ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two central aspects of the thriller, the game and the Empire, which are reconstructed in the tales of Fleming in the terms of a society of the spectacle, and explores the meaning of the new prominence of the codes of sexuality in the Fleming thriller. With James Bond, the spy thriller enters its moment of greatest popularity. In The Spy Who Loved Me, James Bond tries to explain the enterprise of spying to Vivienne Michel: It's nothing but a complicated game, really. The game-like nature of the Bond tales was the subject of Umberto Eco's important and influential essay on narrative structure in Fleming's novels. In his essay on James Bond, Tony Bennett examines the narrative codes that structure the stories and argues that the ideologies of sexism and imperialism are inscribed within the very form of the Bond novels. Travel and tourism make up much of the interest and action of a Bond thriller.
