Ian Fleming’s James Bond books are being reprinted with less racism
But not zero racism, and there will also still be some classic Bond misogyny
Aux News Ian Fleming
Recently, after the decision to reprint Roald Dahl’s books with less problematic language was met with an immediate and predictable backlash from pretty much everyone, the company that owns Dahl’s publishing rights backed down and agreed to keep both the new and classic editions of the books in print. That means that future generations will still be able to read about the times Dahl referred to a character in one of his books as “fat” or “ugly” (and then maybe they can read about some of the times Dahl said even worse things about real people), but the same can’t be said for another iconic British author’s works.
The Telegraph says that newly edited versions of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books are going to be released in honor of the series’ 70th anniversary, but there are some twists here beyond what happened with Dahl—namely that Fleming’s books are being altered so their less overtly racist, and also Fleming himself sort of approved of this (despite dying nearly 60 years ago).
The changes all seem to be specifically related to Fleming’s depiction of Black people, with The Telegraph saying that the N-word has been “almost entirely expunged” (wow, almost!) and replaced with “Black person,” though direct references to a character’s ethnicity have been totally omitted in other cases. The way The Telegraph story describes it, it sounds like that alone might trim these books down by 100 pages each:
In one example, some criminals escaping from Bond in Dr. No become simply “gangsters”. In the same novel, the race of a doctor and an immigration officer now go unmentioned, as does that of a henchman shot by Bond.
The ethnicity of a barman in Thunderball is similarly omitted in new editions. In Quantum of Solace, a butler’s race now also goes unmentioned.
There’s also a section in Live And Let Die where Bond’s impression of people in the African diamond trade has been changed from “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” to “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.” Also, a scene where everybody gets horned up at a nightclub in Harlem is changed from “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough” to “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.”
The original American release of Live And Let Die was already edited to be less racist, and Ian Fleming Publications is quick to point out that Fleming himself approved of those changes before his death—saying in a statement that they are “following Ian’s approach” and making changes to the language that are “more accepted today but in keeping with the period in which the books were written.” Oddly, The Telegraph says “dated references to other ethnicities remain,” like racist terms for Asian people, and there’s still a lot of misogyny and homophobia in the books (though editing that stuff out of the James Bond series might make them structurally unsound).
The new paperbacks will be published in April, and Ian Fleming Publications said they “encourage people to read the books for themselves when the new paperbacks are published in April.”
266 Comments
“Ian get your moldy ass in gear and hop on that bandwagon, dammit!”
The book to get it the worst will be The Spy Who Loved Me which will not be changed at all.
Going back in time and taking a flamethrower to the manuscript is the only acceptable change you could make to that book.
Is it weird that the I think the premise at least has some potential? A Bond story from the girl’s POV about how some crazy spy nonsense suddenly barged into her life isn’t the worst idea.
I agree, but the spy nonsense needs to be more than about 8 pages of the book.
Wasn’t there like a Mila Kunis movie from a few years ago with the same premise?
Spies Like Us? Yep.
Thats stirring up some Paul McCartney memories.
Like Grendel?
No you have to go back and make sure Fleming is never born.
That’s the book that Fleming himself hated so much he would literally only allow the title to be used for the film series, with a totally original story under it. Featuring the line “All women enjoy semi-rape.”
That’s the joke.
Funny coincidence — Fleming and Dahl worked together in British intelligence stationed in Washington DC in 1940-1941, trying (unsuccessfully) to get FDR to enter the war (before Pearl Harbor decided the issue). There’s a great book about them by Jennet Conant called “The Irregulars: The British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington”.
Dahl also wrote You Only Live Twice, probably the most overtly anti Asian Bond film.
bird not make nest in bare tree
Plus maybe Fleming’s most notable non-Bond book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
I completely forgot Fleming wrote that. What a film.
The only other Fleming fact I know is that he was related to Christopher Lee ( they were 2nd cousins if I remember correctly) Also if you get the chance , read Lee’s autobiography Lord Of Misrule , which is great and pretty much racism free ( I think the closest is when he mentions playing a fu manchu like character back on the 60s)
Yes; we must do everything in our power to ensure that instead of reading more interesting authors of color, people continue to read the same crusty white men under the impression that they were slightly less crusty.
Because it’s an either/or proposition?
Man in bookstore: “Gee, I was all set to read “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, but now I see there’s a new edition of “Thunderball.”
Because no author of color has ever written a spy novel. Go fuck yourself, you racist piece of shit — but also, thank you for proving my point.
One of your own comments was apt here, so I’ll just reply with that:“Is this what you always say when you’re wrong? Because holy shit you must be miserable to be around.”
Only when the person says something racist! Which doesn’t make me much fun at country clubs, but hey.
“Sir, please, I have but two weeks left to live before the cancer claims me and sends me to my heavenly reward – could you please recommend one and only one book that I might read before I go?”
If you only have two weeks to live, you should not read Thunderball. You should watch Thunderball. Time’s short.
If I’m sitting down to read a book, I’m choosing one book. This is a bit of a ridiculous thing to challenge.
And each and every time you sit down to read a book, you’re prevented from reading what you want because bowdlerized Ian Fleming books exist? Further to the comment below, when I wanted to read Coates’ “Between the World and Me” nothing about “You Only Live Twice” stopped me.Respectfully, your comment presented a false dichotomy.
Lecturing me about false dichotomies while claiming that every book written by a person of color is similar to “Between the World and Me”? Extraordinary.
The film franchise is one of the most successful in cinematic history and continues to gross billions of dollars. It stands to reason that some newer viewers may want to check out the novels they are based on, like I did when I was a kid. These aren’t – to my knowledge – being included on reading lists or school curriculums. The Fleming estate is just updating the books to avoid scaring new readers away. If Fleming’s often-stale writing doesn’t push those readers toward more interesting authors of color, I don’t know what will.
I mean, maybe the racism would push people away more than stale writing. Just a little bit.
But your comment is predicated on the idea that a white author’s racist work is being elevated over the work of authors of color by society, when the entity putting out these whitewashed editions is Ian Fleming’s own estate, in the hopes of not scaring away new readers who likely sought out his work because they were introduced to the franchise by the movies and video games based on his books. In other words, “we” are not doing anything in our power to ensure people continue to read this crusty white man instead of more interesting authors of color; the crusty white man’s family is trying to give the impression that he was slightly less crusty to sell a few more copies to people curious about the franchise.I just mentioned the stale writing because short of completely rewriting Fleming’s novels, nothing his estate does can really fix that. Omitting racist passages is comparatively much easier.
By “we” I meant “humans,” which tend to comprise societies.
Humans also tend to comprise families and estates.
So, you’re saying that We Live In A Society?
The books don’t seem to suggest racism is okay. They just have characters who are products of their time. If we truly removed everything problematic about Bond then…at what point is it a different character? I mean he’s kind of a dick and a womanizer. That’s who he is.
Can confirm: ‘Tis rare to see Fleming’s work on a college syllabus, unless you’re taking/teaching a class specifically on spy fiction. It definitely won’t be on a high school curriculum. I have taught spy fiction in pop culture classes in the past, and I’ve put Bond novels on that syllabus without much concern. But it’s a college class, so the considerations are different. Part of the reason you read those novels is to talk about how they reflect cultural attitudes. We read From Russia with Love, for example, and talk about the stereotypical depictions of Romani people. Or we talk about the sexism/misogyny, or imperalism. There’s been a ton of research and scholarly writing done on these things in Fleming’s work, so from that standpoint I wouldn’t want to see the works altered. But scholar will know to seek out the original editions, so I have no real qualms there if publishers want to smooth out some of the rougher edges to lure more contemporary audiences.That said, I’m not sure the edits will help spur a lot of book sales. Fleming’s writing, as you note, has not aged well. He’s hard for most students to read. Heck, I struggle with him. He’s not like le Carre, whose sentences still wash over you like a symphony some 40+ years after they were written. Le Carre’s prose is beautiful. Fleming’s in brutal.
Le Carre also has the added bonus of feeling like real spywork. I know Fleming and Le Carre were real spies, but even at Bonds best, it always feels a few steps beyond plausible. There is no Fleming book like Spy Who Came In From the Cold.
Oh that’s inarguable. There’s no one who writes spies like le Carre. There’s no comparison between le Carre and Fleming, in part because le Carre’s work reacts to and pushes back against the excesses of Fleming’s. If Fleming delights in the perceived glamour of the spy trade, le Carre insists on focusing on the mundane, realist elements of spycraft. That’s what makes le Carre great.
