Sometimes the Old Ways are Best: Regressing 007 Franchise

Using a structural narrative analysis this project undertakes to explore how the James Bond film Skyfall reflects the complex relationships between gender and technology in the age of new media. This research is largely possible only because of the specific features of Bond films, their extensive documented history as exemplars of techno-masculinity, their adherence to established formulas and tropes, and the implicit cultural mandate that Bond succeed in the end. In contrast to prior research, mine focuses on the characters that appear opposite Bond, and the ways that their characters shift in response to Bond’s performance of gender, and the role of technology in his storylines, and theirs. The results of this work indicate that media narratives centered on masculinity and technology are consciously regressing the gender dynamics of their texts in response to the confounding new affordances of potentially liberating, but equally destructive new media technologies.