When Daniel Craig was finishing his run as James Bond in 2021, Sir Keir Starmer was asked who was his favourite 007. ‘I don’t have a favourite Bond…’ he replied ‘but I do think it’s time for a female Bond’. This from a man who, at the time, struggled to define what a woman even was and whose party has never elected a female leader.
It is telling that Starmer couldn’t even name his favourite 007, but still felt the need to opine that the next one should be a woman
But what the future prime minister’s response typified was a certain bien pensant belittling of Bond that goes back decades. Ian Fleming once described his creation as a hero for ‘warm-blooded heterosexuals’. To many on the left that was Bond’s original sin, for which the franchise has never been forgiven.
The calls for a female Bond are as lazy as the calls for a black Bond, and are invariably made by people who don’t personally care about the franchise at all. They merely see it as another staging post on their ruinous march through Britain’s cultural institutions. It is telling that Starmer couldn’t even name his favourite 007, but still felt the need to opine that the next one should be a woman.
So thank heavens Sir Idris Elba has a better grasp on Bond’s enduring appeal than Starmer. The British actor, who is frequently cited by those who argue it’s time for a non-white Bond, told GQ that the character ‘was written how he was written for a reason’, and that ‘Bond is big all over the world. And (audiences) won’t go for a black male, an African male, playing Bond. That’s not what they like in their culture. Period.’
While adding he was ‘complimented’ to be linked to the role, Sir Idris continued: ‘Bond is so unrealistic, so a hint of reality is good, but let’s not try to make it woke. I think you’ve got to be pure to what it is: escapism. Don’t try to answer the world’s taste. Just be Bond.’ Spoken like a true Fleming fan.
To say the character has never been woke would be an understatement. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Fleming observes that ‘all women love to be semi-raped’; in Goldfinger, Bond ‘cures’ Pussy Galore of her lesbianism. Throughout the books, Fleming’s portrayal of black characters is oudated even for the 1950s, with variations of the n-word used liberally and observations like the one in For Your Eyes Only that black women ‘don’t know anything about birth control.’
Even the films contain several scenes that would today be labelled as ‘problematic’. In Thunderball, Sean Connery’s Bond coerces a reluctant spa employee into a shower by threatening to have her fired otherwise. In You Only Live Twice, Connery adopts a notoriously awkward ‘yellowface’ disguise while undercover in Japan. In Octopussy, Roger Moore tips an Indian waiter and quips it should ‘keep you in curry for a few weeks’. Even the Daniel Craig era was not immune from controversy. There is a scene in Skyfall, for instance, in which Bond creeps, uninvited, into the shower of a sex-trafficking victim.
Of course it is right that Bond moves, to an extent, with the times. The aforementioned examples would receive short shrift from modern audiences, and rightly so. The series’ producers, until recently Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, have done well to balance Bond’s rougher edges with evolving cultural norms. But with Amazon now in control of the franchise, they would do well to remain closer to Elba’s vision of Bond than Starmer’s.
In an ever-changing world, 007 is simultaneously a character of the past, ‘a sexist, misogynist dinosaur… a relic of the Cold War’, as Judi Dench’s M memorably denounces in Goldeneye, and also a modern-day cultural icon. A huge part of Bond’s enduring popularity is his timelessness. He belongs to both a bygone era and today. If producers try to contort Bond to fit the latest culture mores, they will destroy him. Idris Elba is right: James Bond should never be woke.
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