Fleming never could write something as self aware and reflective as Legacy of Spies.
There’s a great (true) story about how Le Carre got dragged beyond the Berlin wall by one of this superiors, complete with a Hi-Power smuggled in a briefcase, to some dismal East German tavern to meet some supposed contact who never showed, and it got John thinking about maybe this superior made it the fuck all up and just…dunno. Wanted to feel important? Like he was doing something? Like his suppositions and theories weren’t all geopolitical paranoia and that this trip wasn’t just some manifestation of that pathology in an attempt to somehow justify it?
You can see a lot of it in his works.
I believe that. Mundane work and out of touch assholes who want to be special and frequently don’t know what to do.
A firefighter in Perth, Australia once told me that most arsons involve firefighters who want a fire to fight.
And Le Carre actually despised the Bond series for that very reason. Which makes it pretty amusing that Bernard Lee appears in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, as an innocent bystander who’s beaten up by the “good guys.”
I remember laughing fairly hard the first time I saw the film and M getting his ass kicked. What luck.
TBF I can’t imagine that the overlap on the Venn diagram of “people interested in the work of challenging and exciting new authors of color” and “people actually reading an Ian Fleming James Bond novel in the Year Of Our Lord 2023″ is that big.
This. Never read any James Bond novel, watch every movie. When LOTR movie came out, spend weeks reading the book. Although I’m more scifi oriented reader (Michael Crichton, William Gibson, etc).
“Ian Fleming was a terrible racist, homophobic, misogynistic old fossil.”“So why are you trying to whitewash him?”
You think this is effort to continue some kind of white supremacy? You’re fucking nuts. And if you can cough up some POC writers of Fleming’s stature, I’m all ears.
“Ian Fleming Publications have also taken the liberty of removing some of the stupider passages of his books, such as in Live and Let Die where Bond inflates villain Dr. Kananga like a balloon, which sends him flying around the room making a deflating fart noise until he explodes. Furthermore, the pigeons in Fleming’s Moonraker no longer do double-takes.”
I would strongly be in favor of both plus taking out the kazoo sound effect from the Man with the Golden Gun car stunt.
I disagree vociferously. It’s a slide whistle not a kazoo.
A subtle but notable difference. Slide whistles are worse.
Just to be safe, let’s put all kazoos and slide whistles in a pile and then nuke the pile.
When they came for the racism I did nothing. Then they came for the slide whistle.
Man With the Golden Gun is one of those houses that’s a total loss after a fire. Pay the Lee and Moore estates for their likenesses and start over.
Summon Christopher Lees ghost, go get Maud Adams from the old folks home, get a new Bond and Bond girl, keep the car stunt, redo everything else. Also burn all copies of Lulus title song its the worst.
In all seriousness, there is a deep fake out there with Henry Cavill replacing Dalton in License to Kill and Dalton replacing Brosnan in Goldeneye. We aren’t far off from Richard Madden dueling Christopher Lee while Natalie Dormer watches (and Nick Knack is completely erased off the screen because Peter Dinklage shot and killed everyone who knocked on his door asking him to do it)
Id watch that movie, not the thing we currently have. Lee and that stunt plus Maud Adams are literally the only good part. Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight is among the flattest Bond Girls in the series, Moore isn’t having fun, the plot is a mess, Nick Knack as a character doesn’t work, it has the terrible racist sherif from Live and Let Die for some fucking reason. God what a mess.
The 70s Bonds, with the exception of Spy Who Loved Me, are all about trying to capture the cultural moment and being two years late.Live and Let Die – Blaxsploitation Golden Gun – Kung FuMoonraker – Star Wars
Theres also some psychedelic aspects to Golden Gun which is a solid 5 years past its due date. God people pick on modern films for aping trends, Cubby Broccoli was the king of saying let’s just do whats making money right now. The recent films have continued this tread with Quantum of Solace being a Borne clone and Skyfall through No Time To Die doing the MCH overarching storyline sthick.
Licence to Kill is a Miami Vice episode two years after that show was relevant. Bond was at its best when IT set the culture – From Russia With Love/Goldfinger or For Your Eyes Only and Casino Royale. Broccoli’s biggest stroke of genius was correctly guessing the Soviet/West stuff Fleming used would not hold up. Whatever the sexual and racial problems with the early Connery stuff, it isn’t outdated politically.
Well said. The four films to mentioned are among my favorite. Russia with Love is my number 1 Bond film, Goldfinger is a blast no matter how dated it is with gold standards, For Your Eyes Only is the best Moore ever got and Casino Royale is a close second best for me. I’d just add Goldeneye as Brosnons best and a really good example of reading the cultural moment, post Soviet Union era spying.License to Kill, AKA the real life version of McBain the movie. Just replaced Senator Mendoza with Franz Sánchez and its the same movie.
I was in a thread on Goldeneye once and we came to the surprising conclusion that Natalia may be the greatest Bond woman ever.Capable, calls him out on his shit, playful banter – the look she gives him when he says “Russian Minister of Transportation” still cracks me up – takes her own initiative to play a role in foiling the bad guy, and of course, gorgeous.
As far as I can remember, Natalya is the only Bond girl with a significant amount of screen time before she crosses paths with Bond, serving very well to give her agency of her own in the story.
In the ‘60s Bond set the trend. In the ‘70s Bond was following them. In the ‘80s they did their own thing, but in the 2000s Bond was following Bourne for no good reason
Now that the Craig cycle is definitively over, it’s time for Bond to set the trends again.
The Spy Who Loved Me was even more dated in its reference — the 1960s TV show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-1968).
I’ve got this great idea for a henchman who is a black dwarf assassin named Lon Jockey.
Call Tony Cox’s agent!
I feel genuinely sorry for Goodnight in that one. I really do loathe the “lol, idiot comic relief, lol” school of writing characters.
I aggressively hated her for the same reason. The bit where she plants a tracker on the car goes on so painfully long that its obvious she’s about to get kidnapped. Also the end where her ass randomly hits the fuck up the bad guy button. She’s as useless as Tiffany Case in Diamonds are Forever.
It’s Bond. In an evil mastermind’s lair. The sanest choice we’re left with is “You know, things would probably be better if he just – whoops! – pushed her into one of those non-OHS compliant nitrogen tanks.”Not only does she not really suffer any serious consequences (at least relative to the context of the movie), but the fact that Bond is expected to save her every five seconds…even while she’s actively endangering him and others. We’re just expected to roll with it.Lucky she’s hot, I guess. It’s literally the only thing that gets Goodnight through the movie – Scaramanga only keeps her around because she looks good in a bikini and he already offed Future Octopussy. I actually remember little about Diamonds, because you can see Sean cashing the paycheque in every frame of that film and it’s just…diamond smuggling? That’s the big bad? Oh, sure, they tacked on Blofeld in the end, but come on. Best thing about that flick was the Elrod House:
Britt Ekland is quite pretty, although I found Maud Adams, who played Andrea Anders and later Octopussy, prettier. That probably gives away too much information about my taste in women…
Maybe I am losing my man card, but Britt Ekland never did it for me. Not in a movie with Maud Adams and where the last one was Jane Seymour and the next one was Barbara Bach.
Diamonds are Forever is just as unwatchable as Man with the Golden Gun. I’m not choosing. It’s like choosing whether I want herpes or anal warts.
First, because of the bad toupee and the beer gut, Connery looks 10 years older in Diamonds than he does in Never Say Never Again, which was done 12 years later.
I know it’s annoying to have all the Bonds be connected now, but this is one where just a little tiny connection would have been good.The whole Willard Whyte thing is just abominable. As bad as the racist sheriff. The gay hitman thing wouldn’t have flown even five years later, let alone even the 50 years later its been. And Jill St. John is just… I cannot stand stupid women on screen. This is right after Diana Rigg for God’s sake.
I actually remember little about Diamonds, because you can see Sean cashing the paycheque in every frame of that film and it’s just…diamond smuggling? That’s the big bad? Oh, sure, they tacked on Blofeld in the end, but come on.Hey, hey, the diamonds were being smuggled to construct a satellite weapon.It was not a good film.
