If you’re like me, you’ve grown up with the Bond film series. With 36 installments spanning over 50 years, it’s hard to be a British or even an international citizen without hearing about one of if not the most iconic film franchise of all time.
Blatant sexism is just one problem the series features but if I was to go into all of them this article would be ridiculously long.
There is one thing that we all know, the Bond franchise is so obviously racist.
Throughout its broadcast time, the series has seen various actors play the famous spy, from Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton to Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan. The current actor – Daniel Craig has already said that Spectre (released in 2015) would be his last film.
So here comes the problem.
When the news first broke, one of the biggest names up for the job was Idris Ebla (who if you didn’t know is a black man). His name was among others such as James Norton and Adrian Turner but people seemed to have the most problem with Idris Alba (again the only black man among those names).
Their main argument was the fact that Ian Fleming originally wrote Bond to be a white man and Elba isn’t. To be fair that is true but Fleming died in 1964 and since then 33 films have been released so it’s clear that not everything he intended or wrote has been portrayed in the films.
And before anyone tries to reinforce the fact that bond was never meant to be black, let’s just acknowledge that one of the big contenders for the role is now Ryan Gosling.
You know, American Ryan Gosling who isn’t at all British but you know that’s fine because he’s white.
The most worrying fact about this whole subject is that people are genuinely worried that the integrity of this character will be broken simply because the actor is black.
With the representation of people of color so scarce in film industry in present time, a widespread franchise such as James Bond featuring someone of color would be another step that we all need to push us further towards equality.
It’s disappointing that a person of color playing Bond will probably never happen; but to the writers and producers of the films, is the franchise really that fragile, that allowing someone of color to act as Bond is such a difficult thing to perceive?
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