Product placement in James Bond for an essay
Oscar Einarsson
Posts: 3MI6 Agent
Hello James Bond enthusiasts, we're two students who are writing an essay on product placement within the James Bond series. We would like to have your opinion on the topic. For example: Do you think James Bond has been too commercialized or what type of changes in product placement has occured over the years?
Thank you!
Thank you!
Comments
Specifically, the Hong Kong hotel scene.
Brioni shirts, Bollinger, Phillips.
The media nicknamed it Buy Another Day due to just how much product placement occured.
Unchecked, but I think product placement covered the budget of Tomorrow Never Dies (probably not true though).
Good luck with your essay.
interesting info, thank you!
An extremely obvious example comes to mind...
allow me to quote my old self verbatim: others in that same thread correctly noted this goes back to Fleming. Fleming describes the clothes Bond wears, and the products he uses in his home, in obsessive detail. He seems very snobbish as to what products Bond brings home from the department store. Part of this is Fleming's writing technique (to ground the fantasy in verifiable detail), but part of it also relates to the character of Bond. He knows he could be dead tomorrow, so he indulges in pleasure while he can.
Fellow agent Number24 pointed out when Fleming started writing these stories, Britain was still subject to rationing. All this conspicuous consumption was as much a fantasy to the average British reader as was the plane travel and the casual sex.
The filmmakers are able to visualise all this, requiring real consumer goods for our hero to conspicuously consume on screen. Which of course producers of these goods are happy to provide, as it's advertising with a guaranteed worldwide audience, and the filmmakers are happy to accept, as these films are bloody expensive to make.
The paradox is: why are the villains therefor so rarely communists, and so often western industrialists? The villains flaunt their fancy consumer lifestyle even more than the good guys do!
Not all that surprising though as communism and hypocrisy go hand in hand with each other, especially at leadership level.
It goes back to a decision made by Eon at the very start of the film series. Dr No, Rosa Klebb & co, and Goldfinger all worked directly for the USSR in the source novels (Dr No on a freelance basis, admittedly) and the films carefully removed this (trickiest in FRWL, of course). If the villain didn't have an organisation such as SPECTRE for financial backing, then he/she had to be wealthy to operate their fantastic schemes since they weren't working for a country.
It's possible to be both in the novels (eg Drax and Goldfinger were wealthy in their own right while working with/for Russia) but with the films extracting Russian backing they are simply left as rich industrialists.
The interview would be either be through a phone call or through an email conversation.
If interested please send a pm on this site (if possible) or an email to this adress " ek15.mattias.heurlin@edu.nykoping.se"
Thank you!