It is telling that the next several movies leading ladies were: a bad-ass Russian spy, an astronaut, a bad-ass who had her own agenda, and a master criminal.Of course, then you have poor Tanya Roberts, who had to play a woman who got snuck up on by a blimp
Every time I see Zorin’s blimp I think of Roger’s like from the American Dad parody “Tearjerker”: “IS THERE ANYTHING MORE TERRIFYING THAN A HOVERING BLIMP?!”It’s also why I can’t stand Constable Bob in Justified, because it’s just “OK, we’ll make this scene ‘interesting’ by having Bob come in and fuck it all up” – that’s why it’s lazy writing. Just…bleh. I love Patton Oswalt, but jeez. I kinda like Bob, too, but I wish they did more with him than “I’m a pathetic loser who only wishes he could be like you, Raylan!”My absolute favourite Bond girl is Natalya. Fyodorovna. Simonova. Is she a trained spy? No, and there’s certainly situations where Bond helps her out and saves her because, again, not a trained spy! But fucking hell. She watched her entire workplace get murdered, outsmarted Onatopp, climbed out of her collapsed building via the wreckage, took a fucking dogsled back to civilisation from the middle of Russia, and wrangled herself an internet connection and made contact with Boris – granted, she didn’t know he was scum at the time. Agency, people. She mightn’t be a secret agent but she’s got agency.That bit where Bond hands her the Makarov at the end and says “Know how to use this?” and she drops the mag, checks round count, slams it home and racks the slide is beautiful (it’s also telling that she saves Bond at the end by disobeying his instructions, because Bond is out for revenge and not really thinking of an exit strategy). Plus she gets Bond back on numerous occasions, and gets almost as many cool lines as he does. “Do you destroy every vehicle you get into?” and the classic callback “Go ahead. Kill him. He means nothing to me.” which elicits a classic Brosnan eyeroll. My only problem with Goodhead in Moonraker was that Lois Chiles sleptwalk through the whole damn thing and had zero chemistry with…anything. And so this remains her best spy movie role:
I think you missed Melina Havelock in For Your Eyes Only, who could come across as stupid but I think, instead, she’s just young and incredibly pissed – and justifiably so. Plus, y’know, crossbows are always cool in modern settings.
I want 14.4 modems!
For the American School AND the Swedish School!And madame requires a private place to test them!
Natalya is really solid. My personal favorite are of course Tracy, Vesper Lynd, then probably Melina Havelock and Tanya Romanova shes actually pretty great.
I thought it was just me! Here is what separates her from most Bond women, as well as most leading ladies in any action movie.
She makes her own decisions. Plenty of leading ladies are capable, but they do so as part of a plan the leading man cooks up. Even the next movie, with Michelle Yeoh, who is on paper more of a strong female character, is much more subsumed to Bond’s agenda.
* Bond tries to get out of the train and she decides to find Boris. (She does need him for the password, which is fine)
* She distracts Xenia long enough – and takes a wicked head butt for her trouble – for Bond to shoot at the helicopter and cause Xenia to be crushed.
* When they infiltrate the lair, Bond says, “Stay here” and she goes and encrypts the satellite, sending panic and dissension through the bad guys.
* She slaps the shit out of Boris (Sean Bean’s smirk at that never fails to crack me up) and causes him to grab the explosive pen which eventually leads to the place being destroyed.To be fair, she had no idea this would result, but it is still her. If we’re going to credit the rat who releases Ant-Man in Endgame, we credit Natalia.
* Bond AGAIN tells her to stay put and she saves his dumb ass by distracting Trevalyn during the fight.Add in that she calls him out on his bullshit, has great banter, and has a hilarious moment of getting in between the pissing match between Bond and the Russian defense minister. “Boys with toys” is the PG-13 way of saying “Measuring each other’s dicks” and as we have gleefully recounted, hilariously gets her own internet connection.
The prosecution rests. Move over Pussy and Plenty and Goodhead and all the rest. Natalia is the new queen.
More and more, I’m come to realize Goldeneye is a Top 5 Bond film. And then when you add Casino Royale in there, you realize that Martin Campbell directed two of the 5 best Bond films ever.
Goldeneye is the most important Bond film, IMO: people were literally saying Bond was dead and irrelevant when the Wall fell, and that there was no need for any more – that the paradigm had changed, there’d be no need for spies or anything like that (yeah, because like Russia’d ever start shit again, right? Right?) (Never mind that most of the previous Bond films barely had any Soviets in them as the baddies, and, hell, Bond occasionally worked with them, or at least had their grudging respect like in TSWLM or FYEO.)Instead, what they got was a smart, reasonably grounded Bond film that neatly bridged the Cold War-Post Cold War divide by setting a story either side of it. It also grappled with Britain’s past as a superpower with the recruitment of Lienz Cossack 006, challenged Bond’s role in a changing world directly (“…a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War…”) – and with some subtle digs at ELINT/SIGINT that we’d see played back up (very poorly, IMO) in Skyfall (god that movie was stupid – couldn’t spend 2 pounds on a physical padlock, eh, MI6? Internet Of Things bullshit…. Or get an IT dweeb who wasn’t a fucking idiot who plugs a baddie’s laptop straight into his own network?)It neatly dealt with the collapse of the Soviet Union by…showing the rubble. 90s Russia was a shitshow, and it hinted at the powerplays and corruption, the devolution into a Mafia state with the criminals taking power in the chaos that we’re dealing with quite openly now. A former Colonel who “sees himself as the next Iron Man of Russia” being groomed to become President by working with mobsters…now, does that sound familiar? And we get a lot of depth added to Bond – subtly, not heavy-handedly like it was done in the Craig films. There’s the aforementioned misogyny and practicality questions M raised, but we also get to see Bond going after a friend and colleague – again called out by Natalya: “He was your friend. And now he’s your enemy, and you will kill him. It is that simple?”And that great exchange:“Why, why must you be so cold?”“It’s what keeps me alive.”“No. It’s what keeps you alone.” I appreciate what they tried to do in the Bond films like Skyfall and Spectre, but at the end of the day…they’re still Bond films. You can add depth to the character without completely neutralising the point of his existence in his own universe. “Here’s our most capable spy – er, just make sure a pretty woman doesn’t look at him on a train or he’ll melt into a blubbering mess and forget what the fuck we sent him out for.”We still want a bit of a badass. You can be a badass with depth.Again, they revisited MI6-agent-turned-rogue in Skyfall with much less skill. Of course, Bardem is an excellent villain – because Bardem – but there’s no connection with Bond, and the film essentially ends up being Home Alone with somehow worse mummy issues. (The idea that the recruited Silva because he was a psychologically-vulnerable outsider, like how Bond and Trevalyan were recruited because they can be easily moulded into agents is barely touched on, if at all.)Goldeneye saved Bond. It was an incredible gamble to get Bond back on the screen in 1995; few thought it could be done.We got a Bond Girl who was still sexy, but incredibly well-rounded and deep. We still got some great glib one-liners (“That depends on your definition of safe sex”, “Standard operating procedure…er, boys with toys”) but we get to see that they hide a vulnerability within. There’s some great fight that are fairly gritty and dark – Brosnan show real agony in some of the fights – but we all get the cool stuff like taking out a goon with a towel, or him adjusting his tie in the tank after barrelling through a building. We get funny characters side characters like Ouromov swigging vodka from his flask during the chase, and, of course, the late, great Robbie Coltrane: “Walther PPK. 7.65 millimetre. Only three people I know of use such a gun, and I believe I’ve killed two of them.”By the way, if you haven’t seen it, the deleted scene with a Pakistani arms dealer at Zukovsy’s club was cut for pacing, but it does add some excellent background about his knowledge of arms and the fact that Janus is one of his biggest rivals (“The zilly Ch:Goldeneye managed to have a little bit of everything we wanted from Bond: it’s a teeny bit camp (I mean: Xenia, come on), it was a bit funny, it was out-there but still plausible (the Goldeneye satellites are indeed scarily plausible), and grounded in the real world. And it dealt with the issues that were rarely, if ever, raised before. It balanced on a fine line between all these.And, of course, Natalya remains the GOAT Bond Girl. (I think it’s incredibly telling we never see her dressed deliberately, pointlessly sexy – but Izabella doesn’t need that anyway…plus I do have a thing for that 90s chick in baggy cargo pants and T-shirts anyway). (Hang on, getting kicked out of the coffee shop…)
I see you, my brother. Haven’t had time to respond. I hate posting long, thoughtful screeds that disappear, so I got you.
OK, you’re right, but you’re also leaving out another reason Goldeneye was important – Bond had been away for 6 years due to rights nonsense and Licence to Kill underperformed at the box office.
