Abstracts & Papers
Let's Get Things Straight: Gay BOND-age
Clichés are forever?
Evil or psychoanalytically termed the Other has taken many forms in 007 movies over the years. James Bond has fought all kinds of dangers to his super-masculine identity and it seems difficult to think of any stereotype he hasn't stumbled across in the process.
The particular incarnation of evil/Other I want to take a closer look at is homosexuality. Male homosexuality, that is, and the way it is portrayed in one particular Bond movie: Diamonds Are Forever. I will briefly point out how this movie is situated in the historical context of an emerging gay liberation movement and the cultural tradition of marking the Other as homosexual. Taking a closer look at the movie itself shall supply us with sufficient material for a psychoanalitically inflected analysis tracing the hetero/homo antithesis in the representation of the two gay characters and Bond's behavior in relation to them.
Finally, I will close my paper with a few deliberations on whether Bond is a closet case and whether it is possible to read this movie differently, deviantly, subversively.
download: paper (PDF)
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