You must be joking:

007 in the Laboratory and Academia

With SPECTRE here -and a proper psychologist making an appearance in the film, to bootProf G Neil Martin looks at how scientists have studied Bond in the lab and in the ivory
tower.

Everyone knows Bonds resident scientist. Major Basil Boothroyd, played by Desmond
Llewelyn- the original Q- was a regular foil to Bonds insouciance and cavalier disregard for
office equipment. Desmond morphed into John Cleese who then transmogrified into the
dry, youthful and voluminously coiffed Ben Whishaw, the man with the dermatology who
operated intriguing security breeches from the matutinal comfort of his gingham pyjamas.
His was the youthful demeanour which elicited the exasperated response from Bond in the
title above. But Q, of course, has not been Bonds only scientist.
If you ignore the dispensible villains and their bacteriological or viral plans for world
destruction, there are some notable meetings of minds between spook and boffin. There
was arguably Bonds first strong female lead, Dr Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), the US
astronaut from Moonraker. At the other end of the hotpants spectrum, there was Dr
Christmas Jones (Denise Richards), The World Is Not Enoughs unorthodox physicist. The first
Bond Girl of the Pierce Brosnan era was Caroline (no surname, just Caroline, like Sting, or
Lulu, or Bono) who was sent to psychologically evaluate Bond in Goldeneye, ended up racing
Xenia Onatopp (yes, stop it, weve done them all) and being seduced by Bond in his DB5.
The pitifully monikered Dr Molly Warmflash (Serena Scott Thomas) did a similar job- this
time rehabilitating Bond after his collision with the Millenium Dome- in The World Is Not
Enough. Doctor Hall was the comically Freudian shrink in Skyfall. And, since we are in the
year of SPECTRE, lets not forget that the first Eon Bond films villain, Dr Julius No -treasurer
of greatest criminal organization in China, SPECTRE member, dextrocardic (in Flemings
novel, he was born with his heart on the right side)- went to medical school in Wisconsin
but, due to an unfortunate radiation accident, ended up replacing his hands with pincers.
Now, in SPECTRE, we have the appearance of Bonds first proper psychologist, Dr Madeleine
Swan (Lea Seydoux).

Speaking of psychology, a curious cottage industry exists examining films via the prism of
psychological theory and research. Review papers have examined the veracity of the
representation of amnesia in the movies and how neurology is presented. Books have been
written on the mad scientist archetype, and the representation of mental illness in cinema.
And lets not get started on the Psychology of Batman. Because many people have already
done so and it is best to leave them to it.
The cottage industry extends to Bond. For example, tucked away underneath the seemingly
innocuous title, functional connectivity of the macaque brain across stimulus and arousal
states lies an fMRI study of monkeys brain response to Tomorrow Never Dies. In our first
experiment, Sebastian Moeller and co-authors begin, we scanned two monkeys (monkeys
L, H) while they viewed clips of the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, interleaved with
three blank periods. Via this method, the authors found 20 cortical network regions
involved in the processing of arousing visual stimuli (which probably excluded Elliott
Carvers portable keyboard taping etiquette), including the visual, auditory, somatosensory,
motor, prefrontal and parietal cortices. Tomorrow Never Dies also crops up in another study,
on imitation and smoking. Eighty four smokers watched a film which featured smoking or no
smoking and which contained breaks for pro-smoking or anti-smoking ads. Watching the
smoking in Bond had no effect on smoking intensity, according to the study published in
Tobacco Control. Tomorrow Never Dies was also the subject of a paper in Magnetic Resonance
Imaging -TND is obviously the scientists go-to Bond film of choice. This paper looked at
alterations in EEG activity during the continuous viewing of a two-minute film clip (the first
two minutes of TND) in seven participants. The researchers found that the perception of
differences between visual contrasts in the film were correlated with EEG activation in area
V1 (the primary visual cortex).
Another psychophysiological study examined participants responses while they played the
part of James Bond in the game, JB007: Nightfire. In the experiment, galvanic skin response
and facial muscle activity were recorded while people either killed or wounded villains, or
were themselves wounded and killed. The aim was to discover the psychophysiological
responses generated by different emotional and moral perspectives.
When an opponent was wounded or killed, participants skin conductance increased but
some of the muscles in the face (zygomatic, orbicularis occuli and corrugator mucles, all
found around the eyes and mouth) decreased. The more psychotic the participant, the less
pronounced these changes were. When the protagonist was wounded or killed, there was a

