Maybe this thread fits better into IMHO. Mods, fell free to move it.
I just saw the trailer of “007 - A view to a kill”. Bond introduces himself to a police officer with the classic: “My name is Bond, James Bond.” The officer answers: “And my name is Dick Tracey but you’re still under arrest.” To me that sounds like the officer knew the name from the movies but (of course) didn’t believe the guy he just arrested.
Does this imply that in the world of the James Bond, the James Bond movies also exist?
Probably not. To the officer, Bond might as well have said “My name is Smith. Joe Smith.” To which to cop responded with his “Dick Tracy” zinger.
However, I might note that in the movie “Our Man Flint,” secret agent Derek Flint meets with a British spy codenamed “0008.” Then, a little later, one of the villains can be seen reading a “0008” book, complete with a Bond-style logo.
That last part isn’t really relevant to the subject at hand, but you might find it interesting.
No, there is no self-referential Mobius strip reality to the Bond franchise per se, but there’s ample bad writing that posits his cover being totally blown, to the point where not just the international intelligence community, but every two-bit thug, assassin, fence, smuggler, mercenary, escort girl, moll, floozy, chopper pilot, shark wrangler, etc. etc. knows who he is.
It’s one of my pet peeves with a franchise that I otherwise love.
So your theory is that Bond is a well-known name to people “in the know” - crime syndicates, ex-KGB officers, Chinese spy rings, megalomaniacal supervillains, etc., but nobody really knows who he is? Maybe it’s something akin to Daniel Boone walking into a bar in New York and not having anybody react to his name. When Bond says the line to the girl of the week she doesn’t react, since she’s not in the group of people who would have heard about him.
Perhaps Bond gives out his own name and cheesy pseudonyms (“Mr. Stock,” anyone?) likes getting captured, the pervert.
[QUOTE=BraheSilver]
So your theory is that Bond is a well-known name to people “in the know” - crime syndicates, ex-KGB officers, Chinese spy rings, megalomaniacal supervillains, etc., but nobody really knows who he is?
/QUOTE]
No, my theorie is, that the movies exist (as they do in our world), but no one (in Bond’s world) knows that he really does exist.
In the words of Otto West (“A fish called Wanda”): It’s a smoke screen. A double bluff. An XK-red-27 technique.
IIRC in Spaceballs, there is a self-reference, when they watch the Video-tape of the movie to find out, what to do next.
I think you may be reading too much into what is basically a throwaway joke. Bond tells the cop his real name in the hopes that the latter will recognize him and let him go. Either the cop doesn’t know who Bond is, or does know and intends to arrest him anyway. Regardless, it’s a set-up for a fire-truck chase scene through the San Francisco streeets.
In Octopussy, Bond’s contact in India, Vijay (played by real-life tennis star Vijay Amritraj), swats off attacking bad guys with a tennis racket.
How does Vijay first make contact with Bond? He plays a couple of bars of the “James Bond Theme” on his snake-charmer flute!
In our world, the James Bond theme is immediately recognizable as such, and does not exist outside the movies (i.e. it’s not a prior work co-opted for the movies). One could claim that, in the Bond-world, this is just a tune randomly picked so that two agents would recognize each other, but it would be more interesting if, as the OP suggests, the “James Bond Theme” exists as such in the Bond-world.
Just as an aside, Edgar Rice Burroughs was writing Tarzan books well after the movies. Thus, in one of the later books, Lord Greystoke is in a small plane that crash-lands somewhere (Indonesia?) in a jungle. Greystoke, finding himself in the jungle, strips down to his loin cloth and swings off to find food, etc for the other survivors. When he swings back into camp, one of the other survivors says something like, “Who do you think you are, Johnny Weissmuller?”
So, the Tarzan movies exist in the world of the books, I suppose.
As to the OP, James Bond certainly exists and is known in the Bond universe. I absolutely have always thought that the cop in A View to a Kill was implying that he’d heard of Bond and was saying that this guy wasn’t him. In You Only Live Twice there was that newpaper article confirming that “British Agent James Bond was killed” when they faked his death. In Diamonds Are Forever, Jill St. John commented “Do you know who you just killed?! That was James Bond!” when she thought Bond was Peter Franks. (Granted, she may have heard of him being kinda 'in the business" as The Scrivener pointed out). And again in You Only Live Twice there was that scene where Blofeld said to Osato “Only one man we know carries this gun - James Bond.” (A rather puzzling scene considering the popularity of the Walther PPK).
Now, as to whether the movies exist in that universe, I can’t think of a specific reference, but I certainly think the Bond World has heard of master spy James Bond.
Or the line in Star Trek: First Contact, James Cromwell’s character, Zefram Cochrance, is being told about his importance to the future. He tries to get a grip on what he’s been told and asks the Enterprise crew “so you’re on some sort of Star Trek” (or words like that )
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