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By the standards of the age, Bond films are not particularly PC. But there have been some exceptions. Most egregious are the ban on smoking, M's feminista takedown of Bond in GE, and some of the overt Leftist politicizing in QoS. On the whole, though, it hasn't been anything intolerable, and I must say, SF was refreshingly free of PC.
Funnily enough I did nearly mention the Palmer films (among others) when talking about Harry and for some reason like you Willygalore when thinking of Harry my first thought isn't the good things he did but the elephant shoes too!
Plenty of PC.
1. M as a ball-buster female boss.
2. Leiter as an African-American
3. Bond is not permitted to smoke any more.
4. Bond is no longer able to pursue women for his pleasure, quote from Babs: “[Bond] developed some rather distasteful pastimes but those have now receded into the past”
In other words, Bond is no longer able to pursue women for his individual sexuality. Please don't cheery pick. It is obvious that Craig-Bond is not the ladies man Moore-Bond, or Broz-Bond was . Broz-Bond slept with three different women in TWINE (Elektra, Jones, the Doctor) and two in TND (Paris, The Danish Linguist - which gets cut out of BBCA) . I think Craig-Bond has slept with 4 women ( Solange, Strawberry Fields, Island Girl, Sévérine) in three films. He never slept with Vesper. He slept with Solange in order to get information.
@TheWiz You just can't help it though can you? Try and think of all Harry's good work and I get a voice in my head saying "elephant shoes, elephant shoes, elephant shoes" ;-)
Where you see 'Political Correctness', I see cultural progression. I wouldn't say any of these decisions were taking with a view to being 'PC' (which is clearly a term you don't really understand) they were/are simply reflections of society. The cosy colonialism of past is purely that, the past.
I was just about to make the same point. It's not PC per se ("now there's a mouthful") but more a case of Bond moving with the times, something it has predominantly done for the last fifty years. It has always evolved to reflect the current mood.
What do you mean he never slept with Vesper? Its pretty clear when they wake up in bed in Venice what has happened. Do you actually need to see him enter her?
Do you even understand how sex works by the way? Seeing as you seem to think he slept with Solange when at best he got a blowy. I've never heard such drivel.
As for M being a ball breaker - that's the character. The fact it's a woman was just something done to shake things up a bit. And frankly if its a choice between someone the calibre of Judi Dench or a journeyman actor like Robert Brown then I'm Dench all day long. The only bit of PC crap is at the start of GE with M and Moneypenny. After that its business as usual for the rest of Dench's tenure. In SF there's stuff about her being a matriarch but this has nothing to with PC.
I'm not particularly thrilled they feel the need to make Leiter black and its a shame we still have yet to see the Leiter from the books but as he's never been my favourite character in book or film then I don't really mind that much.
I'll give you the smoking one. The fact that a character can kill, drink and shag for two hours but a crafty fag is banned is ridiculous and very annoying. If we're going back to Fleming then we're going back to Fleming. Why not have him just bonk the baddies on the head as well to make him more kiddy friendly?
I don't have a problem with Leiter being black, I think Jeffrey Wright was only cast on the basis that he is just a bloody fine actor. I hope to see him return at some point.
I also agree with the point made about smoking. It's kind of like the being in the UK's Armed Forces. You can fight and die for your country at 17 but heaven forbid you cannot smoke, drink or indeed vote for the political party you would like see govern said country for which you are fighting and dying! Bloody ludicrous.
"Cultural progression" or PC, it has no place in Bond. Bond doesn't need it to survive, but PC can certainly kill Bond.
I rather doubt it. And I doubt Naomie Harris was cast irrespective of her race. I think there is a very conscious effort to keep the series "diverse" if only to ward off silly charges of "racism."
Difficult to argue with that. If they stuck to Fleming and kept Leiter and The MI6 crew white then the only way they could cast anyone black would be as the villain which would land them in even deeper hot water.
As they are hopefully never going to cast a black Bond (and please don't see that as an invitation to start up the tedious 'should we have a black Bond' debate) they think the best way to steer a course through the PC minefield is to fill some of the smaller roles with a token quota just enough to appease the diversity brigade. And who can blame them really?
Bond reflects the social climate, the cultural norm. Always has. Otherwise he is a hero trapped in time or bound by genre, like Indy or Harry Potter. Stop using the term 'PC' if you don't understand it. The Fleming Bond is not the modern Bond. They share traits but they are also wildly different and should be. Keeping him rooted in the 50's is a sure fire way to destroy his appeal. Life moves on, things change, ideologies become outdated. Get over it.
