No One Should Play James Bond
There’s a wonderful moment in the opening of GoldenEye, the 1995 Bond film that brought Pierce Brosnan into the series. The scene finds James Bond, the gentleman spy, in the midst of a sabotage-mission-gone-awry, hiding behind a tank of chemical weapons with nothing but an AK-47 and a stack of bombs while a dozen Russian soldiers hold captive his fellow agent, Alec Trevelyan, a.k.a. 006. From beneath the barrel of a gun, Trevelyan calls out, “Finish the job, James. Blow them all to hell!” Bond being Bond, he does just that… and mounts a brilliant escape, of course.
It’s not the escape that makes this scene great, however. It’s the rare (and brief) camaraderie between Bond and Trevelyan. As any 007 fan can tell you, it’s uncommon to see James Bond with another double-0 agent; rarer still that we see him with anything resembling a friend. Bond, we’re often told, is without equal in all his roles, be it assassin, stunt driver, or wine connoisseur. That he could have a peer — even, perhaps, a personally meaningful one — is a revelation. But, like a pristine Bond car, the friendship is too good to last. Trevelyan turns out to be a traitor, and in the end Bond defeats him to become, once more, the best.
Perhaps it’s this elite status that gets people excited over long-standing rumors that the next Bond will be played by Idris Elba, a talented actor who is, notably, black, or this week’s news that Gillian Anderson is interested in the role. There’s great symbolic virtue to casting a woman and/or an actor of color in a historically exclusionary role, especially this one, with its connotations of sophistication and prestige. If we’re to continue to make James Bond films, then I — and, it seems, many other Bond fans — would love to see Elba or Anderson play the part. But if we truly want to see progress on the big screen, better roles for women and actors of color, and a more inclusive cinema, then the better choice is to abolish the character of James Bond altogether.
Let’s make one thing clear: James Bond — as a character, an idea, and a film — is racist. Whether he’s throwing money at an Indian man and telling him, “That should keep you in curry,” (Octopussy) or wearing fake eyelids and a spray tan to disguise himself as Asian (You Only Live Twice), Bond’s take on non-white races is decidedly pejorative. It’s an outlook that dates all the way back to the first Bond film, Dr. No, in which the spy off-handedly bosses around a Jamaican CIA agent. And by “bosses around,” I don’t mean that he says, “Follow my lead while we break into this place.” He literally says “Fetch my shoes.” And, this being Bond, the black agent obediently fetches.
Dr. No debuted in 1962, the year that Jamaica achieved independence from Britain. It could be mere coincidence that Bond’s first adventure finds him asserting his superiority over a post-colonial citizen just as the state was freeing itself from European rule. But over the ensuing 50 years, Bond’s missions routinely find him lording it over the residents in former European colonies: India, Bolivia, Morocco, Cuba, Vietnam, and more. All told, over 23 films, Bond visits former colonies 17 times, and that’s not including a couple fictional ones whose regional settings (the Caribbean and South America) suggest they fit the bill. Bond, it’s assumed (or sometimes explicitly stated), works without the knowledge or approval of these nations, but for their benefit. It’s a particularly charitable depiction of Western power; it’s no exaggeration to say that in the James Bond universe, the end of colonialism isn’t an event to be celebrated. It’s an error to be reversed.
And it’s not just James Bond, the man. The films themselves are unapologetically Orientalist. In Octopussy’s India, we’re asked to gawk at snake charmers and sword-swallowers. In The Living Daylights’ Afghanistan, we’re suspicious (though ultimately supportive) of turban-clad mujahideen. (Just like real life!) In The Man With The Golden Gun’s Harlem, we take in a litany of cultural and racial stereotypes (a literal “pimpmobile” is the least of the film’s problems). Inevitably, the Orientalism of Bond films gives way to outright racism, as in a dinner scene in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In an already cringingly-bad premise, women of various ethnicity eat a meal from their home country. The scene quickly cycles through the races: the Asian woman eats rice, the Indian woman eats curry. Then we see the lone African woman. She eats a banana. At least we can take a quantum of solace in knowing that that joke’s never been funny.
