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Popular Culture Review
same time, he knew, deep down, that love from Mary Goodnight, or from any
other woman, was not enough for him. It would be like taking a ‘room with a
view’. For James Bond, the same view would always pall” (200). Bond cannot
be bonded by marriage, for he is already bonded to MI6, King, and Country.
The sign “Bond” contains thus the very reason for its existence, that of
bonding reality, and functions both semantically, as a name and an identity, and
semiotically, that is suggestively, as a role, which in itself represents a micro
structure of the entire narrative conflict between order and disorder, as well as
its satisfactory resolution. The values represented by this bonding agent
appropriately named “James Bond” are accepted as absolute truths; 007 can kill
without experiencing any type of guilt, his virtue is beyond doubt, and his
Christian name underlines his unquestionable ethical status, for the King James
Bible has been the authoritative version of the good book long enough to
become an institution. Therefore, any bonding performed by James serves a
higher, metaphysical good and the narration will never let us doubt 007’s
essentially pure intentions. His license to kill is the administrative equivalent of
the Angel of Death’s godly orders.
James Bond’s section number, 007, is just as efficiently and coherently
related to the content of the narration as his name. In The Bond Code: The Dark
World o f Ian Fleming and James Bond, Gardiner reveals that the number 007
was used as a signature by the 16th century thinker and mathematician John Dee,
when he worked as a spy for Queen Elisabeth I, and that Her Majesty in turn
signed her replies by the letter “M.” Gardiner’s position appears biographically
justified, since Ian Fleming is known to have been reading a memoir on the life
of John Dee at the time he set off to write the first installment of the James Bond
saga, Casino Royale\ nevertheless, this particular association, however founded
it might be upon the reading habits of Ian Fleming, is more supplementary than
complementary,6 for it does not inform us upon the content of the narration, nor
participate to the overall message. Any possible existing similarity between John
Dee and James Bond remains somewhat esoteric, for it is not at work within the
narration itself since any reader or spectator can relate to the James Bond
universe without being aware of John Dee’s intellectual search and
achievements. Furthermore, an analysis of a James Bond adventure according to
the life and times of John Dee might even prove counterproductive for it would
irremediably distract us from the narration itself to concentrate upon an
important and influential figure from a radically different historical period to
that in which James Bond exists. The complementary meaning of James Bond’s
section number, indissociable from his character, must be found elsewhere,
independently from its biographical sources, functioning at a connotative level,
and semiotically completing the content of the narration by underlining some of
its most determining features.
The character of James Bond is immediately associated with courage and
virility, and these two qualities could be considered as the determining
conditions of his narrative function. The novels, as well as the films, present a