Yes, I very much think that's the strategy. And if a black Leiter or Moneypenny is the price to pay for avoiding a black Bond, I can't complain.
Lady boss? Nothing new there, plenty of them out there nowadays and not a PC thing.
Now we have a black Leiter and Moneypenny too. Times change. As long as they hire the right actor, which for me they have in this context because Wright's been nothing but excellent and Harris is a vast improvement over Samantha Bond, I don't have a problem with these choices. Khan is right though IMHO when he says that charges of racism are easily leveled when a certain amount of minorities aren't hired.
Smoking? Well, the lack of that is most certainly a trend everywhere you look, movies here in the U.S now have ratings that pertain to smoking being seen- funnily enough, Barb is a smoker herself for many years, if she's since quit I don't know but I doubt she would object out of some personal stance. Craig is an ex-smoker, and I don't see why he should be forced to take it up again just because it's what Fleming wrote. Blame that on the insurance companies and medical establishment rather than EON.
Gratuitous pursuit of women? Well if that's what Craig hasn't been doing with Solange, Fields, the Greek girl, and Severine, then I wonder what exactly he has been doing then? Someone isn't watching these films if they think that is true.
RC7 is dead on point and his comments reflect mine from earlier on. Fleming Bond is not modern Bond and keeping him that way in every possible aspect is indeed a sure fire way to limit his appeal to all but a very few dinosaurs like Perdogg appears to be in this respect. Fleming's essential character qualities should remain and EON/Craig have done an excellent job in recognizing that in the current era, being a stickler for Fleming Bond on every point is regressing.
(Oh and I'm glad I wasn't the only one to laugh at "blowy") ;-)
Well, if that is the case, I am not interested in it. You all can have a politically correct Bond all you want. Don't complain if one day the producers make Bond gay.
**heh heh**
Son, I've forgotten more about PC (and Bond) than you'll ever know.
Bond absolutely does not reflect the cultural norm, and that is what makes him distinct, what sets him apart from the cardboard, run-of-the-mill Hollywood action hero.
He is upper class, stylish and elite; this sets him at daggers with the coarse, grungy, workaday egalitarianism of contemporary western culture. He is a masterful and fully heterosexual womanizer, which puts him in contrast with the androgynous quiffs most beloved by the regnant feministas. He is a man who uses violence to decisively enact his black/white views; this is in stark relief to PC elites who affect pacifism and claim to believe everything is relative. Bond is a materialist who revels in the finer things in life; this flies in the face of the hypocritically anti-consumerist ethos of our betters. Bond is a patriot who --outside of the anomalous QOS--does not apologize for past actions of the West; nothing could more sharply depart from current views among the glitterati.
I could go on, but why? Bond is obviously a delightful anachronism, even if the films' plots and general tone mesh with the times in which they are made. To the extent that Bond sells out to PC mores he ceases to be Bond and ultimately dies. I think Babs and Michael begrudgingly understand this, even if certain fans do not.
You must give me the name of your oculist.
Forgive me, but there's something I find fascinating about people like yourself. You seem to have this need for Bond to be a 50's relic in a 21st century setting. I wonder at what point you'll give up waiting? It's almost like you enjoy the pain of watching your idealistic view crumble before you, so you have something to continually moan about and berate the younger generation for 'not understanding'. You long for the days when black people were only in Bond as villains, women were behind desks or being slapped on the arse and gays didn't get a sniff in. If you want that, go read the books, watch the old films, but don't expect the producers to bow down to your blinkered view of the world. Masking it behind the ideals set out by Fleming isn't justification.
That's a gross exaggeration there and one that is too far away from the essential character. Bond is clearly white and flagrantly heterosexual, the latter in particular will never change no matter how much pressure may be brought and I doubt the gay community is bothered that he isn't. As to the former, yes that could be an issue with certain special interest groups out there but I sincerely doubt changing Bond's skin color is high on their list of priorities - I've never known a black Bond fan who doesn't fully accept the character's ethnicity and has an issue with it, if one does then they were never a fan to begin with and won't be catered to. Certain changes like these would be fought like crazy and I do believe they would kill the franchise, no one involved wants to kill the golden goose it is now so the formula will remain.
A non-smoking Bond that doesn't slap women around is OK with me. I never believed in beating a woman anyway unless you are forced to defend yourself, which everyone has the right to do and even the PC can't argue that circumstance. The rest of the issues you've stated show unwillingness to change from the 1950's- that's your problem.
