Page - 120 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

THE DOUBLE ABSENCE James Bond is one of the best-known fictional secret agents in the world. There- fore, it is not surprising that Bond films and novels have received a lot of atten- tion from scholars. There are many interesting takes on the popular figure of Bond, focusing, for example, on narrative structures, imperial ideologies, sex- ism, Britishness and reading formations.1 For some reason, “religion”2 has not been much written about in Bond studies, although it is not completely absent.3 Perhaps this is expected, because Bond films are not seen as “religious” or as commentaries on “religion”. The relative absence of “religion” in Bond scholarship is one thing; the other notable absence is the lack of Bond references in studies on religion and popu- lar culture. There is a lively research industry in religion and popular culture, and scholars have been keen to study popular films whenever some “religious” and mythical themes occur, but Bond films, as far as I am aware, have not been ad- dressed. They have not received as much attention as, for example, Star Wars (George Lukas, US 1977–2005; J. J. Abrams, US 2015; Rian Johnson, US 2017; J. J. Abrams, US 2019) or Star Trek (Gene Roddenberry, US 1966–69), to name just a few popular examples.4 1 The most famous earlier readings are Kingsley Amis’s entertaining, less scholarly defence of Bond (Amis 1965), Umberto Eco’s classic analysis of Bond novels (Eco 1992) and a co-authored study by Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott (Bennett/Woollacott 1987). Both Eco and Bennett and Woollacott aim to explain why Bond is popular. Eco’s originality is in detecting a key semiotic structure that explains the popularity of Bond novels. Eco argues that the stories are organized in binary oppositions and repeat patterns common to myths and fairy tales. Eco’s reading is complicated by Bennett and Woollacott, who carve out a theoretical space for thinking about Bond’s popularity through the variety and complexity of “reading formations”, focusing not only on the novels but also on the broader Bond phenomenon. These readings have become standard examples in popular culture and cultural studies textbooks (Strinati 1995; Harris 1996; Turner 2003). They describe the Bond world as right-of-centre, sexist, racist, imperialist, capitalist, individualist, escapist, nostalgic (for the lost British empire) and intertextual, but not reducible to any of these; it is capable of articulating many different and even contradictory values and discourses, and the constellation has changed over time. These classic studies are worth mentioning here to point out that they are a resource for thinking about the complexity of the Bond phenomenon (and avoiding reductive claims about Bond) and to emphasize that even critical analysis does not mean that the audience cannot (or should not) be entertained by Bond by making use of the variety of opportunities for flexible signification of the Bond phenomenon. 2 When I put “religion” in quotation marks it is to indicate the contested, constructed and heuristic nature of the category. When I write about discourse on religion, category of religion or study areas (religion and popular culture, religion and film), quotation marks are not needed. 3 See Black 2005; Daas 2011; Smith 2011. 4 Brode/Deyneka 2012; Gordon 1995; Jindra 2005; Kraemer/Cassidy/Schwartz 2003; McDowell 2007; Porter/McLaren 1999. When films attract dedicated followers who create activities around the film, they tend to get more attention from scholars of religion and popular culture. They are seen as expressions of popular or lived religiosity outside the typical institutional contexts (Clark 2007, 13–15). The lack of such dedicated followers distinguishes Bond films from films such as Star Wars and Star Trek, but it should be emphasized that such expressions do not mark out a boundary of what might be relevant objects of study in religion and popular culture. 120 | Teemu Taira www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 119–139