Bond.... I'm glad you are over.

I would like to start off by saying how much I hope to never experience James Bond again. Possibly the movies are better than the book was, but I could hardly get through the book, let alone watch the movie. I guess there are handsome and manly men in the movies, so maybe I will give them a shot, but as far as the novels go I hope I never have to pick one up again.

The group that presented did such a good (and long) job. Who knew a group presentation could take up the whole class time! But other than the length, it was a really good presentation. I like the way that Dennis(?) started off the conversation, really engaging and working the audience. I felt bad when he asked me who my favorite Bond was.. But I think he felt even worse than I did when I said I had never seen any of the movies. But as the conversation continued, I couldn’t help but be confused by it all. I got the most basic information they were presenting on (namely on the novel we were to read), however, a lot of their discussion was based off of the movies. That really made me feels as if I had no idea how to follow the conversation, let alone engage in it since I have never seen the movies. I had to ask Holly to make sure that the movies were not part of our homework assignment as well, because if they were then I would have been way behind. I wish that the conversation was more about the book, but nonetheless, the presentation was a good one.

One of my favorite parts of the presentation was when it was brought to the classes attention of the outrageous names Ian Fleming called the women in his texts. I know that the guy was going through a divorce when he wrote this; we read that in one of the articles we were assigned. This divorce was obviously a bad one, Fleming using the oversexed James Bond as a distraction. Who knew that Fleming was so bitter that he named women ridiculous names such as Dr. Holly Goodhead, Pussy Galore, Mary Goodnight, Jenny Flex, Octopussy, and Honey Ryder. Very, very interesting names if you ask me.

One of the only things I could really follow about the presentation was the use of post-modernism used in the films as they continued to make them. As the years went buy, obviously the makers of these movies only cared about profit. They would take very popular movies at that time, and copy different scenes in them to help pull in an audience and make profit. Bravo to those people, because movies like Star Wars and Shaft are very iconic, more than helping to bring in profit. By doing this, the true meaning behind the Bond series is lost, but after all, who follows what the true meaning of the series really was? I know that I did not follow it. I still don’t know what the whole idea was about.