What is it about?
As one of the most popular film heroes ever, James Bond merits further analysis. As it turns out, he is a hero who is riddled with contradictions, a hero who resorts to vile acts in defense of a common good and whose actions are sometimes indistinguishable from those of his villainous enemies. One of James Bond's central contradictions is in his status as an international actor who simultaneously defines himself in national terms. His encounter with the rural sheriff in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden best brings out Bond's conflicted nature.
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Why is it important?
To understand James Bond is to understand the sensibilities of a global community of filmgoers who have flocked to his films in droves and often found a hero they could celebrate. Bond's appeal always was, however, unlikely. He is, after all, extremely elitist. When they introduced Sheriff Pepper in Live and Let Die and brought him back in the subsequent film The Man with the Golden Gun, filmmakers acknowledge the problem with Bond's snobbery. Their deeply flawed effort to remedy this problem through Sheriff Pepper offers an important lesson to all of us about the cultural contradictions that shaped the Bond corpus.
Perspectives
It is hard to regard a cinematic as sweeping as the series of James Bond movies without suspecting that greater issues and conflicts are in play. I wanted to use this analysis of the film series to pull back the veil on some of the more deeply rooted ideological conflicts that shaped Ian Fleming's source novels, Albert Broccoli's films, and the responses of audiences around the world.
Dr John D Schwetman
University of Minnesota Duluth
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: “Ever heard of EVEL Knievel?”: James Bond meets the Rural sheriff, CINEJ Cinema Journal, September 2017, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh,
DOI: 10.5195/cinej.2017.160.
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