{"id":6937,"date":"2017-07-10T17:51:09","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T23:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=6937"},"modified":"2017-07-10T17:51:09","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T23:51:09","slug":"black-james-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/07\/black-james-bond.html","title":{"rendered":"A black James Bond?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"from<\/p>\n

From the twitter feed today, \u201cCast Idris Elba as James Bond Already<\/a>\u201d from The Daily Beast. \u00a0Oddly, this was an article from over a year ago; I suppose it\u2019s a slow news day and they\u2019re recycling content, perhaps inspired by today\u2019s reports<\/a> that Daniel Craig has signed on for another Bond film.<\/p>\n

The article reports that Craig had rejected playing the character in any more Bond films, and<\/p>\n

a red carpet\u2019s worth of Britain\u2019s most genetically blessed males are more than eager to obtain a license to kill. . . .<\/p>\n

Others don\u2019t need to campaign so aggressively. The world\u2019s Bond fans are doing the legwork for them. Enter Idris Elba, who has been appropriately dubbed \u201cThe People\u2019s Bond.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n

And, with such a public demand for Elba to take on the role, thus becoming the first black James Bond, the unasked question is: What will happen if he does?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article then goes on to talk about the significance of the \u201cfirst black Bond\u201d as if it\u2019s just as extraordinary and trailblazing as the \u201cfirst black astronaut\u201d or the like.<\/p>\n

Now, I don\u2019t know if this just shows my lack of popular culture knowledge, but I had to google Elba \u2014 here\u2019s the Wikipedia page<\/a>, here\u2019s the IMDB entry<\/a> \u2014 to find out who he is. \u00a0Performances that I\u2019ve seen\/heard include Heimdall in the Thor\/Avengers movies, Krall in Star Trek Beyond<\/em>, voices in Zootopia<\/em> and The Jungle Book<\/em>, and a character in Pacific Rim<\/em>. \u00a0(With respect to the last of these films, yes, it was a DVD rented at the kids\u2019 behest.) \u00a0Where he ranks on the spectrum of A-list actors I can\u2019t tell, and likewise whether he\u2019d have those characteristics that make for a believable\u00a0Bond actor (suave ladies\u2019 man and action hero), or whether people have latched onto him because he\u2019s both black and British, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

But it does raise interesting questions, and I\u2019m not really even offering answers so much as inviting readers to discuss.<\/p>\n

Is it important to the James Bond movie to preserve some continuity with the original Ian Fleming character, who, given the time the books were set in, most certainly would not have been black, but would have been ethnically British? \u00a0Or is it needed in order to preserve continuity in the character\u2019s backstory (in Skyfall, after all, the action takes place at the family estate)?<\/p>\n

Or is James Bond more of a genre than a character, so that, to fit properly in the franchise, the character need only have the characteristics of James Bond, and the movie need only have the general structure of a Bond movie (Q, M, Moneypenny, and a villain who is planning to destroy the world)? \u00a0Certainly, Daniel Craig is a wholly different Bond than Roger Moore, say, grim and serious rather than treating world-saving as a sort of side gig to the primary endeavor of seducing women.<\/p>\n

And if Bond is white because the \u201creal\u201d Bond (of the novels) is white, that is one more way in which it\u2019s simply impossible for black, or Asian or Hispanics actors to be represented fully in proportion to their numbers among the American population, when movies are set not just in the present day but in the past. \u00a0Which is itself another way in which it\u2019s simply not possible to achieve this hoped-for world of perfect, utopian-level \u201csocial justice\u201d in terms of, as they say, \u201cdiversity and inclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0from Pixabay; https:\/\/pixabay.com\/en\/james-bond-spy-movie-bond-james-2114038\/ \u00a0Because I don\u2019t have a good enough understanding of \u201cfair use\u201d and how it applies to using a James Bond or Idris Elba image and I\u2019m not in the mood for figuring it out.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the twitter feed today, \u201cCast Idris Elba as James Bond Already\u201d from The Daily Beast. \u00a0Oddly, this was an article from over a year ago; I suppose it\u2019s a slow news day and they\u2019re recycling content, perhaps inspired by today\u2019s reports that Daniel Craig has signed on for another Bond film. The article reports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA black James Bond?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From the twitter feed today, "Cast Idris Elba as James Bond Already" from The Daily Beast. \u00a0Oddly, this was an article from over a year ago; I suppose\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/07\/black-james-bond.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A black James Bond?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From the twitter feed today, "Cast Idris Elba as James Bond Already" from The Daily Beast. \u00a0Oddly, this was an article from over a year ago; 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