Ideological Construct and Intertextuality in the James Bond Franchise

                                                                (Figure 2) While the cultural and ideological landscape of Britain continues to evolve, Bond was first created in an older Britain, where traditionalist ideas and gender stereotype dictated the films’ ideological position. What can be argued as a highly masculine focussed film series, the representation of quintessential Britain remains firmly at the heart of the franchise, along with this unfortunate gender bias.   In contemporary society it is viewed that “gender is not biological but it refers to a socially constructed set of behaviour patterns” (Poppa & Gavriliub, 2015, p.1200). Film theorist Laura Mulvey analyses these gender positions, labelling ‘the male gaze’ (Hein, 2006, Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema ) as the dom...

(Figure 3) It is argued cinema imitates the real world and often facilitates society’s “eagerness to escape from ordinary life” (Addis & Holbrook, 2010, P.821). The Hollywood film industry produces motion pictures that impersonate reality in order to fulfil idealisms that in turn offer escapism for the audience. By portraying perfected versions of reality; cinema creates illusions, which are just close enough to the real world that the audience can believe and become affectively immersed into. The high concept Bond franchise is a stellar example of a piece of cinema that succeeds in presenting both idealism and escapism. The film series portrays an idealised and heightened world, where the powerful Bond charms doomed lovers and defends opulent London with effortless style and competence. French theorist Jean Baudrillard argues how, “we anticipate reality by imagining it, or flee from it by idealising it” ( Baudrillard, Smith & Clarke, 2015, P.25). To society, reali...