Masculinity As A Commodity

10 Pages 2389 Words

With analysis of any film of your choice, analyse the representation of masculinity as a commodity.

“Shocking, positively shocking”. As the opening credits of the third James Bond film, Guy Hamilton’s Goldfinger (1964), begin to roll and the vibrant tones of Shirley Bassey rise, the audience is left with Bond’s wry comment almost hanging in the air. After sneaking into a semi-military drugs plant; planting an explosive and casually retiring to a bar to watch his handiwork from a safer distance, Bond dispatches an assassin sent to eliminate him, by electrocuting him in a bath. It is then that Bond delivers his immortal tagline just one mark of the now familiar ingredients of the phenomenal Bond series.
In this essay I will be examining Ian Fleming’s ‘James Bond’, more specifically the film Goldfinger to analyse the representation of masculinity. I will be discussing how this representation acts as a commodity or selling point, a positive attribute for the film.
Goldfinger is today one of the most well known films in the world and one of the most popular for Bond fans everywhere. Many people consider Goldfinger to be the definitive Bond film and as a result the perfect example of a film in which to analyse James Bond.

Although Ian Fleming’s ‘James Bond’ novels had become bestsellers and hugely popular, film studios were less than enthusiastic about bringing Bond to the big screen. No less than three studios turned Dr.No down before producers Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were allocated a budget of one million dollars from United Artists for the first in what was hoped would be a modestly successful thriller series. The rest, as they say is history.
The success of Dr.No (Terence Young, 1962) took all but the film makers themselves by surprise, but it was quickly surpassed by From Russia With Love (Terence Young, 1963) and Goldfinger, each of which was the biggest attraction of its year in ...