We currently have a steady cast that includes one black woman in Harris, everyone else is white and Leiter is not a key and steady support character so that barely counts. No one is forcing you, Perdogg, to watch the films. You jumping off the bandwagon isn't going to count any more to EON, the general public, or most of the hardcore fan base than those silly bunch of twits over at DCINB have hoped it would. All their ranting and raving hasn't amounted to squat and never will.
Hey, now, don't try to get on my good side.
But now that you mention it, I'm actually quite satisfied, all things considered, with the Bond world right now. SF--the latest Bond film, you'll doubtless note--is the most politically incorrect Bond film and many a moon, at least since TLD. So, as long as Bond continues along this path, my "idealistic view," far from crumbling, is actually bolstered. And you, young man, can pine away for your black, lesbian Bond, who has given up tuxedos for nipple clamps and butt chaps; martinis for Red Bull; Aston-Martins for public transportation, and patriotism for suicidal self loathing. Something tells me you'll pine for quite a while.
Well you just described my perfect Bond. Old man.
When were the days when ‘the only black people in Bond were villains’ exactly?
Presumably you mean the first five minutes of DN with the three blind mice? Although it seems a reasonable hypothesis to suggest they were black not so much because EON, Fleming and the world of Bond are institutionally racist but because the story is set in Jamaica. Had Crab Key been an island off the Hebrides I think there’s a fair possibility they might have been white.
And they are hardly ‘the only black people’. Remember a bloke called Quarrel? One of Bonds best allies ever? Or Puss Feller?
In fact in between the three blind mice (who I would anyway class as minor hoods rather than proper villains but I’m prepared to concede them just to give your ill thought out point a sporting chance) and Kananga (the first and only main black villain) heres the breakdown of villains to allies:
Allies: Quarrel, Puss Feller, Paula, Pinder, Che Che.
Villains: Three blind mice, Thumper.
In the same period heres a list of other villains:
White British: Dent, Grant, Goldfinger, Count Lippe (foreign sounding name but Doleman certainly plays him as English), Dr Tynan, old woman who ends up in the canal, Franks.
White Foreign: Mr Jones, Kronsteen, Blofeld, Morzeny, Klebb, Krilencu, Capungo, Bonita, Mr Solo, Bouvoir, Angelo, Fiona, Largo, Yanni, Vargas, Helga, Hans, Grunther, Bunt, Wint, Kidd, the undertakers, Slumber, Shady Tree, Saxby, Metz, Bambi.
Other Foreign: Miss Taro, Dr No, Sisters Rose & Lily (they had English accents but weren’t they Chinese?), Oddjob, Mr Ling, the guy who kills Henderson, Osato.
So what are these ‘days’ you talk about? Or could it be you’ve just tossed off a poorly conceived generalisation that fits your Guardianista point of view without thinking it through or having any facts to support it?
Should Russians be up in arms at always being portrayed as villains because that has happened far more than it has with black people? And what about tall blonde Aryan looking guys – how many of those have we had? Grant, Hans, Kriegler, Necros, Stamper – they always get stereotyped as the villain. Pretty racist if you ask me.
But then I’m no expert in these matters. I would always defer to Baroness Lawrence’s superior knowledge.
I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I mean, so don't make it political. I didn't say anything about any minority being 'up in arms' about the way they are portrayed. I was countering the bullish 'It's political correctness gone mad!' brigade. @Perilagu_Khan likes to assume Felix was cast as a black man for purely political reasons, while @Perdogg seems to believe we're on a collision course with 'Gay Bond'. All a load of utter nonsense IMO. This isn't about being a Guardianista or spouting leftist rhetoric, it's about using a bit of common sense and not spouting unproven shite because you're scared of ones racial or sexual leanings. I'm bored of reading comments phoned in from 1955.
Self-awareness is not one of your strong suits, I'm afraid.
Is this just tit-for-tat now? Because it could become incredibly tedious for the rest of the community. We have wildly different views on what is and isn't conducive to the modern Bond and they aren't going to be resolved any time soon. I happen to find some of the sentiments on here staggering, but each to their own. I suggest we get it back on topic before this descends any further.
Opinion - On paper, DAD is a decent Bond film.
(This is not strictly my opinion 100%, but I'll elaborate once others have crucified it).
I would say Jaws was batting way above his average.
I can sort of see what you mean. If the special effects looked a million times more realistic then you might be able to enjoy it as a stupid but fun Bond film.