Paradoxical Masculinity : James Bond, Icon of Failure

Abstract

The James Bond films enact dilemmas posed by the paradoxical, split subjectivity of male spies under capitalism. Success and failure, sophistication and ignorance, knowledge and class, gender and sexuality, commercial targeting and viewing pleasure jumble together in a complex amalgam. A weird mix of hyper-bourgeois individualist, technocrat, and empty signifier, 007 can never relax, never truly know who he is, beyond being a shifting sign of impermanent state labor. His masculinity incarnates these paradoxes: often derided and celebrated for his brutality, Bond exemplifies less-than-conventional forms of life in his sexuality and identity.