Edward's James Bond Blog: Lecture 12

James Bond 007 started with the film Dr No in 1962 and celebrates this year its fifty anniversary with ‘Skyfall’. With the first book being published in 1953 called ‘Casino Royal’ by Ian Fleming. The phenomena of the brand of the British secret agent with her majesty secret service fighting countries around the cold war where it was East versus West from the 1960’s to 1990’s like Soviet Union. In the last two decades James Bond 007 fighting corrupt individuals on a power trip that have connections with North Korea or organisation that want global control. The genre of Ian Fleming 007books was spy thriller the success of the book series captures the imagination of the working class and it was a cheap paperback. Ian Fleming vision of the character was an icon of Englishness with upper class attitude with an English background in his first novel. But after seeing Sean Connelly he adapt his writing with a Scottish background to fit Sean Connelly identity within the film Dr No. The trademark of 007 films is gadgets, womanizing, fast cars, theme tunes for action scenes, and gambling. Bond’s books are about the empire crisis with plucky little England against the evil forces from the countries like the Soviet Union with the financial funding of the superpower call the United States of America. The 007 James Bond refers with other 1950’s organisation and music industry groups that started at roughly the same time as ITV channel, Elvis, The Beatles and Disney. The Beatles and Disney are also celebrating fifty years celebrations.

Kandeep Lally: The Culture Industry

The Culture Industry In this popular culture class we looked at the culture industry which meant understanding the concept of the culture industry and the applicability of the idea to the work of Disney, James Bond, Tabloid Newspapers, television and The Beatles. The Culture Industry is one in and of itself that focuses on the media and the mass market. We looked at ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ written by theorist Adorno, in which he describes the industry as “ruthless” and “rubbish”. He argues that the culture industry is a mass deception in which we the passive consumers are conceived as ‘absent minded’ we buy the latest products weather if we may not need them; therefore feeding into Capitalism where ‘business is their ideology’. Additionally, by consuming most of these products we actually ‘alienate’ ourselves, for instance, film conflated as a product not art in which ‘the idolization of the cheap involves making the average the heroic’. Most of these ideas and concepts of the culture industry are significant for our popular culture exam.