Brosnan never quite gets the credit he deserves for saving the franchise. AND he held the corner against all the imitators that popped up during his tenure. Just as the Connery Bonds spawned the UNCLE series and In Like Flint and even Get Smart, the Brosnan Bonds spawned:
* Bond, but parody – Austin Powers
* Bond, but stunts are his drug instead of martinis – Mission Impossible
* Bond, but Extreme Sports – xXx
* Bond, but Eurotrash – Bourne
Where Craig’s movies lost their way is in trying to imitate THOSE movies. Quantum tried to be Bourne. Putting M and Q and Moneypenny in the field was trying to recreate the IMF. They didn’t try to imitate Austin Powers, but were so terrified of him that they avoided even the slightest hint of camp.
And then, like Bourne killed off just about every supporting character – Seriously, does that franchise get no shit for fridging every woman? – Bond starts doing the same. Felix dying pissed me off almost as much as Bond dying.
Brosnan’s movies said, “Fuck you. I’m the original. You all imitate ME!” The biggest weak points of the Brosnan trilogy (Die Another Day does not exist) is that they felt the need to attract American 14-year-old boys by casting overrmatched actresses like Teri Hatcher and Denise Richards. At least Broccoli had the sense to overdub whatever Italian beauty pageant runner-up he cast in the early stuff.
You are so right in the Skyfall hate. Let it flow through you. That movie was like eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting. Fantastic while you’re doing it. Then as soon as you see the empty container, you’re like, “The fuck did I just do?”
Here is what I want for the next Bond. I’m partial to Richard Madden, but I’ll ride with just about anyone they pick.
I want the next Bond to be fun.
I want MI6 to be on Bond’s side.
I want the next M to give Bond a mission, make a couple of snarky comments and then fuck off. (Since Game of Thrones ended, there should be no shortage of old fart British actors looking to earn an entire year’s salary for a week’s work – the guy who played Barristan Selmy is first choice)
I want Bond to stop apologizing for Connery in the 1960s, Churchill in the 1930s and Queen Victoria in the 1880s.
Melina Havelock is a really underrated Bond Girl.
Point of order, it was a slide whistle, but fuck me does it ruin it. They actually did that damn stunt on the first try (the driver basically walked off and said “That ain’t happening again!”) but now everyone just talks about the damn slide whistle.It really should be one of cinema’s most lauded stunts but instead…slide whistle.It should be up there with rolling the Aston seven(!!!) times in Casino Royale but…slide whistle.
I fully agree. Its awe inspiring stunt. Yet some idiot felt it needed a joke noise. Oh the contempt I have for that choice!
It’s something that not even HB Halicki or George Miller could pull off, but they did it. As a middle finger to the laws of gods and physics combined, they did it.Slide whistle.I mean, I do think that the current Bonds go too far in the other direction – how the FUCK does current Bond, in his own universe, ever pass the psych evals? He wouldn’t just be put in a desk job; he’d be medically retired (or probably just killed off). It seems like most of the recent ones are just “OK, 007, this is your last, last, LAST chance to prove yourself. For real this time. Not like those other times.
And I do enjoy a bit of the camp, the kitsch, of the early Bonds. But the double-take pigeon and slide whistle…ugh. Also, goddamn do I miss Ken Adam’s set design. Goddamn.
Ken Adams sets for You Only Live Twice and Spy Who Loved Me are some of the best in the business.
Not only iconic, but influential. I’d say he’s to villain sets what John Williams is to film scores. I mean, his real name was “Klaus Hugo George Fritz Adam” which is a Bond Villain name if ever there was one. You can just hear Roger Moore expositioning that, can’t you?“Do you know anything about this…‘Adam’ fellow, 007?”“Only what I’ve read, sir. Klaus Hugo George Fritz Adam. Born 1921, to a secular Jewish family in Berlin. Father was a Prussian officer in the Zietan Hussars – highly decorated, earning both the first and second class Iron Cross. Well-respected, upper-middle class merchants, ran a sporting goods store, I believe. Fled to Britain when the Nazis took power, and they sent the young Klaus was sent to school in Edinburgh. One of only three German-born pilots in the RAF in the entire war, where he earned the nickname ‘Heinie The Tank Buster’.”(No shit, I’m not making any of that up – that’s Adam’s honest to Gott bio.)I mean, his is a highpoint of Midcentury Modern style. Tiger Tanaka’s Lair is a place I wanna be:The swivelling copper TVs, the Arne Jacobsen Oxford Chair (seen in every tech boardroom since), the Kjaer desk, that column of lamps…and it certainly doesn’t hurt that MCM took a lot of cues from Japanese design. (Plus I am a sucker for whisky/saddle tan/cognac leathers.)He really gave the cinematographers pure joy to work with, those strong angles acting as natural frames for the cameras to hunt out and find.
The man lived the most charmed life imaginable. Surviving ww2 as a pilot, paling around with Stanley Kubrick on multiple occasions, two Oscar’s, some of the largest most elaborate set designs in cinema history. Even a lesser film like Moonraker is much improved by his sets. He is the king of sets the same way Maurice Binder is the king of the Bond title sequence. Shame he died within the last ten years but he was in his 90s. A life well spent, oh the glorious lifestyle porn he built!
Also, I am growing so tired of Bond being against MI6. At some point in the Craig era, don’t you think the desk staff at MI6 were like:
“Hey, Tom, how was your weekend?”
“Oh, pretty good. Finally got the rose bushes in. Anything new today?”
“Oh, 007 was disavowed again. I’m processing the cancellation of the credit cards now.”
“Again? What did he do this time?”
“Who knows? By the time I get off hold with these assholes, I’m sure he’ll be reinstated.”
“Yeah, I heard there’s frozen yogurt in the cafeteria today. See you there!”
Barry later admitted tbat slide whistle was a mistake.
Well I can accept that.
I purchased the James Bonding pigeon double-take t shirt myself. I’m sick that way.
Okay I own a good number of Flemings Bond books. Casino Royale, Thunderball, Goldfinger and so forth. Fleming did not keep his racial and gender opinions to himself. Goldfinger alone has about 9 different ethnic slurs for the Chinese people who help Goldfinger at Fort Knox and all the women who help him are lesbians including Pussy Galore until Bond forces himself on her then she’s straight again. Also she’s a lesbian because of molestation from her dad. The edits to the Dahl books were a bit odd and I’m sometimes not sure why they were changed. Here? Oh I know exactly why and where paragraphs will be altered. I am perfectly fine with this for the record. You will miss nothing of value.
I think the most hilariously wtf one was Bond complaining about gayness being caused by letting women vote.
Yep… he says that so casually too.
I think “Gay people can’t whistle” beats it.
That scene cracks me up because the first thing M does upon reading it is whistle. Stodgy old M.
heh- ^This^
Bond forces himself on her in the movie, not in the book. But in the book, she is a lot more butch and then says it was because her uncle raped her.
Ah that was it yeah you are correct. Weirdly the sex is more consentual in the book but the whole raped by family made me gay quite makes up for it in ick factor. Honestly the films better then the book. Book meanders more and the plan is literally steal the gold and not just destroy them to increase value.
Honestly, the movie’s plan never made much sense to me either. The gold is still there, and it’s never physically involved in paper currency transactions, so who cares if it’s radioactive?
It is a film that’s hysterically dated the moment the gold standard was gotten rid of. No the movie doesn’t make a ton of sense either.
I just read Goldfinger this week.It’s Koreans, Bond just casually says that all Koreans are subhuman. It’s rough. It’s genuinely hard to see Bond as a hero with all his casual sexist and racist comments in 2023.
Yep I couldn’t remember which Asian communist country it was in the book, I remember all the subhuman comments, there are many. And this is the stuff that’s not getting removed apparently, boy that sure says something.
Really? What exactly does it ‘say”?
I’m sure Fleming was really concerned about 2023 when he put out a book in 1959.
I think he was more concerned about putting a down-payment on a lovely pad in Jamaica, and where his next G and T was coming from.
Ah, see it wasn’t written for pussies in 2023. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Changing his works is sacrilege. If you support this you are censor. Period.
Man, that reminds me of how, during WWII, Fleming was the head of a special commando unit tasked with burglary and safe cracking. And they HATED Fleming. Why? Because he kept on trying to insist the unit call themselves the “Red Indians”
Of course he did. He also bragged about his big mission in the war being… watching Franco and making sure he doesn’t join the Axis. Yeah real Europe hanging in the balance there!
I’m gonna be slightly fair to Fleming on this one, since keeping Spain out of the war would have probably been fairly important. If Franco had joined in on the Axis side then that would have given the Nazis significant help in reinforcing France, thus making the Allied invasion of Normandy a lot more difficult, and it would have made the North African and Italian campaign much harder than it had to be given that Franco would have almost certainly invaded Gibraltar and pretty much cut off Allied access to the Mediterranean, or at least made it much harder and more dangerous. So while he almost certainly over-inflated just how vital and glamorous and sexy and dangerous it was and how important his role was, it probably was a little bit ‘Europe hanging in the balance’ as well.
