[Morgoth]

D, on 04 December 2012 - 08:55 PM, said:

Gnaw, on 04 December 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

I would love to know why you chose to focus on what is probably the least important statement in my post (and completely ignoring the follow up reply to worrywort.)

He's an admin. Makes perfect sense for him to focus on the part that violates forum rules.

Gnaw, on 04 December 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

It is a series of posts by a few people positing that the Bond character is white. Period.

That position is racist. And should be called that. If people want to try to say otherwise, they need to come up with something much, much better than idiotically comparing a black Bond actor to a white actor playing Martin Luther King.

I don't really have an opinion on this argument, but the above strikes me as a bit illogical. Technically speaking, the statement that "the character of Bond is and always has been white" is factually true (unless there's some non-white portrayal of him I'm not familiar with). Certainly the way people might express such a thing and the argument they make using that statement might be racist, but simply noting, accurately, that a character has so far had a particular characteristic in his/her depictions doesn't seem to be inherently racist by itself, to me, since the statement doesn't say anything about "shoulds" or "can/can't ever be" etc. So blankly stating that everyone who even dares note such a fact is a sheep fucker seems not only to be pretty offensive to me, but also illogical.

Well, it was Battalion...

[Morgoth]

stone monkey, on 04 December 2012 - 07:44 PM, said:

Whilst it would be interesting to see a black Bond - played by Idris Elba or Colin Salmon (the previous frontrunner for the first black Bond, who was actually even in a few Bond movies) or someone else - it ain't gonna happen in my lifetime, I think. As a black Briton it pains me on a fairly personal level to say this, but the reason is fairly simple; Bond's entire image rests on his Britishness and, unfortunately, when the home or international audience thinks of Britishness, they generally don't see it as being embodied in the person of a black man.

We could argue all around the houses on this forever, but there it is. Although if anyone wants to give me a call, I'd give it a go

You're firmly placed within my idea of the English stereotype, so perhaps the foreign idea of the British ideal is less white than you think

[Gnaw]

D, on 04 December 2012 - 08:55 PM, said:

I don't really have an opinion on this argument, but the above strikes me as a bit illogical. Technically speaking, the statement that "the character of Bond is and always has been white" is factually true (unless there's some non-white portrayal of him I'm not familiar with). Certainly the way people might express such a thing and the argument they make using that statement might be racist, but simply noting, accurately, that a character has so far had a particular characteristic in his/her depictions doesn't seem to be inherently racist by itself, to me, since the statement doesn't say anything about "shoulds" or "can/can't ever be" etc. So blankly stating that everyone who even dares note such a fact is a sheep fucker seems not only to be pretty offensive to me, but also illogical.

Here is full post. You decide what the person meant.

Quote

I think that skin colour is quite a defining feature. You suggest that having Bourne be a black man is no different to Bond but, to me, Bourne isn't a black man either. Nor is John McLain or Rambo. It significantly changes the character's persona. Imagine if one of Jason Bourne's passports had a picture of a black man because they were essentially the same people.

For the record, I don't think that a character such as Shaft, for example, or, say, Pulp Fiction's Marsellus Wallace should be played by white people either.

As I say, don't get me wrong -- I think the concept is good and it would work for a similar type of character/role but unless James Bond is genuinely turned into a position/rank, Bond the person is and always has been a white man, the same as me. I certainly don't expect to wake up tomorrow and discover that I've turned black over night!

In my experience (therefore anecdotal and not evidence) the phrase "Don't get me wrong but...." is usually not followed by reasoned thought.
YMMV

[masan's saddle]

I'm not going to really add anything substantial to this discussion other than to say I think Gnaw, you are being overly harsh on the puddycat.
Correct me if i'm wrong but I think Cougar's main point originally was that Idris Elba would not make a good Bond, something he argued at length with Amph and something I agree with ( way too tall and cumbersome).

Interpreting his following comments as thinly veiled racism is pushing it. I do not know Cougar personally so I could be totally wrong, but based on the general timbre of his contribution to this board, suggesting he is a racist is way off mark.

That said I'm sure he will be along shortly to make his own response.

Also, shoo Abyss shoo !

I just bought popcorn.

[polishgenius]

Gnaw, on 04 December 2012 - 09:50 PM, said:

In my experience (therefore anecdotal and not evidence) the phrase "Don't get me wrong but...." is usually not followed by reasoned thought.

There's nothing wrong with 'don't get me wrong'. It's hardly 'no offense but' which can only ever be followed by something that might cause offence.

Like this:

No offence, but the vehemence of your reaction to this topic is making you come off as a few guppies short of an aquarium.

I appreciate that you feel strongly about the subject, but if you're going to refuse to engage into what was until now a sharp but civilised (and, let's be honest here, finished) argument, then just don't engage. Coming in and making it very clear that you're essentially painting everyone who doesn't agree with you as a racist, regardless of the fact that there are degrees of argument here and the majority of the Bond-shouldn't-be-black opinion came from people making pretty reasoned arguments based on social perceptions, rather than anything remotely close to what you're suggesting, is not going to amend people's views that you might want them to change in any way.

