Abstract
In the years before cinema acquired the technological refinements it now possesses, action comic books featured Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel, and others in plots that pitted superheroes against criminal evil-doers. In the modern setting, sophisticated criminal and terrorist organizations operate with relative impunity until they confront Bond or Bourne. The films reflect a paranoid, apocalyptic view of the world where global corporations, military cabals, transnational crime syndicates, and even governmental agencies threaten to undermine civilization as we know it. Typically these enemies are depraved, demonic, and above all, dehumanizing. The social world of the modern spy film breeds success for the film industry but paints a melancholy picture of social realities. The chapter explores the misogyny that informs spy films as a genre, and the concept that war tends to become not much more than theater and entertainment for many in the audience.
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Notes
- 1.
The “ethnic purity” striven for as part of the production process that the top producer wanted dearly was compromised from the start: Al Ruddy is Jewish; James Caan who played Sonny Coreleone is Jewish; Robert Duvall who played the Coreleone Crime Family Consigliere,Tom Hagen, is Irish/German; Marlon Brando who played the Godfather, Vito Coreleone, was Irish/French; and Abe Vigoda, distinguished Yiddish Theatre actor, who played the role of Tessio, a capo regime close to the Godfather mischievously claimed that he was Lakota Sioux.
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Rieber, R.W., Kelly, R.J. (2014). Bedlam in Spyland: Is Bourne Bond?. In: Film, Television and the Psychology of the Social Dream. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7175-2_4
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