Given his long history of racism, it’s worth asking why any actor would want to play James Bond. It’s tempting to think that casting a black actor could set right a historically racist role, but James Bond, as a character, is structurally problematic. By design, James Bond is a wish-fulfillment of embarrassed imperialists pining for their glory days. Bond is not primarily an action hero in the mold of Jackie Chan. His effortless coolness doesn’t come from his ability to pull off amazing stunts; it’s his ability to walk into a casino (or bar, or secret lair) and instantly get respect. Bond’s greatest strength is his ability to project that he is of a higher class than we are. He is the apex capitalist, a man of means who, through his ability to project his class standing, is able to subjugate anyone or anything to his will. As we might expect from a white male capitalist fantasy, that often means women and people of color.
There’s another reason to think that replacing a white actor won’t fix the structural racism of the narrative: it’s been tried before. In the 1970s, gangster films that had once featured white actors in prominent roles were re-cast with largely black casts, ostensibly in the spirit of equality. But the resulting films weren’t any less racist. The now-black roles took on cartoonish depictions of black criminality, some even worse than their predecessors. They were so bad, the NAACP invented a term to denounce them: “blaxploitation.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, the racism of the blaxploitation genre didn’t keep it from commercial success. By 1974, blaxploitation films had gotten so big that even James Bond had to cash in with The Man with the Golden Gun, in which Bond goes to Harlem:
There’s no reason to think that a black or female Bond wouldn’t encounter equally stereotypical and one-dimensional characters.
There’s also the uncomfortable fact that James Bond is a serial rapist. I really wish there was another way to say it; there isn’t. In film after film, Bond brutally initiates sex with women who have shown little to no interest in him and who, in early films, actively resist his sexual advances. In the Bond world, sex is something men force on reluctant women, who inevitably come around after seeing the man’s persistence. This is, of course, the definition of rape culture. It’s worth pointing out that while the outright racism of the older films has been tempered as of late, Bond’s habit of taking sexual consent for granted hasn’t changed a bit. Skyfall finds him creeping into a shower, where a woman previously unaware of his presence instantly consents to sex.
Bond’s philandering may not be inherently sexist in the age of Tinder, but women in the Bond universe don’t get the same benefit: Unlike Bond, women with multiple sexual partners in Bond films are punished for their sexuality, to the point that half the time they wind up dead. That’s not an exaggeration. Of the 67 women who dot Bond films (up to Skyfall), 19 are shown or implied to have multiple partners. 10 of those women — or 52%– die. And women with only 1 sexual partner? They only die at a rate of 13%. That’s a double-0-standard.
Not to be overlooked, Bond films are predictably homophobic, from the gay, BDSM-loving assassins of Diamonds are Forever to the inexplicably gay villain of Skyfall, who hits on a captive and restrained Bond. It’s unclear what purpose, exactly, Javier Bardem’s character’s homosexuality served to the plot. Should we have felt Bond was in greater danger by this perceived threat to his sexuality? Dismal attitudes towards homosexuality have a long history in the Bond franchise; few will recall that the most famous Bond girl of all, Pussy Galore, was a lesbian. (“You can turn off the charm,” she informs him upon their meeting, “I’m immune.” Hint, hint.) Of course, by the end of Goldfinger, Bond successfully “turns” Pussy because when you’re an irresistible racist sexist asshole nothing is impossible.
So what do we do with James Bond? Well, one answer is kill him. Let him die a painful death, alone, without any women to comfort him, nor black agents to boss around. Let Idris Elba or Gillian Anderson play a new secret agent, one unencumbered by all the cultural baggage that Bond carries with him. Hell, maybe it’s Elba/Anderson’s secret agent who defeats Bond. And if you really want, they can take his name.
If we absolutely must keep Bond, let’s imagine him in a new role at MI6, perhaps as a surly ex-field agent now confined to a desk, loudly passing judgement on all the young new talent. Let’s stop romanticizing Bond and show him for what he really is: The sad drunk at the hotel bar, the pushy date who doesn’t know when to stop, the red-nosed business traveler embarrassingly hitting on the flight attendant. He’s the coworker who gets too loaded at the party, pulls you in close, and lets you know what he really thinks about all these Affirmative Action-types taking over the office. Elba or Anderson could look uncomfortable and excuse themselves.
“What’s his problem?” their date will ask in low tones.
“He’s old,” the new 007 will reply, looking back at him with sad eyes, “And he doesn’t have any friends.”
