The bond beyond

The final chapter considers aspects of the Playboy–Bond connection from the mid-1960s onwards, reflecting on the legacy of past associations and outlining some of the broader transformations that tested the limits of James Bond and Playboy as cultural icons. The nature and general patterns of the relationship formed between Bond and Playboy magazine in the early- to mid-1960s proved to be influential in the decades that followed, but were also negotiated in relation to social and cultural change. These changes include perceived shifts in gendered power relations and feminist critiques, meaning that strategies like humour and nostalgia became increasingly prominent ways to address cultural anxieties and the ongoing struggle to maintain some kind of contemporary relevance. In particular the chapter discusses the mid-1960s Bond parodies, the women of the Bond films in Playboy, the Bond of the Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig eras, and challenges to the playboy post-1960s. In the later sections of this chapter the importance of nostalgia to the Playboy–Bond relationship, and contemporary popular culture more generally, becomes especially apparent. The chapter concludes that the foregrounding of nostalgia is a key strategy used by Playboy and Bond to mediate and (re)narrate the relationships between past, present and future.