I have been inspired to document my academic research online by my recent attendance at the Trans-(media) conference at the College of Staten Island, New York. http://www.blog.csimediaculture.com/?p=21
This two day event provided attendees with a plethora of interdisciplinary talks and I also enjoyed sharing my research (see abstract below) with fellow academics. I would not have been able to attend this conference without the travel grant awarded to me by the Alumni Foundation at the University of Bristol and I feel very privileged to have represented this organisation to an international audience.
Licence to Trans-Genre:
An analysis of the ways in which Licence To Kill (1989) adopts narrative properties of the Western genre.
According to Kitses, The Western is ‘the most popular and enduring of Hollywood forms.’ (1969: 7) The history of cinema is adorned with iconic images of cowboys, saloons and desert landscapes, however, key to the Western’s popularity are the aspects of its narrative: the characterisation, plot and moralistic values. As Kitses suggests, these revolve around a negotiation between the wilderness and civilization (1969: 11). Often, the hero, as a man of the wild, spends the film trying to remain independent from the community until he eventually succumbs. These narrative aspects, I believe, have been adopted by the Bond film Licence To Kill in an attempt to give new life to the franchise; a response to opinions at the time that, ‘the longer the [Bond] films continue the more derivative and depressingly formulaic they become.’ (Chapman, 2003: 91) As a result, Licence To Kill adds a wild side to the character of Bond, presenting a more complex hero, who is unpredictable, morally unstable and emotionally driven. Amongst the recognisable formalistic conventions of the Bond franchise lies a narrative in which our hero is constantly negotiating with the civilized ways of his profession and the wilderness to which he has strayed. In this paper I will identify elements of the film which combine conventions of Western and Bond and explore their effects.
Works cited:
Kitses, J. (1969) Horizons West, London: Thames Hudson
Lindner, C. (2003) The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader, Manchester University
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