies, let alone read the books. I picked up the book we are to read for next week’s discussion, and I hate to say that I fell asleep by the time I was on the 4th page of the text. It could have been because I was tired.. or perhaps it was the context of what I was reading.

The first read we were assigned this week was called, “Dr. No: Bonding Britishness to racial sovereignty” written by Cynthia Baron. It was a pretty interesting read, comparing the sexuality represented by Fleming’s work to the Cold War. Clearly, without reading the book or seeing the film, I am unsure of the context of all of this, but the article refers to an interesting point. Baron states, “Imperialism and racism intersect in the opening moments of the film. As the title sequence ends, we begin to hear a ‘Jamaican’ version of ‘Three Blind Mice’….. Three (blind) black men making their way through Kingston”. The article continues to show the relationships between British and their subjects at this time, eventually showing how black men intimidate people in England at this time. This is news to me, I thought this whole series was about an oversexed spy who kicks a whole lot of ass. There is also an idea of ‘Britisness’ that is being dissected throughout this article, which correlate to the ideas of imperialist hero’s.

Then our readings bring us to “The moments of Bond” by Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott. This article started out by stating Fleming’s intention was to write as a distraction whilst he was going through a hard time – he had no intention of creating a pop-icon. He also felt as though he did not put enough time into the novel to result in the amount of popularity it got—therefore he decided to kill off the hero in the last book (thanks for ruining it!). In the end, this article defends a lot of arguments, but one of the most interesting is the idea of Bond being a political hero for the middle class. This phenomenon known as James Bond was approached to be branched out through many different avenues – and actually was. From the books, to TV adaptions, to cinema adaptions, and even to a comic strip, the name ‘Bond’ was becoming a household name. He was someone to look up to and to consider a true modern hero.

I think the heroism of Bond is what makes the story so popular. Bond was there as a distraction through many national issues, also growing its popularity. Ladies fantasized over him, and men fantasized to be him.

I mean look at this guy.. Ladies are crawling all over him.  Little boys were growing up to see him as a true hero for the greater good. I guess with all of this said, how could you not love James Bond? I guess I will find out my true feelings on the novel next week..