Resisting James Bond: Power and Privilege in the Daniel Craig Era

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Description

Beginning with Casino Royale (2006) and ending with No Time to Die (2021), the Daniel Craig era of James Bond films coincides with the rise of various justice movements challenging deeply entrenched systems of inequality and oppression, ranging from sexism, racism, and immigration to 2SLGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive justice and climate change. While focus is often placed on individual actions and institutional policies and practices, it is important to recognize the role that culture plays within these systems. Mainstream film is not simply 'mindless' entertainment but a key part of a global cultural industry that naturalizes and normalizes power structures. Engaging with these issues, Resisting James Bond is a multidisciplinary collection that explores inequality and oppression in the world of 007 through a range of critical and theoretical approaches. The chapters explore the embodiment and disembodiment of power and privilege across the formal, narrative, cultural and geopolitical elements that define the revisionist-reversionist world of Daniel Craigs Bond.

Reviews

An interrogative, urgent edition to the expanding field of Bond scholarship, Lisa Funnell and Christoph Lindner's Resisting James Bond takes the Daniel Craig oeuvre as a whole and offers an overarching yet thoroughly comprehensive take on the actor's five-film tenure vis a vis a number of original and inventive chapter topics. A rare scholarly treat. * Ian Kinane, General Editor, International Journal of James Bond Studies, University of Roehampton, UK *
This is a thought-provoking collection which, in challenging the identification of mainstream cinema with mindless entertainment, delves deep into the problematic representation of social injustice and oppression within the longest franchise in film history. Re-assessing James Bonds Craig era against the global rise of social and political unrest of the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the collections interdisciplinary essays interrogate the power structures embodied by the worlds most iconic fictional secret agent at a crucial moment in the 007 series. * Monica German, Reader in Gothic and Contemporary Studies at the University of Westminster, UK *

Author Bio

Lisa Funnell is Associate Dean of Creative Industries at Mohawk College, Canada. Christoph Lindner is Professor of Urban Studies at University College London, UK.