Loaded Magazines: James Bond and British men’s mags in the Brosnan era

As Bond scholarship has shown, men’s magazines played a crucial role in shaping images of masculinity that circulated around James Bond from the 1960s onwards (Hines, 2018). More generally, critics have charged both the Bond film franchise and men’s magazines with perpetuating sexist imagery that upholds patriarchal values or erodes the gains of feminism. Yet close readings of men’s magazines and Bond films can produce a more complex picture of masculinity and gender relations, especially since the mid-1990s saw not only the return of James Bond to the screen following a six year production break, but also scholarly and media attention to masculinity and significant growth in the men’s magazine market, including the rise of lad mags. This research will analyse magazine content relating to Bond in British men’s magazines during the Pierce Brosnan era, beginning with the launch of the 1995 film GoldenEye, to examine the interrelationship between James Bond as a longstanding male icon, and contemporary models of masculinity characterised by this publishing phenomenon. It will argue that these men’s magazines become an important site for (re)negotiating James Bond’s culturally loaded masculinity throughout the Brosnan years.