Present History Podcast

The James Bond Duology

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Throughout his cinematic career, Bond has faced stereotypical Soviet threats, grandiose crime lords and eccentric businessmen; home-grown internal threats, nuclear weapons, biological warfare, space-travel, terrorism and dictatorships. What all these antagonists have in common, is that they’re just as much a product of their time as the character of Bond himself. Whatever was a perceived threat to Britain’s security at the time, invariably ended up reflected in the latest instalment of the Bond franchise. This was common from the very beginning.

James Bond has been a staple of British literary and cinematic culture for the past 59 years. He has undergone a slow, steady, evolution into the modern world, carrying with him the luggage of his Cold War origins and a need to remain relevant. He has always been a kind of mouthpiece for the political and cultural issues faced by Britain and America throughout his emphatically consistent cinematic career. Beginning as a figurehead of resurgent British power in the years of economic downturn following the Second World War, becoming the icon of Britain’s Cold War, through the American War on Drugs, the fears of seemingly omnipotent media moguls, and internal threats, Bond has been brought firmly into the modern world, standing against terrorism and biological- and cyber-warfare. He is, and always has been, a product of the sixties constantly adapting to whatever threat his real-world, modernising nation needed him to face.

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