On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 6:46 PM Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
If the producers wanted to do a series akin to “Mission: Impossible” where different movies followed different Double-Oh agents and operatives, each with varying backgrounds, genders, personalities, and attributes, I’d be on board with that. And every couple films the various agents could assemble as a team to handle a superbig supervillain. Marvel certainly has found success along those lines. But 007 is James Bond, and James Bond is who he is. To state that James Bond is not a woman is not the same thing as saying there should be no movies about female secret agents. I’m not enough of a novel purest that I believe Bond must have thick dark hair and a dueling scar, because (and I say this as a ginger) hair color isn’t a defining character trait, but Bond’s misogyny is. Bond believing that this is a man’s world is central to the plot of every traditional Bond story. I suppose one could write a character who is both a lesbian and a misogynist, and it might be a great character, but it wouldn’t be James Bond. The thing that got me reconsidering Bond years ago was a clickbait headline saying, "Should Idris Elba be the next James Bond?" In technical terms I'd think why not? He's got the right charisma and certainly knows how to act. But how should the character be written? If there's no acknowledgement of Bond being a Black secret agent then the wrong actor has been cast in the role. But then I thought about the scenes in the Caribbean in the books and the early movies where people of color were treated as happy natives and atmosphere and I wonder if a Black Bond should identify with them or ignore them like the white Bond does? And that led me to the question: should Bond accept his place as an agent of British colonialism? In the movies from the sixties, I get it. But if you're continuing the same character over the decades a new actor has to have some continuity. A Bond with different sensibilities (no matter how diverse you want to go with the actor) is a different Bond. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiEQe54ojqm_qJ%2Bxp%3Dj8-HY0yo%3D8G0i6FtEGiJTK8XTF_w%40mail.gmail.com.