Aiming the majority of your bile at Cougar just because he happened to be the one arguing with you now helps even less, since probably out of every person in this topic his arguments are furthest from 'Bond should be white because I am'.

To counter a thing Cougar did say long after I bugged out of the first iteration of this discussion: despite my username and indeed parentage I'm, socially speaking, absolutely British and I see no problem with Elba playing Bond, so I'm not sure that works as a vindication of your position... The role which effectively won Craig the role, in Layer Cake, is one in which he plays a character actually quite similar to Elba's Stringer Bell - drug dealer who sees himself as a businessman and attempts some social climbing to get himself out of the game. And in general Bond does come across as a rough boy playing upscale socially rather than a posh boy getting his hands dirty, to me, which is something I can see no problem with Elba doing.

[stone monkey]

Implying that Cougar is to any degree racist is probably the worst case of laughable in the history of ridiculous that I've ever seen. Presumably that makes his self avowed giant man-crush on me the biggest case of Jungle Fever ever recorded.

Although we should probably note that the quote Gnaw uses isn't actually from Cougar. So yeah...

Anyway, back to black Bond.

I do think it's interesting that we've come so far as a society that we can have a discussion about making Bond black with any kind of idea that it may even be a realistic prospect. I mean Fleming, a horrible old racist in that astronomically condescending old British Empire mode if ever there was one, very obviously wrote him as a white man, and he has always been portrayed as a white male on screen. I personally am not sure that Bond, protean as he is, is quite that up for grabs at the moment.

Although arguably the race of any fictional character, and some non-fictional ones, is always up for grabs when being portrayed on screen - witness Angelina Jolie playing Mariane Pearl for instance. Going back to Bond, the supporting character of Felix Leiter (also written by Fleming as a white male) has already been played by both black and white actors on screen.

tbh I'm of the opinion that the kind of super-dickish, upper-middle-class British sense of entitlement and arrogance that Bond embodies (it's practically Victorian when you get down to it) can only, in the socio-political sense, be done by a white actor at the moment. I can't imagine a black actor being able to carry it off; there's too much of the baggage of Empire involved, the character so obviously believes that he was born and bred to be HM Government's unanswerable arm in the world, riding roughshod over diverse contemptible foreigners at will. Speaking as a black Briton, I think our relationship with Britishness, both felt and perceived, is slightly more complicated and, more importantly, conflicted than that. I'd argue that the character would actually seem even more ridiculous than he already does (which is going some) if a black actor played him as is.

So much as it would be refreshing to see such an icon of muscular white masculinity portrayed by a black actor, I don't think it would fly.

[Gnaw]

masan, on 04 December 2012 - 09:54 PM, said:

.
Correct me if i'm wrong but I think Cougar's main point originally was that Idris Elba would not make a good Bond, something he argued at length with Amph and something I agree with ( way too tall and cumbersome).

Interpreting his following comments as thinly veiled racism is pushing it. .

Also, shoo Abyss shoo !

I just bought popcorn.

polishgenius, on 04 December 2012 - 10:31 PM, said:

There's nothing wrong with 'don't get me wrong'. It's hardly 'no offense but' which can only ever be followed by something that might cause offence.

Like this:

No offence, but the vehemence of your reaction to this topic is making you come off as a few guppies short of an aquarium.

I appreciate that you feel strongly about the subject, but if you're going to refuse to engage into what was until now a sharp but civilised (and, let's be honest here, finished) argument, then just don't engage.
the majority of the Bond-shouldn't-be-black opinion came from people making pretty reasoned arguments based on social perceptions,

Aiming the majority of your bile at Cougar just because he happened to be the one arguing with you now helps even less, since probably out of every person in this topic his arguments are furthest from 'Bond should be white because I am'.

stone monkey, on 04 December 2012 - 10:59 PM, said:

Implying that Cougar is to any degree racist is probably the worst case of laughable in the history of ridiculous that I've ever seen.

tbh I'm of the opinion that the kind of super-dickish, upper-middle-class British sense of entitlement and arrogance that Bond embodies (it's practically Victorian when you get down to it) can only, in the socio-political sense, be done by a white actor at the moment. I can't imagine a black actor being able to carry it off; there's too much of the baggage of Empire involved, the character so obviously believes that he was born and bred to be HM Government's unanswerable arm in the world, riding roughshod over diverse contemptible foreigners at will. Speaking as a black Briton, I think our relationship with Britishness, both felt and perceived, is slightly more complicated and, more importantly, conflicted than that. I'd argue that the character would actually seem even more ridiculous than he already does (which is going some) if a black actor played him as is.

So much as it would be refreshing to see such an icon of muscular white masculinity portrayed by a black actor, I don't think it would fly.

You are all perfectly correct in criticizing my tone, language, and insinuations against Cougar. He annoyed me with the "don't call people idiots".

And, by not actually going to the end of the conversation I did not realize that I was necroing a topic. I was scrolling down the front page of the forum, the title caught my eye, I opened it, started reading, and got pissed me off. I do apologize for the necro.

So I posted what I did and got reactions. (Was not my intent to troll, but that is essentially what I did. Apologies for that as well.)