I don’t see any situation where Franco joins the war. He was so exhausted from the Civil War and the few times he tried to diplomatically deal with Hitler was so miserable even old Adolf said it was easier pulling teeth. Granted I don’t think the allies were aware of this so it made sense to monitor Spain at the time. Its just with the knowledge we have now, it was never going to happen.
True, but in total fairness like you say this is a ‘benefit of hindsight’ thing now. It probably seemed a lot more urgent for the British to make sure Franco wasn’t thinking of joining in back in 1941.
I had to spend the weekend reading a book about him for work… he was pivotal in conceiving and planning Operation Mincemeat, where the Axis powers were tricked into preparing for a fake invasion of Italy by means of a body that had washed up onshore laden with false intel … his secretary inspired the character of Miss Moneypenny.
Whats weird is I read about a fictional version of that mission in Neal Stephensons Cryptonomicon before I learned about it happening in real life , and thought it was a bit far fetched.Some of Britain’s ‘dirty tricks brigade’ work in WW 2 was crazy.
Cracked.com is full of articles detailing lots of misdirection and straight-up msgic tricks the allies used against the Axis powers.
One of the amusing elements of the Mincemeat movie from last year was that everybody in British Intelligence seemed to be writing a spy novel in their spare time.
Should movies not have racial slurs ever again? Should we go back and alter movies that contain them and edit them out with something else?
The edits to the Dahl books are specifically about trying to sell more copies and to make the material more attractive for adaptation.
Also I’m cynical, so I suspect that generating outrage was part of the point – who was talking about Roald Dahl a month ago? Whether it really was on purpose or not they’ve probably sold more Dahl books in the last month than they have in a long time.
I also think the Fleming edits are largely in this second camp because the movies long moved past adapting Fleming’s books and are off into creating “new” stories for the films. But getting people to talk about the Bond books again? Free advertising from newspapers and upset Bond nerds? Tapping into some of that culture war zeitgeist to get the target audience for Bond novels to buy them up before they get “censored”? Pure gold there.These aren’t political moves, these are moves about generating money. The only thing that would put a stop to these kinds of edits is reducing copyright down to the lifetime of the author plus maybe a decade – then there’s a chance that the work won’t be so outdated and old-fashioned before it falls out of copyright for its owners to have to worry about altering it to make more money off of it.
“These aren’t political moves”No, they are politically correct moves. This is the kind of shit important people I don’t even need to mention warned us about.Fun fact: The term “politically correct” comes from Mao.
“You will miss nothing of value,” tells you all you need to know about the elitist, arrogant mentality behind all censorship:“I thought for you because thinking is too hard or dangerous for you.”
It’s the same thing as the Dahl reprints- this is just capitalism. The number of people who will refuse to buy a book because it has too much racism in it vastly exceeds the number of people who will refuse to buy a book because it doesn’t have enough racism in it. By changing the book you can (presumably) sell more of them.
Now the entire collection can fit on the same post-it note for easy and convenient storage.
At a strip club outside a college campus, “Bond could hear the frat boys panting and grunting like pigs at the trough”Would that be edited? Seems like that description could fit any group of horned up people.
Wow I can’t believe he would demean pigs like that. What an asshole. I say we dig up his corpse and yell at it.
limp
Cry about it.
poor baby they took your racism!
I wrote the books? Oh kiddo…
impotent
weak
If someone’s use of the n-word could be replaced by just saying “black person” that’s like KKK levels of racism. I hope/assume that it was characters speaking, not just Fleming describing someone narratively.
Pathetic. The people this is presumably being done for would probably never buy James Bond books in the first place. Just give them a copy of Paddington Bear instead, so they can discover the source material for the film they were shown instead of being too fragile to watch American Sniper.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/04/students-protest-american-sniper-showing.html
Ah yes the right wing propaganda movie about the habitual liar who bragged about shooting people in New Orleans that he didn’t and whom comsidered arab people subhuman. Ah yes that film.
Don’t forget the worst prop baby of all time.
Bradley Cooper deserved the Oscar for not ruining every take from laughing. Its sooooo baaaaad.
If someone feels that way, a great justification for not seeing the film (which doesn’t get into anything you just said, for what it’s worth). But getting it pulled so that *no one* can see it even if they want to, and having it replaced with a kids movie is, again, pathetic.
So you want it, what, censored? Banished? REGARDLESS OF CONTENT, you’re a censor. or at least adjacent.
And do you remember a few years ago that movie the aeronauts came out? It’s based on a true story about two scientists and hot air balloons. They were both men. The movie erased one and replaced it with a fictional female character for “representation”. I know that sounds hard to believe, the sheer audacity…and of course the outcry that we would see if the reverse happened would be epic, but it did happen. The movie had Eddie Redmayne
Vaguely remember the title. Like a lot of these other moves, I think that “goofy” is the best word to describe it. Not necessarily malicious or sinister, just…goofy. Which a lot of the far-left experiment increasingly seems to be, unfortunately.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it sinister, but it’s just amazing to me because the director literally said he just didn’t want two white men. Of course white people haven’t suffered racism like other races have in America, but that is still technically racist and sexist right? Yet they were so brazen about it, they were even proud of it.Goofy is one word for it, I’d also call it just bizarre. I mean sure we do expect movies based on “true” stories to invent things, but damn. I can’t understand why they didn’t just choose to do a movie about female scientists. It’s not like they didn’t exist back during the era the movie takes place in. And I’d be pissed if I was the guys family.
I remember back in summer 2020 (there were a lot of these post-George Floyd), I was listening to an interview with I think the black actress who had been on Glee. Someone told her that the group The Dixie Chicks had just announced that they were dropping the “Dixie” from their name. Her response: “Okay. Good for them, I guess.”Sort of sums up a lot of these for me. It’s not going to help anyone, it’s not even a step toward meaningful change, it’s a cosmetic measure to point to in order to certify your own progressivism. Good for them, I guess.
You know the spirits of all the slaves in the south rejoiced when The Dixie Chicks became just The Chicks. It’s what they were waiting for, they couldn’t move on to the next life until that moment.
A scene that’s hopefully scored to the updated progressive version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”
That song is Problematic. Now I’m off to listen to a rap song about slapping bitches and shooting people.
Editing the past to make it appear less racist seems much more dangerous than just leaving the books alone.
Ah yes from the people who brought you keep the statues otherwise we forget the past comes, keep the N word otherwise we don’t know if the author was racist.
I’m not saying that all? Changing Flemming’s books to make them less racist isn’t like pulling down confederate statutes, it’s like changing history to claim that the Civil War was about “states rights” instead of slavery.
One is replacing history with fiction, the other was fiction from the start. Essentially the current owners of the property are allowed to make whatever changes they want to and if that happens to be changes that would be required of the author to get published today, it’s a reasonable action for them to take.
It just seems like a waste of time. The people who would actually buy Bond books probably already have them. And I don’t think Millenials and Gen Z’ers are interested in Bond.
Not…really? Because one gets used to justify the continuation of racism and muddle the reality that an entire group of people were, and in many cases still are, systematically disadvantaged by the events of the past, not to mention the perpetuation of a sense of victimhood in people who were very much not victims yet weaponize it to excuse despicable thoughts and actions.The other is just making a fake British spy say slurs less frequently.
The past is foreign country; they did things differently there. Changing any of it is wrong. Any of it, including the statues. It’s dangerous. Gee, I wish someone had warned us about this…think his name was George or some shit. Whatever, censor away! Can’t hurt the feelings!
Kind of extrapolating on Generic Poster’s actual views aren’t we?
I guess my question would be if the book has words that offend you why don’t you just not read it? It’s not even like these are children’s books.
I agree. All books are a product of history. Ideas, language, etc. This better be VERY clearly noted as a revised edition with a very clear editor’s note.Once this movement gets going though what’s to stop it from making Rubber Ducks of the tanks of Tiananmen Square?I suppose we should stop teaching history to kids because they’re emotionally fragile, mentally weak and can’t handle reality.Oh wait… THAT’S THESE “ADULTS!”The idea that history has to be “nice” is a bankrupt, $hi%?¥ idea. History ISN’T nice. It’s history! That untarnished difference is what makes it dangerous and valuable!Most people are uneducated, philosophical swine, and I’m sick of them having a say. I’ll take money back now please. These clowns are not citizens but consumers. And Chinese at that: blowing with the wind and cowed into a crowd of mindless consent. They’ll get the oppressive childish government of fence and cradle that they deserve.
