Reading the Complexity of James Bond's National Identity on Film

Though frequently conceived of as an essentially neo-colonial figure, James Bond’s national identity in the Eon Productions film series is more complex. Rather than solely or even predominantly rooted in the imperial centre of England, Bond frequently emerges from peripheral and ambiguous spaces, whether the marginal within the United Kingdom – Scotland, Wales – or from former colonies, like Ireland or Australia. Of the six men who have portrayed Bond in the series, two are English (Roger Moore and Daniel Craig). The remainder portray Bond as ambiguously English-and-not.

All of this comes to the forefront in 2012’s Skyfall, which directly addresses Bond’s national origins. The title refers to Bond’s homeplace: his family’s estate in Scotland. Bond is played here by Craig, an English actor, and the film avoids pinning down when he left Scotland, other than it being after his parents’ death. Because Skyfall has priest holes, this film also frames Bond as explicitly Catholic, further positioning him outside Britain’s imperial centre.

Bond’s complex and peripheral national identity complicate postcolonial readings of the films. Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of mimicry illuminates Bond’s doubled existence: when members of a colonised society imitate and take on the culture of the colonisers, the effect is, as Lacan notes, “camouflage ... it is not a question of harmonizing with the background, but against a mottled background, of becoming mottled". In this context, Bond’s role “on her majesty’s secret service” raises questions of complicity, compliance, and the fraught, always incomplete disavowal of Otherness.