similar GSR increase but also an increase in two sets of facial muscles and a decrease in
another set. These results suggest that the emotional consequences of attacking another or
of being attacked can be characterised by subtle, facial muscle changes.
On the subject of violence, a couple of studies have examined the extent of violence in the
Bond movies. Violence in cinema and TV is a perennial favorite of social psychologists
exploring the relationship between exposure to violent material and the subsequent
expression of aggression or violence. A 2013 study published in the Journal of the American
Psychiatric Association Pediatrics found that the portrayal of serious violence in the Bond films
increased significantly over time, even when accounting for film length. The most severely
violent was Tomorrow Never Dies, which may explain why scientists have been so keen to use
it in their studies. The 2008 re-boot, Casino Royale, featured 250 acts of violence involving a
perpetrator, action or target, compared with 109 in Dr No. And it isnt just violence thats
increased: sexual activity and more violence against women has increased, too. A 2010 study
of 195 female characters across 20 Bond films, which was published in Sex Roles, also found
that end-of-film mortality was predicted by sexual activity, ethical status(good vs. bad), and
attempting to kill Bond. This article was titled Shaken and stirred.
One of the more methodical papers investigated how people viewed changing situations or
circumstances in films. One of those films was Moonraker (the others were Star Trek II:
Wrath of Khan, and Jeremiah Johnson). Participants made 85 change of situation judgments in
Moonraker, mid-way between the other two. Shifts in time and movement were particularly
noted. Staying with Moonraker, the same research team examined peoples ability to make
predictions while watching the film- i.e., indicate whats going to happen next. People were
actually quite good at doing this, using visual and discourse clues in the film. Which either
suggests that the participants were quite adept at this or that Moonraker is a predictable
watch, at least if youre asked to predict what is going to happen in it. The climax of the
scene where Bond encounters Jaws on a plane, fights, bails out and the latters parachute
fails to open and he falls onto a circus tent a set of scenes grimly illustrated in the paper- is
predicted by participants. None of the participants had seen the film before. The best
predictors of what was going to happen were mise en scene, montage, framing and dialogue.
Using these, participants made very specific predictions about what would occur in the film.
Finally, lets not, despite our better instincts, forget semiotics. Not a science, barely a
discipline, in semiotics- where there are signifiers, there are interpreters to make a
monumental meal of interpreting. Holly Cooper and colleagues from Griffith University in

Australia, for example, presented a textual analysis of the brand narrativesspecifically in

the context of James Bond films. which is as much of an incentive to carry on reading as any
other. In engaging with the text of popular culture, Holly et al write, consumers engage in
the story and the embedded brand narratives in that text. Consumers readily draw on these
texts for directions in constructing. Not only that, consuming, viewing, and engaging with
films and the embedded brand narratives in film fuels consumer dreams and consumption
ideals. Crikey. Who would have thought that Heineken could reach those parts?
Holly and colleagues examined the use of brands in all Bond films up to Casino Royale,
including that Casino Royale. The first analysis begins with Vignette 1: The Bollinger Lover
Brand Narrative and goes quickly downhill from there. It describes Bonds seduction of
Caroline, the hapless MI6 bureaucrat tasked with psychologically evaluating Bond in
Goldeneye. The Bollinger brand, write the authors, embodies the masculine desire of
James Bond and presents as a social tool of romance. Oblivious to even Bond levels of
innuendo, the authors thus set the tone of the analysis.
The next vignette pits the Aston Martin against the Jaguar. Ive always had a soft spot the
Aston Martin and not just for the nickname possibilities of employment at Birminghams
second University. The sleek, understated sybariticity, the purring power and modesty, the
cunning stealththese are all devilish attractions but so is the fact that the company was
named after Lionel (Martin) and his favorite hill (Aston). Here, Holly et al stray into the
world of the esoteric, in a way that even Derek Akorah would admire. Commenting on the
ice-chase between Zao and Bond in Die Another Day, they write: The depiction of
supernatural abilities can only nurture the aspirations of consumers, who are seeking a
sophisticated and superhuman status. (the supernatural abilities are those of the motors).
They conclude, the scene embodies the Jaguar brand narrative of an antihero or an outlaw
rebelling against the sanctions of society. Well, there we are. Think on that when youre
next driving the Jag to the golf club.
Oh, and if youre interested in the engineering and the science behind the train uncoupling in
Skyfall, heres all you need from Cassandra Obee, at the University of Leicester:

Professor G Neil Martin is at Regents University London. He might return.

Email: neil.martin@regents.ac.uk
Twitter: @thatneilmartin