Enjoy the second inning of the death of your freedom, you idiots.
You’d have history itself neutered into a rubber duck, and your assumption of words as violence is a threat to truth and wisdom. Move to China that’s what you are: a good Chinese prole.
So you’d censor Mark Twain? Censorship is censorship. We were warned.
These are just people who own a property trying to make more money with that property by sprucing it up to attract younger buyers.Hell, they’re counting on the “backlash” to sell more of the older versions.The reality is that Ian Fleming novels are another generation away from fading into obscurity. That dusty copy you will find at the local library in a few decades is the old one that is already there (and already dusty.)
I’ll quibble a little here; the Fleming books will likely be around as long as Bond movies are around, and there’s no serious sign that Bond movies are going anywhere just yet. They are, however, going to increasingly become mere footnotes to the movies even more than they already are.
I doubt the estate is as concerned with which option is more dangerous as it is which one will generate more revenue.
If only there was something like a public written record database, a wiki if you like, that could keep track of these things for anyone who’s interested.
Not to mention we’re dealing with a character whose superpower is ultra white privilege sanctioned by the British government.
I don’t think you need to worry about the racist roots of James Bond being forgotten.
I actually am somewhat sympathetic to this p.o.v. Mildly sanding over the racism of the James Bond books doesn’t actually solve the problem within the books, which cannot really be “solved.” I mean, there were calls, not by liberals, but by conservatives, to remove the N-word from “Huck Finn.” Which would have the effect of vastly minimizing the racism that Mark Twain was trying to portray, so that seems like a no-go, in that case. This has nothing to do with pulling down crappy Confederate statues that were built in the 1920s: by all means, pull those down. Or maybe as a literature major I’m just more sensitive to the idea of changing/censoring books. I’m okay, for instance, with trying to remove racist language from Dahl’s books, but the idea of removing the words “fat” or “ugly” seems odd to me — his books feature grotesque characters; that’s sort of an element of the books. Anyway, it all seems complicated to me…
White people are desperate to erase their embarrassingly racist past. It’s what they do.
Does he still muse about the “sweet tang of rape” in Casino Royale?Goldfinger is the worst offender for its race and gender relations and just being a stupid plot. Also, that movie is perhaps the best example of an adaptation improving a popular book.
“…The bitch is dead now…”
After the Dahl stuff came out this doesn’t surprise me.I just finished reading Goldfinger this week, and the casual sexism and racism while “of the time” or whatever is just so stark and harsh. It makes it really hard to enjoy the Bond books because it makes it hard to like Bond as a character.I don’t think this is necessarily good, but, some of it is really rough.
I dunno, I think a character can be likeable and unlikeable at the same time, you know? One of my favorite shows was Sons of Anarchy. Pretty much 90% of the main characters are awful people. Some are willing to kill kids, all the gang members are willing to commit murder even against innocent adults.Jax Teller is an awful person. Yet an engaging one. Gemma Teller is awful, but engaging. I like seeing how Bond is going to get out of whatever precarious situation he gets himself into. I like the cars and the gadgets and the women. I don’t expect him to be a Saint. Walter White in Breaking Bad is an awful person too. In a decade or two should we edit it to make him less awful? Or is he the acceptable kind of awful where you can steal and murder and its okay as long as you don’t toss out the N word a few times?
droopy
I swear, at least half of Fleming’s work feels like it was written by an edgelord teenager desperate to get attention by owning the libs. Sample line from Felix Leiter in Live and Let Die: “This drink used to be called a Jigger, but now you have to call it a Jegro.”
If you understand race relations and how they contributed to “American culture” in sociology, it’s kind of sad that racism and “othering” of people in general is…kind of, if not, the true blood of the country, right down to its founding. It’s not surprising when you acknowledge that. That’s right, “American” culture and pride is based on having someone to look down upon.
Makes sense, since most of the founding fathers were English ex-pats.
The word “Race” and its definition today were made with this system in mind, a word that is meant to divide and conquer from the start.
Don’t forget that Felix was the one white friend. “I like the Negroes and they seem to know it somehow” and then he got out of a jam by whitesplaining jazz to his black captors. Keep in mind that whole book was written in 1953 and, for its time, was probably progressive. M even tells Bond, “Well, the blacks are giving us great scientists, authors, etc… Bout time we got a master criminal out of them.”
I have to say that I am conflicted by changing any author’s book(s) to be more modern in terms of the treatment of other races, ethnicities, nationalities and gender. It’s certainly not that I want to see Black people described with the N-word or worse, and other groups of people wrongly disparaged. But I feel that it’s important to recognize the historical period when books were written and the prejudices and biases of people (and authors) of those eras and how far, or not, that we have come as a society since then.
This first came to light for me a number of years back when some publisher rewrote Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” to make it less offensive. I agree with the opinion editorials of that time that this is wrong. Just as we need to learn the true history of our country (including all of the ugly things that have been done in the name of progress and freedom, both here and abroad), we need to see the true nature of literature as written.
Plus, the whole point in Huck Finn is that he’s a dumb kid who barely even comprehends the idea of fiction, so how is he supposed to grasp how offensive the word is?
The language that Mark Twain used seems selected specifically to be offensive – not to the people who were the fictional targets in the book, but to the real live people who used that language in their daily lives. To expose them as ignorant, nasty human beings who used that language to denigrate others.Fleming and Dahl used such language carelessly as part of how they apparently felt. It’s not clear there is any story value to fictional spies saving the world also being racist and misogynistic. Is it to shame spies who are going after super villains?
The point is that it is how some people of the era that Fleming wrote in did think and feel that way. It has nothing to do with whether the language used “[has] any story value.” It places the book within a certain historical context.
Shouldn’t we leave the text alone and open to interpretation? Or… “I’m gay, I find women offensive. Time to erase women!”
exactly. read the originals & discuss how much things have changed.
I recently saw a tweet about the Dahl thing that posited that the real problem here is that these guys have been dead for decades and their estates still hold exclusive rights to their works. If the copyrights had been allowed to lapse after, say twenty or thirty years, or ten years after their deaths or something like that, then anyone who wants could put out an edition. I have no doubt that if an edition with all the racism removed was released you’d get an unedited one released in response to that. Hell, you’d probably get a special extra-racist edition released. Point is, the estates wouldn’t be able to make it so the edition they’re currently trying to push is the only one anyone can get a hold of. The edited Huck Finn is a case in point. When that came out, it was still easy to get an unedited version. Easier, in fact, than finding that edited one. But suppose the people that released the expurgated edition had sole rights to the book, and didn’t want the original to be out there at all. That’s what would have happened, eventually.
I would also ask about other forms of art. Take the movie Pulp Fiction. Should we go back and redub parts of it? Specifically the parts where Tarantino uses the N word. His character throws it around a lot. And if we are editing out bad words why not extreme violence too? I’m struggling to understand why I can read a passage where someone is brutally raped or murdered but it’s a step too far if the N word is used.
That’s right the answer isn’t to rewrite TWAIN or history! It’s to educate the offended and intolerant!What ridiculous expectations some have. I blame the Universities for not resisting this.
Eh, I’m in the slap on a foreword/disclaimer but leave the text largely as-is* camp on this one. Fleming was a racist, misogynist, imperialist dinosaur and so was his creation. Not much use in pretending otherwise.*I’m fine with censoring out individual slurs, but modifying the character’s/author’s views seems a step too far.
Good. Those books were really hard to get through.
I mean, like… read something else instead?
There was this movie called Pulp Fiction that came out in the 90s. I suggest you avoid it due to your delicate nature.
I understand why these IP owners want to keep these books on cultural life support by hiding (some) of the authors’ sins ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$) but it feels anti-historical to do so. The books of both of these men were written for specific people and implicitly not for others. Let today’s kids and other readers find other, newer books that are written by people who see them as fully human. If these readers want to read older books written by generations that were less empathetic or inclusive, great, just let them engage with the reality of these books. Hiding the casual bigotry of the past helps no one. You cannot even understand James Bond without understanding the white colonialism that created him.
I have never read Fleming, but I’ve read H.P. Lovecraft, whose racism I hope was exceptional even for his time. I don’t think you’d lose anything by expunging it entirely. But HPL was really a terrible writer all around, albeit one with a vivid imagination. His works should probably just be re-written from scratch.
how exactly do you fix “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” say. The whole concept revolves around his horror at The Other. “His works should probably just be re-written from scratch.”I mean, then they aren’t his works and are just what everybody has been doing since the 30s: their own spin on the mythos. Why not just stick to other writers if you want their versions?