In my 3rd post I point out the three different discussions taking place in the thread.

The first two are valid discussion points. Neither of which would interest me for long really. It is the third which is entangled in the other two that bothers me.

Which is why I asked Cougar the questions I did. I actually would like to know if he thinks that their is an equivalence between the argument that
a fictional character HAS to be the same race as written/portrayed because that's what the author intended
and
the character is white and therefore has to be white.
There were more than one person in the latter category. Cougar being pissy because I called one of them an idiot while he was apparently just fine with not calling out racism when it's baldly proclaimed is a bit strange.
Also, for the record, I do not think Cougar is racist. Don't get me wrong, no offence intended, with all due respect, to be honest, at the end of the day the following does make me think that his thought process is something along the lines of "yes, theoretically a black actor could do it, I just don't think there are any black actors from the right socio-economic background to do so now. Maybe in a few years."

Cougar, on 15 November 2012 - 04:06 PM, said:

I think, in all seriousness, there are two interrelated questions here: could Elba do bond and could a black guy do bond? I'd have to say no and yes respectively.
Elba couldn't, in my NSHO. The reason for this being I don't think he could pull off the things Bond needs to be. Bond must be British, but with an RP accent. I've no idea whether it comes across to North Americans, but Elba is well spoken, Southern English, but not what we'd call RP. RP can be accented with Scots, or Irish or Welsh as has been demonstrated by Connery, Brosnan and Dalton, but he can't sound too common. Second, you have to believe that Bond is quite posh, has come through the British public school system and has a certain upper middle-class insousance to him. Fundamentally, I don't feel Elba would pull that off. He could manage the action hero, SBS side of things that Bond has, but not the Oxford knot, champagne cocktail job.
None of those requirements exclude a black actor. I'm struggling to think of a black actor up to the job, but if anyone's ever seen Rugby pundity Jerremy 'Jezebel' Guscott, you'd know that there is nothing unreasonable about an elegant, public school type English black chap.

That is uncomfortably close to an applicant being told "We just don't think you'd fit in with our atmosphere at this firm. Have you considered applying at ..."

[Use Of Weapons]

The plummy RP accent is one of the first things any British actor learns to do. Yes, even the ones on Eastenders. Even Kylie Minogue can do it, FFS. Saying an actor can't play a role because they don't have the right accent is like saying a surgeon can't operate because he's doesn't wear sterile clothing. They're actors. Putting on new accents and mannerisms is what they do. IMO, the only reason a black actor wouldn't be chosen to play Bond would be because of any history of previous characters he brought with him. And that may well be the reason none springs to mind -- because their character history is, pretty inevitably, of playing characters who happened to be black, while the history of Bond portayals (thus far) is a pasty sea of whiteness. As soon as that history changes, as soon as the precedent is set, everything will be up for grabs.

[polishgenius]

Use Of Weapons, on 05 December 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

The plummy RP accent is one of the first things any British actor learns to do. Yes, even the ones on Eastenders. Even Kylie Minogue can do it, FFS.

Sean Connery can't.

[Gust Hubb]

[Use Of Weapons]

polishgenius, on 06 December 2012 - 12:02 AM, said:

Use Of Weapons, on 05 December 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

The plummy RP accent is one of the first things any British actor learns to do. Yes, even the ones on Eastenders. Even Kylie Minogue can do it, FFS.

Sean Connery can't.

He can, he just doesn't bother. Because he's Sean Connery.

[Cougar]

I'd argue that there are plenty of actors who struggle with accents and that being British is no guarantee of being able to pull off Bond's accent. I doubt Elba could pull off plummy. Crowe couldn't even manage to keep his attempt at Northern English on one accent (Sheffield via Gallway most of the time it seemed) despite months of training!

Also apologies for the fact that Stone Monkey had to do the equivalent of 'Cougar's not racist, some of his mates are black' for me.

I'd have to admit that sometimes I have to both argue and do modding in the same post, so apologies for any confusion it causes.

[Abyss]

Cougar, on 06 December 2012 - 03:31 PM, said:

...I'd have to admit that sometimes I have to both argue and do modding in the same post, so apologies for any confusion it causes.

MODGOD NOTICE OF IT WORKS BETTER IF YOU CHANGE FONTS FOR THE DIFFERENT ROLES.

It's not really an accent issue, in the sense that if the actor can speak coherently, most of the world isn't going to care. Bond's been played by enough different flavors of bits for anyone to be fixated on one particular 'voice'.

[Cougar]

Read previous post on accents, Abyss.

[Abyss]

I did. I was agreeing with you.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

All I have to say is, isn't Johnny Depp at least part native?

[Macros]

I'm not sure, I think he's about 195% awesome though

[amphibian]

Was at an X-mas party last night. A large group of people there all said Elba would be amazing as Bond, but that he might age out by the time Craig is done.

So a bunch more random Americans who know the Bond franchise and Elba's past work think he'd be a good fit now.

[Macros]

Breaking news from four four two.

Rio Ferdinand says he would love to be the first black Bond.
he was being serious as well.