In a world where it can sometimes feel as if the worst thing that can appear on the CV of a person seeking a job is the phrase “middle-aged white man”, those who fall into that category finally got some good news this week, followed by some bad news.
The good news? That the woman who has cast the last 14 movies in the James Bond franchise says, determinedly, that the role of Bond should still go to a white male because, in her words, “Ian Fleming wrote a character, and that’s the character that stays”.
The bad news? It turns out that the lady in question, Debbie McWilliams, will not be casting the next Bond movie – and that she says of the franchise that “it’s about to change dramatically, is all I can say. And I’m not sure whether I’ll be paying my money to go and see it or not”.
Ominous, indeed.
Defensible Changes?
The question of Bond’s race is, of course, one of those that is not clear-cut. The multiracial nature of modern Britain means that it is entirely plausible that MI6 could recruit a British-born person from a minority ethnic group – à la, for example, Idris Elba – to be one of its crack overseas operatives. A Black Bond is no more at odds with modern British society than, for example, the notion of an ethnically Indian prime minister in Rishi Sunak or an Afro-Caribbean foreign secretary like David Lammy.
The broader question is whether Bond, regardless of the race of the actor who portrays him, is still Bond at all.
James Bond is, of course, an avatar of a particular kind of masculinity, deeply rooted in the era of his creation. He is cold and ruthless, sexually voracious and not particularly minded toward emotional sensitivity. That there are toxic elements to his character is not in doubt, and the idea of such a man having a license to kill is presumably, in some modern quarters, terrifying.
But that is the point.
What Bond Represents
Bond is, and must remain, a representation of a certain kind of masculinity that the Western world finds simultaneously unsettling and essential. His callousness and indifference to emotion, for example, are necessary components of a character whose purpose is to eliminate, without much mercy, threats to our collective security. A man fully in touch with his feminine side would – this is a compliment to women, by the way – probably be less likely to coldly kill an unarmed opponent, as Bond does in GoldenEye. A man sensitive to modern sexual mores would likely not be so casual about seducing women under false pretenses, as Bond does in several of the films.
The franchise, while it glamorizes Bond to a certain extent, is intended to leave the viewer in no doubt that this is not a good man. Merely an essential one.
That ambiguity is precisely what makes Bond endure. He is not Superman, a moral exemplar sent to inspire us. He is closer to the old literary anti-heroes – men who commit ugly acts so that ordinary people may continue living ordinary lives. Every civilized society relies, whether it wishes to admit it or not, upon a small number of people prepared to exercise violence on its behalf. Soldiers, spies, special-forces operators and police firearms officers are not employed because they possess an unusually refined emotional intelligence. They are employed because, in extremis, they are willing to do things the rest of us hope never to witness.
Modern culture, however, has developed an odd discomfort with this reality. We are happy to enjoy the security such men provide, but increasingly reluctant even to depict them as they are. Fictional heroes are forever being softened, deconstructed or invited to apologize for themselves. Every rough edge must be sanded smooth, every vice balanced with vulnerability, every display of masculine confidence accompanied by an explanation that, underneath it all, lies a frightened little boy desperate for validation.
Bond was never desperate for validation. If anything, his defining characteristic was that he simply did not care what anybody thought of him. He possessed complete certainty in his own judgment, complete confidence in his own abilities and almost total indifference to the approval of others. Those are qualities that can become dangerous in ordinary life, but they are indispensable in a man whose profession requires him to decide, in a fraction of a second, whether another human being lives or dies.
Is He Still Bond at All?
That is why attempts to reinvent Bond have so often fallen flat. It is not because audiences object to change. Bond has changed continuously for more than 60 years. Sean Connery’s Bond was not Roger Moore’s, Pierce Brosnan’s was not Daniel Craig’s, and each reflected the era in which he appeared. What never changed was the central premise: that Bond was a man shaped by a brutal profession and that the profession had left its mark upon him.
If Amazon’s much-heralded dramatic change amounts merely to updating the gadgets or modernizing the villains, few viewers will object. If, however, the intention is to produce a James Bond who spends more time examining his feelings than defeating his enemies, then they will no longer have James Bond at all. They will instead, yet again, have another expensive streaming protagonist wearing somebody else’s name.
And audiences, rightly, are sick of that. Whether Bond is black or white is really the secondary question. The bigger question remains: Is he still Bond at all?