Yeah, there are so many pastiches and homages to Lovecraft, his stories have pretty much been rewritten many times over already with modern perspectives.
Yes, I get that people claim being part evil fish-man is a metaphor for being mixed race, and probably HPL meant that, but it is a weird thing to complain about given that in other stories he doesn’t resort to metaphor to tell us he doesn’t like non-whites. Also the Portuguese (Rhode Island had a large Portuguese immigrant population at the time and HPL didn’t like them).
I get what you mean, but maybe “exceptional” wasn’t the best choice of word. “He’s an exemplary racist! No, wait, he’s a meritorious racist!”
I would say Lovecraft is good at descriptions and imagining horrors from beyond the stars, but he falls hard on dialogue. The entire section from Shadow Over Innsmouth where the old drunk man tells the story of the village is the absolute worst, attempting to mimic slurred speech while monologing important information.
Weird thing about Lovey, is that he HATED Irish people , and wrote them as mumbling subhumans , but then he became mates with Robert E. Howard who was a major Hibernophile ( Seriously , some of his later stuff is about Ancient Ireland , in his universe Conan’s people over the centuries eventually become Celts) , and after a while Lovecraft stopped with the anti Irishness .I often wonder if Lovecraft had actually met some Black, Hispanic,Jewish etc people , would he still have been as racist.
I think a reader has a right to confront the text as intended by the author, not some reputational whitewashing that may hide the author’s true beliefs from the very targets of their hate. In the case of H.P. Lovecraft, the racism is as important to him as his flights of fancy. We shouldn’t put creative works on life support via retrofitting. The man is the man. The work is the work. He lived by the sword and his work can die by it.
I honestly don’t know their motivation. I mean obviously money, but I am not sure their intention is to hide this. I mean announcing the changes would have the opposite effect. It would broadcast the fact Fleming was racist.I think it’s not about hiding it. It’s about stoking the culture war. They will sell edited copies to people and also sell originals. That is what Dahl’s estate did, announced changes then a few days later announced you could buy the originals.I just can’t comprehend someone who can’t read offensive words. I loved to read, especially as a kid. Some books did have offensive terms, but I didn’t turn around and start using them. I suspect that is true for 90% of people. If you don’t like it don’t read it. Surely there are more modern spy novels.
“I just can’t comprehend someone who can’t read offensive words.” If they were directed toward you and everyone you loved, maybe you’d feel differently. I understand why people are perfectly happy bypassing these literary works in favor of the many others who can entertain or engage without devolving into derogatory speech.
“If they were directed toward you and everyone you loved, maybe you’d feel differently.”I’ve had offensive words directed at me in the past. I’ve also come across these same words in literature without having a fit. When it comes to the American populace would you say I’m the exception or the rule in that regard? I’d hope I’m the rule and not the exception.I just dont know where this ends. There are books with rape and murder. Do these need to be edited? What if a real life rape victim reads the book? And if not, why is it okay for me to read about rape and murder, but someone uttering the N word is somehow just a step too far? Am I to truly understand that if I penned a brutal rape and murder of a character that it’d be okay as long as they dont call their victim a slur during the altercation?
And what about movies? Why on Earthy would it be tolerable for a movie to have a slur but not a book?
“I understand why people are perfectly happy bypassing these literary works in favor of the many others who can entertain or engage without devolving into derogatory speech.”I agree here, if someone is offended just dont read the book and read something else. Untold number of books out there, if Dr. Seuss or James Bond are offensive they dont have to be read.
Depicting bad things is entirely different than engaging in bigoted behavior. The racism in Lovecraft (a really lousy writer) or James Bond books isn’t there to cast judgement — it’s part of the creators’ worldviews. That’s wholly different than the depiction of racism/sexual assault/etc. with the intent of illuminating their evils. The two simply don’t compare. Plenty of people read books that are full of vile hate speech — probably most prominently Black academics reading/teaching Huckleberry Finn — and they do so with eyes wide open. Some books that reflect the hate of their times may well be considered worth keeping in the canon (and there will never be full consensus).That said, people shouldn’t be dinged because they don’t want to engage with the work of people who consider them less than fully human. That’s not cowardice or weakness. It’s dignity.
But uhh what if the character in the book is a bigot? And you bring up Huck Finn despite there being controversy there over the use of the N word even though the kid isn’t particular hateful of N word Jim. Hell to kill a mockingbird has people coming for it, but the whole fucking point of the book is the hatred some have.
I’m exposed to offensive words directed at me and everyone I know everyday and I would never in a million years demand censorship. Or “sensitivity readers.” It just would never occur to me.
Unlike Dahl, whose stories are genuinely fun adventures for children, James Bond is nothing but pro-imperialist propaganda, and it shouldn’t be whitewashed as they intend. Why should anyone change these books when at their core, they’re literally stories that capitalize on an empire that starved, overworked and underpaid people of color all over the world for the benefit of a select few? There shouldn’t be a version of this without the attendant racism and misogyny, because that’s what the works are based on in the first place.
Who on earth is buying new editions of Bond now anyway?
You are all budding fascists. And history will not treat you kindly.
shut the fuck up dummy
namely that Fleming’s books are being altered so their less overtly racistThis must be a fun hobby, what do you do for your real job?
“The Telegraph saying that the N-word has been “almost entirely expunged””.The estate went on to say, “there were just a couple of times where the N-word flowed better, if you know what I mean. We tried it with “person of colour” and it just didn’t sound as nice.”
This is real life.
flaccid
I read all the Fleming Bonds, and at least one other Fleming too (I think a travelogue?). I don’t remember THE N-word being in the Bond books. Maybe I’m mistaken and it’s in dialogue, someone used the word around Bond?
I believe I remember an N-word: “negro”. Is that the one they’re replacing?
Good, bad, or otherwise, in and of itself, I don’t know. But I think this (along with Dahl) is a signpost along the road, and a demonstration of where we’re headed. If we’d talked ten years ago, say, about editing these kinds of works to make them less offensive, I think most people here would have laughed it off as some kind of slippery slope fear-mongering. That this kind of shit would never happen.
So I do wonder what’s next. For instance, are we ready for the argument to pull older, problematic works out of libraries, or make them generally unavailable? I’d guess that — again — a lot of people currently would say that we shouldn’t do such a thing, and that we never would. But what will the argument look like in ten years, when people are brought up in a society where it’s commonplace to edit out the parts of older works we find morally questionable? And what’s the argument again for keeping those questionable works around? And, crucially, who’s going to be willing to make those arguments?
I don’t really agree with the editing of questionable stuff out of older works, but I also don’t understand why so many people act as though this is something that’s being forced on anyone. The estates of these authors are doing this of their own volition. There’s no office of censorship handing down orders from on high to sanitize these books.
You’re right, there’s no office of censorship handing down orders here. But if we’re interested in upholding traditional liberal values like “freedom of speech,” do you think the only thing we should concern ourselves with is explicit political censorship? Or should we also consider the role that corporations play in our lives and our media, and etc.? And what about the direction of our culture more generally?
Things like an office of censorship don’t typically come out of nowhere, after all. (Consider that, before prohibition, there was a national cultural movement for “temperance”; things tend to proceed from the culture to the Capitol.) We’re currently bringing kids up in a culture where some of us are affirming that, yeah, it’s good to cut stuff out of old books, if that offends you. So I’m concerned with where that kind of thing might be headed.
And when June rolls around there is no committee out there that forces companies to put a rainbow in their logo. Yet some no doubt feel pressured to do it.
limp
The estates are doing it because it’s what the audience demands. The audience of wilting flowers are the censors.
And where does it end? If offensive words in books are bad then why is extreme violence okay? If there is a book where someone is brutally raped and murdered should we go back and edit that out? And if not someone please explain why I can read about rape and murder as long as the character doesn’t utter a racial slur during the acted?And then what about movies? I know they get edited for regular TV and fine, but should copies on netflix or hulu be altered?
I think all that is coming. (Unless we get shocked out of our present course somehow, which is what I’m counting on/praying for.)
With some of the AI tech I’ve been looking at — along with everyone else — over the last couple of months? I completely expect to see changes come to older movies and television, seamless digital changes, to make them more… palatable. I mean, I guess it wouldn’t be completely new. But at least when Spielberg took the guns out of E.T., it was treated as the laughingstock it is, and a personal peccadillo. I don’t know what the response will be next time.
