I have just finished writing a dissertation, entitled 'For Queen and Country: James Bond and National Identity in the Daniel Craig Era', which explores the evolution of Bond's Britishness over the course of Daniel Craig's 3 films. I will be presenting this work at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association's annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA this coming February.
http://southwestpca.org/
Here is the abstract for this study:
The most recent James Bond adventure, Skyfall (2012), sees Daniel Craig
proudly flaunting his character’s British nationality with many a carefully
placed union jack, chase scenes on the London Underground and a climax set in
the Scottish highlands. A segment of the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony,
involving Craig as Bond and the Queen, had already gone some way in
representing Bond’s Britishness even before Skyfall
was released. However, not so long ago, in Craig’s debut outing as Bond, Casino Royale (2006), he was defying the
British spy protocol, displeasing his nation’s representatives and generally
downplaying his nationality. The aim of this paper is to explore why and how
the British aspects of James Bond have shifted so dramatically within the
Daniel Craig era alone. The research methods, which form this investigation,
include looking at marketing and preview literature for all three of Craig’s
Bond films in order to identify the themes and values attached to each one.
This is followed by textual analysis of the films themselves and a summary of
their reception by reviewers. This paper presents and evaluates the findings of
this research in order to identify the various factors that have shaped Craig’s
Bond’s Britishness and how the relationship between these factors has worked.
