International Symposium In Paris To Probe, 'What Makes James Bond Tick!'

The world's biggest-grossing longest-surviving spy hero James Bond is under the microscope at a highbrow symposium in Paris where academics from across the world are analysing what makes 007 tick.

With more than four billion dollars earned since the first of the 21 James Bond films, "Dr No," hit the screens in 1962, and 200 million 007 books sold, the symposium is taking a thoughtful three days at France's National Library to look at the history, economics, politics and psychology behind the superspy saga.

From 007's appetite for sex, fine food, martinis and fast cars to the changing face of the world over the past half-century that provides the back dropto every story -- deconstructing Bond is no easy task.

Not least is how the hero survived six face and personality makeovers, from Sean Connery through George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and most recently Daniel Craig, who stars in the 2006 blockbuster "Casino Royale," the highest-earning 007 thriller of all time.

Bond is a modern revival of the legend of St George and the dragon, Vincent Chenille from France's National Library told the audience earlier this week. Bond, he said, "battles against death".

The world Bond inhabits, said Michel Baumgartner of Vancouver's British Columbia University, "is a paranoid society of loners, of people threatened by their surroundings or who threaten the social order themselves". 007 had no home, no family, no relationships and spent his time going from one temporary place -- a hotel, casino or car -- to another. "What is the cause of Bond's restlessness?" he asked.

Ian Fleming, author of the 12 original Bond novels -- the other score were written by four other novelists including Kingsley Amis -- once wrote that Bond lost his parents as a child in a skiing accident. Thus, said the academic, Bond was a man "searching for a home he never can find and for his missing parents. Everybody is single in Bond's world -- 007, M,Q, Miss Moneypenny, Bond, and the Bond girls".

The Bond character promoted luxury goods that helped fund the films and tested hi-tech military technology, said Mathieu Fionneau of Paris I University. His sex life and licence to kill "highlight his abnormality," said Mathieu Letourneux of Paris X University. "All the characters are always monstrous."

One paper will focus on food in the Bond films, another on how the films have helped Switzerland become a financial hub, and yet another on how ladies man Bond, as the new British Don Juan, helped overcome frustration in Britain over losing its colonies "by conquering the female sex".

Bond entered the world in 1953 in "Casino Royale," the first 007 novel penned by Fleming, who was a poor student and Eton drop-out from a wealthy family who did a stint as a journalist before joining British naval intelligence in the run-up to World War II.

"He was never sent into action during the war. He sat behind a desk throughout," said William R. Cagle of Indiana University's Lilly Library. "He lived life vicariously but very much wanted to be in the action." So Bond became his alter ego and the trauma of World War II and the Cold War shaped his first works.

Unknown to many however, Fleming, who had a gift for languages and read in German, Russian and French, was a prodigious book worm and built one of the 20th century's most prestigious book collections, Cagle said.

The Lilly Library, along with Fleming's manuscripts, shelters his collection of around 1,000 first editions from the 18th to 20th century of works that helped shaped modern thought, ground-breaking books by the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. (The Nation)
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