An Examination of Sexual Deviance in the James Bond Franchise
Feature 02 below Figure 1: Colonel Rosa Klebb (Lotte Len- ya) caresses Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) in From Russia with Love (Eon Productions, 1963) When Can Homophobia Live and Let Die?: An Examination of Sexual Deviance in the James Bond Franchise By Lauren Spungen keywords: James Bond, Skyfall, homosexuality, LGBTQ+, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger THERE ARE CERTAIN fall in love with him, rescues her from a sexually deviant villains have been present ExPECTATIONS – necessities to dangerous villain, and saves the world – all throughout the films. From one of the first many fans – that come along with the within the course of a two-hour screening installments, From Russia with Love (1963), to release of a James Bond film. As a result time. But there is one aspect of this formula one of the most recent, Skyfall (2012), many of the fairly predictable nature of the that goes mostly unacknowledged by fans: of Bond’s enemies fall on the LGBTQ+ films, the franchise has become a popular many of the evil geniuses Bond faces spectrum. phenomenon, evidenced by total box office off with are minorities in terms of their As of 2015, in which the most recent earnings of over $7 billion (“Box Office sexuality. Christine Bold, a professor of Bond film, Spectre, was released, about History”). Beginning with a silhouetted, English literature, notes about the franchise, 60% of Americans were in support of hyper-sexualized credit sequence, Bond “beauty, heterosexuality, and patriotism go gay marriage, a 200% increase since only is equipped with unrealistically high-tech together; ugliness, sexual ‘deviance’ and 2004 (Koplowitz).
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