Never Again?

Abstract

At the end of the Bond films produced by Broccoli and Saltzman the title, ‘The End’ appears on the screen with an additional sentence: ‘But James Bond will be back in ...’ In this chapter we want to discuss why James Bond could depart from and return to the sphere of popular fiction so effectively and over such a long period and ‘speak’ to many different reading formations. In order to do so, we want to reconsider the nature of ‘popular heroes’ and popular fictional genres in relation to more general and widespread ideologies. We have stressed from the beginning of this book that we do not consider that popular fiction can be seen as a simple conveyor belt of ideologies from dominant to subordinate social groups, nor can it be seen as a spontaneous expression of the views of subordinate social groups. At the same time, we have attempted to suggest various ways in which the James Bond texts are implicated in more general ideologies in a complex and ambiguous variety of ways. We want to review those suggestions at this point and examine the role of popular heroes such as Bond and popular genres such as the Bond films and novels in relation to the ideological formations present in British society during the periods of Bond’s popularity.

‘M says without you in the service he fears for the security of the civilized world.’—Small Fawcett from the swimming pool to Bond in Never Say Never Again.