And part of what gets me is… look, consider Lolita. I don’t think there are many people on AV Club currently who would support a call to stop publishing it, or carry it in libraries, or whatever, right? But if we continue to do what we’re doing, what about ten or twenty years from now? What about the generation that’s been brought up in a world where Roald Dahl was deemed too offensive to leave alone?That’s what I don’t think people here understand. They think that they’re in the exact right place, morally and politically, now and for all time, and they don’t understand how it moves under your feet — how there’s momentum, and how progressives especially always want to continue to “progress.”
flaccid
It doesn’t stop until the tanks of history are rubber ducks.
We’ve been warned by some very smart people about what comes next, and we have history as a guide as to what comes next, too. People think this is innocuous. It’s sinister. Once the censorship starts, it doesn’t stop.
I actually am wary of this sort of thing. Erasure-of-history argument. Fleming was what he was. We don’t gain anything from not knowing that. With Dahl I feel like there’s more of an argument because they’re children’s books. Like, maybe as a parent I don’t need to be reading my kids books that require a lot of “discussion” in place of others that help instill things I actually value. So if I do want to pass on the books from my childhood that I loved, even if they taught me racism and body shaming are OK, it’s nice to have a version we can navigate more easily. But Bond books are decidedly not for kids. And, like, we’re fucking grownups, we can take the messiness, particularly as those books aren’t much more than entertaining cultural artifacts anyway. These aren’t statues built specifically to honor problematic figures, they’re just books someone wrote. They contain information about their time and their perspectives accurately reflect that time. Why make them less accurate? I know the answer is money and a culturally irrelevant property trying to remain viable. I also know if this isn’t done these books might be one step closer to falling out of print due to lack of interest. I just don’t necessarily love it. Sincerely, old guy.
Like I said with the Dahl stuff, I’m not a huge fan of Bowdlerization — it always seems like a cynical half-measure to me, and even beyond that a lot of the Dahl stuff seemed to go from “reasonable edits” to “changing the work for questionable reasons”.But honestly, in this case? I can at least see it. Fleming is racist as fuck. Compared to him, Dahl is Judge Freakin’ Reinhold.
Wait what did Judge Reinhold do?
flat
I know this is the cheaper route, but I would have preferred to see them remake these books the way movies and comics stories are redone. Get a whole new creative talent to do it from scratch, rather than re-editing the original. “Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, by [New Author]”. Maybe even get a new writer for each book. Sell the originals as a “historic edition”.Then again, that might be a monkey’s paw.
Can I take your drink order sir?Yes I’d like a martini, shaken like ****** baby, not stirred
Maybe books should try reboots like movies do. Just hire some ghostwriter to redo the books entirely. Let Ian Fleming become a name like Franklin W. Dixon that could signify a book written by any number of people. It’s not like we’re talking about the destruction of great literary art here. Go ahead and reboot it entirely. The estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs should consider doing the same.
Hell, they’ve rewritten all the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books numerous times, starting in the fifties or sixties. Bond isn’t much above that stuff, from a literary standpoint.
As a young Hardy Boys fan I used to buy a book for 25 cents or whatever, whenever I happened to come across one at a garage sale. Some of the ones I got my hands on were the old versions, and oh boy could you tell.
What about game of thrones books? “Her cunt was the world” is a literal line written about Dany. Plus should all the incest and rape be removed?
feeble
Someone reboot Goosebumps. Not that it’s problematic.
floppy
Yup that’ll end racism.
The Proud Boys heard about this and disbanded.
weak
“Get in, pussy galore. We’re making james bond great again.”
Look, I consider myself liberal. I do. And there is nothing nice or right about the things being edited. Seriously, Bond was a scuzball. But here’s the thing. Literature is art, and warts and all, art should be left as is, untampered with. To do otherwise is censorship, and censorship leads down a path to something much worse than some offensive writing. Please, I’m imploring anyone who reads this, PLEASE think about what we’re actually doing here.
When I was a kid in the 70s/80s I read a lot of ‘abridged ‘ kids versions of classic books ( I.e. the hard words, racism by at least 1970s standards and more convoluted bits removed , and pictures added) . Robinson Crusoe was probably my favorite, bit the version I read them missing the the casual slavery, N bombs and a lot of the more religious passages ( Robinson REALLY got some Jesus in his life after a while).As an adult I read the original, and it’s still readable , and gets across his loneliness, and self hatred a lot more but there’s a few bits that scream wwrongness at my modern sensibilities ( Xuery (sp?) a Brazilain kid from the early section of the book , pre shipwreck , is HAPPY to go back into slavery when recaptured!?! on the vague promise of freedom later as an older adult) but it was written in the 1700s . Dumas wasn’t a horrible racist by standards of the time , so you have to cut him a little slack. Its a better book than the one I read as a kid without doubt though.These edited books are the same , just acknowledge they’re not the ‘real’ versions , and for the original texts just preface them that they’re a product of the time.
Balls ..that should have been Defoe , not Dumas …doh …I’m a dumb ass.
As long as they will also sell the original versions cool.
soft
Why cater to the small minority of people who are so offended by bad words in books that they can’t read them?I don’t get it. If they want to make money why try to cater to small easily offended groups. Is there some data they are working with that proves that a lot of people are this delicate? Does anyone here have any theories as to why people are so delicate these days?
Shut the fuck up, chud
Cry more you salty bitch.
stop eating your own jizz
cry about it little bitch
Some people are banning art. Others are censoring it. Far-right Leftists.
The very idea behind this brings to mind when Judi Dench became M and says something to Bond to the effect of him being a misogynistic relic of the cold war. I always liked that line because it acknowledges that yes, Bond kind of is a shitty person and happened to be one in an era where that kind of behavior wasn’t as openly frowned upon as it is now.The debate also makes me think a bit of Hopper in S3 of Stranger Things. I recall there was discussion around Hopper acting like an asshole towards Eleven and how shitty that was… but would have also been considered common (or at least not rare) behavior by a guy his age in the mid-80s. Now obviously ST isn’t editing past works to fit with more modern sensibilities, but it did raise the question of how authentic ST was trying to be to the character and the time.
Now that I think about it though…what DID the Daniel Craig Bond do that was so sexist? Yeah he slept with women, but it’s not like he forced them. Are we taking away their agency? Is there a scene I’m forgetting where he is like “yeah women are stupid bitches”? Did he once tell M to shut the fuck up and make him a sandwich? What did he do?
limp
Books, generally, are a product of history and the ideas, language, etc. Which belongs to a specific period. This is a very dangerous impulse but I guess that idea is too complex for 90% of people. This better be VERY clearly noted as a revised edition with a very clear editor’s note.
Once this movement gets going though what’s to stop it from making Rubber Ducks of the tanks of Tiananmen Square?I suppose we should stop teaching history to kids because they’re emotionally fragile, mentally weak and can’t handle reality.Oh wait… THAT’S THESE “ADULTS!”The idea that history has to be “nice” is a bankrupt, $hi%?¥ idea. History ISN’T nice. It’s history! That untarnished difference is what makes it dangerous and valuable!Most people are uneducated, philosophical swine, and I’m sick of them having a say. I’ll take monarchy back now, please. These clowns are not citizens but consumers. And Chinese at that: blowing with the wind and cowed into a crowd of mindless consent.They’ll get the oppressive childish government of fence and cradle that they deserve!
Enjoy the second inning of the death of your freedom, you boundless idiots.TLDR: It’s clearly NOT ending, here, bc so far it has kept on spreading, and every time there’s virtuous apologists lined up to defend the revision as a special and necessary case.
Anyone who’s seen one or more of the movies, enjoyed them, and decided to read the books is in for a real shock. The movies have often been problematic but the books are so much worse. I know that Fleming was a product of his time, but it’s kind of shocking today how casual his racism, homophobia, and misogyny was. The hatred of and contempt for anyone that doesn’t look and talk like Bond and/or his author is simply a feature of the landscape.
Now with less Racism, and 100% more sexism.
It does seem like they decided racism is worse than sexism.
droopy
Sounds like something real Fascists would approve of.
I’m told the character of Auric Goldfinger was written to be as insulting as possible to architect Ernő Goldfinger, whom Fleming hated.
So go read something else. Who gave you people the idea that everything has to only reflect your sensibilities and not say things you don’t like?
Jesus fucking christ. Are you people…are you people even familiar with George…do I even need to say his last name? Do I even need to draw the comparison? Last name begins with an “O”? Book is like called 1987 or some shit?This is sacrilege. This is pure pussydom. Pathetic.