Shooting began on the latest Bond film earlier this week. Reports are that this will be the last one featuring Daniel Craig as 007, hence all the speculation afoot about his replacement.
No speculation has been more fevered than the prospect of a black actor playing James Bond. But frankly my friends, the campaign behind it has me shaken and stirred.
What bothers me most are the putatively proud blacks in the vanguard of this campaign. These, after all, are the same blacks who have been accusing whites of cultural appropriation for everything from white girls braiding their hair to white boys singing rap songs. I poured scorn on this phenomenon in “Calling BS on ‘Cultural Appropriation’,” February 28, 2018.
But consider how you would feel if whites mounted a campaign to get a white actor to play T’Challa/Black Panther. Because, far from the amorphous notion of cultural appropriation, this would be a glaring case of intellectual misappropriation … and laziness.
This is why any proud black person should object to a black actor playing Bond. Yet I have been among only a handful of blacks willing to decry the championing of this intellectual misappropriation and laziness.
Most notable in the vanguard of our campaign is actor Yaphet Kotto. Significantly, he gained international fame and acclaim as Bond’s nemesis, Mr. Big, in Live and Let Die.
Here is how he poured scorn on this prospect:
Political correctness be damned, we have to stay with what is literally correct. [Bond] was established by Ian Fleming as a white character, played by white actors.
Play 003 or 006 but you cannot be 007.
(The Independent, April 9, 2015)
My informed indignation was such, however, that I preempted even Kotto. For here is how I poured scorn, laden with racial humiliation, in “A Black James Bond? No, Hell No!” December 26, 2014:
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Frankly, casting a black actor would require too much suspension of disbelief for anyone who knows anything about the zeitgeist in which Bond was born, and still thrives. To say nothing of the wanton disrespect to Fleming’s oeuvre, or the insult to reasonable expectations of existing fans, it would entail. …
I prefer to emphasize my opposition by noting that Idris Elba playing James Bond would be every bit as ludicrous as Michael Fassbender playing John Shaft. Never mind rumors that Fassbender might be anatomically correct for the part in at least one respect.
What’s more, I refuse to believe, and Elba should be loath to affirm, that it is so untenable for Hollywood to create iconic black characters that it has to cast black actors to play firmly established white ones. …
Instead of playing along, Elba should at least challenge Sony executives to greenlight a Bond-like character for him to play. …
Indeed, if Hollywood has become so bereft of creativity, Sony executives could turn John Luther, the detective Elba popularized on TV, into a movie star to rival James Bond or Jason Bourne. Hell, they could even introduce him as John Luther 009, the mysterious, unnamed MI6 agent Fleming refers to in Thunderball. (Contrary to popular belief, agents 001 through 007 are already named characters.)
But Elba as Bond? No, hell no!
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Which brings me to Ralph Fiennes risking curtains on his career to stand up for Bond’s intellectual integrity and creativity:
Ralph Fiennes has walked into a major casting row by saying that 007 should never change gender. Nor, he believes, should James Bond be played by a black actor.
Fiennes, who succeeded Dame Judi Dench as spymaster M, insists black or female stars should be given their own action films to showcase their talents, away from the Bond franchise.
(The Daily Mail, March 17, 2019)
Come to think of it, though, it’s hardly surprising that Fiennes would be the first A-list white actor to pooh-pooh these misappropriations. After all, here is how I was moved nearly a decade ago to describe the integrity of his acting:
As Ralph Fiennes demonstrated in Schindler’s List, it takes real talent to make a Nazi bastard seem endearing.
(“82nd Annual Academy Awards: And the Oscar Goes To…,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 6, 2010)
Many of you might know Fiennes only from his role as Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter movies. Therefore, you probably scoffed at this character actor replacing Dench as M. But you’d do well to see why Fiennes was so eminently worthy by checking him out in other films like The English Patient, The End of the Affair, and (my favorite) The Constant Gardener.
(If you’re into Harry Potter, I suspect it would be too much to suggest even more compelling performances in classics like Onegin, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra.)
I just hope Fiennes can withstand the kind of bullying tweets that forced former bond actor Roger Moore to cower after standing up in similar fashion. Mind you, in doing so, Moore only reinforced my critique of him as the least convincing (or “manly”) of the six actors who have played this iconic role. Compared to Sean Connery, for example, Moore came across like a “Richie Rich” playing cops and robbers.
As it happens, I also laid the groundwork for Fiennes to stand up against a female playing Bond. I refer you to “Female James Bond Is Just a Cinematic Perversion of Stockholm Syndrome,” May 7, 2018. I wrote this to disabuse the likes of Diane Kruger – who have been lobbying for a female Bond the way Idris Elba has been for a black Bond.
Related commentaries:
cultural appropriation…
A black bond…
Female James Bond…
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