It’s honestly like that every night Bohemian lunacy and shenanigans
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I suppose it’s women from particular cultural backgrounds eating ‘traditional’ dishes - with the African woman getting the bananas. I’d not necessarily see that as classically racist, rather as a culturally clichéd depiction (like showing a German dining on Sauerkraut or a Bavarian with Lederhosen and beer stein chewing on Weißwurst; not so much wrong as tired and unidimensional bordering on caricature).
It probably came about by an element from the book that wasn’t originally anything else but part of Blofeld’s scheme. The girls came from agricultural regions of the UK and families heavily involved with the produce, potatoes, poultry and such. Naturally their allergies put a severe pressure on them and Blofeld’s plan was to let them spread various targeted viruses, foot-and-mouth disease, potato blight and the like - while he pretended to ‘cure’ them. In the novel Bond wonders whether he fell amongst cannibals when the ladies order their meals.
Over various treatments the script changed Blofeld’s operation to a global scheme with virus Omega spreading infertility and the girls coming from all continents. They wouldn’t need to have a specific agricultural background nor to be especially ravenous about particular dishes.
Interestingly, there is a strong element of ancestry and cultural background running throughout both book and film, Blofeld’s claim, the entire College of Arms business, the Christmas traditions shown in both versions, the background of Marc Ange Draco and his daughter, the makeup of Union Corse and Spectre.
What exactly marks out Brosnan as kinky - in a film showing a woman with obvious relish mowing down people - still isn’t as clear to me as perhaps to others though…
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I agree. I don’t see any racism in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. ALL the girls are eating foods that are very prevalent in their own countries not just the ethnic ones. In Charles Helfenstein’s The Making Of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he lists the Angels Of Death eating:
Ruby Bartlett – chicken
Nancy – potatoes
Scandinavian Girl – assorted cold meats
American Girl – corn fritters
Chinese Girl – rice
Australian Girl – lamb
German Girl – red cabbage and sausage
Irish Girl – grapes (but in the film it is seen she is actually eating corn on the cob)
Indian Girl – japarti (which apparently is a misspelling of chapati)
Israeli Girl – nuts and fruit
Jamaican Girl – bananas and brown sugar
and the English Girl – veal
So where is the racism? Stereotypical? Perhaps. But certainly not racist.
And as for Pierce Brosnan being pervy in GoldenEye? Don’t see it. Xenia Onatopp is the pervy one.
I’m afraid the staff is way off base on these ones.
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I suppose as predominantly younger folks the staff simply defines these categories in different sensibilities and terms. What’s considered ‘normal’ and what’s considered ‘not normal’ - no kink shaming here - isn’t so much a result of cultural consensus as of varying degrees of representation in social media feeds. Over time that may lead to something approaching consensus, just with a different level of significance and maybe subject to more frequent changes.
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It never occurred to me “those girls” – or anything else in OHMSS – could be seen as “racist.” Even with the photos upthread, I didn’t take the banana that way; honestly it was the first time I’d noticed she was even eating one, but even once it was pointed out, I assumed it was meant to be sexually suggestive.
What I did notice about OHMSS was its outdated sexual politics, and only then when I saw it in the cinema a few years ago with a crowd that seemed largely unfamiliar with the film. In particular there was a reaction to Draco’s line, “She needs a man to dominate her” and later the bit where he punches Tracy out and merrily quips, “Spare the rod, spoil the child!” And the reaction wasn’t gasps or boos, but laughter; not in the sense of “it’s funny when men knock out women” but more like, “can you believe this was considered culturally acceptable entertainment relatively recently?” My impression was that the whole “it’s a man’s world” attitude was considered hilariously quaint, like the hammy gesticulations in a silent movie or a zippered rubber suit on a Toho kaiju. Ridiculously outdated and thus harmless.
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It is interesting, though, how things are perceived now.
Then again, the younger generation, as I experience it, often has this reflex to go „ugh, so sexist, racist, shameful“, and when I ask to specify I rarely get a clear response. It‘s mostly about peer group thinking and repeating without really arguing about the merits of an accusation or the lack thereof.
Bond films are time capsules, and that’s one element I absolutely love about them. So what was considered funny back then can easily be intolerable now. But to chide the times which have passed to not be as enlightened as the present is pointless.
As for BrosnanBond being a perv… I want to hear about those reasons.
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Well, he DID bite Terri Hatcher’s shoulder. The unmitigated nerve! 
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I don’t know that I’d consider any of the Bonds to be “pervy.” I could see calling Roger “lecherous” or Sean “rapey,” but pervy? I don’t get it. It is admittedly bizarre how Brosnan likes to bite his partners, but to me it comes off less as perverse and more like he just doesn’t quite understand how sex works.
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Okay, that almost made me spew coffee all over my keyboard. Touché!
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You do know they even wrote songs about love bites?
In Brosnan’s defence, that particular mannerism does also feature in one or two of the books if memory serves. Might even have been written into scripts as ‘back to Fleming’ content…
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He’s “peeling back the layers.” With his teeth.
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I am not sure there is much daylight between a representation that is “classically racist” and one that is “culturally cliched.”
Nothing dates a film faster than its sexual politics.
I agree with the “ridiculously outdated” classification, but not with the “harmless” corollary. As we see in today’s world, the ridiculously outdated can have tremendously harmful effects.
That is not what is occurring. Just as with Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION, there were voices at the time of production criticizing these representations–not as numerous as today, but they were present. The difference is that in previous times marginalized voices had much greater difficulty in being heard.
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I meant that I sensed the audience wasn’t scandalized or outraged, but instead greeted the scenes with the same patronizing ridicule with which we’d regard an 1800s admonition not to ride on a locomotive because the human body isn’t designed to withstand travel at 35 mph. That is, they were too amused to feel threatened.
If they’d seen it in a new film, they’d likely have been far less forgiving; but since it was shot in 1969, it was taken as merely foolish echoes from a time of ignorance. Or maybe more accurately, a reflection of the kind of sexist, macho fantasy fare that James Bond is no longer allowed to indulge in. In my experience, as much as people recognize just how “wrong” classic Bond tropes are by modern standards, on some level they’re still sad to have them all stripped away. One could even argue whether without all those politically incorrect elements it’s still “Bond” at all.
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Fully agreed.
But I had conversations when younger people (in my family) actually criticized the depiction of Miss Moneypenny in the Connery era because the filmmakers did not decide to make her M, just like they made M female in the Brosnan era.
Yes, in a perfect world this could have been done even in 1962 - but that world did not exist back then, and I doubt it will ever exist.
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So I‘ve been doing this wrong all the time?
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Thanks for the clarification.
That sounds about right. Films and other media sell different fantasies now.
I cannot go there with you. I am glad when tropes are challenged, critiqued, and even upheld.
I think that is one of the strengths of “Bond.” The franchise can present tropes in one movie that are then critiqued down the road in another.
For me, that is taking critique in a direction that is not useful. Analyze the representation that is there, and how it works, instead of lamenting for something that could never have occurred in the first place.
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As has been said, times have changed since the 1960s/70s. But show me the man and I will show you the crime. If people are looking for racism, sexism or any other ism they are sure to find it. Nonetheless, I agree that Bond won’t be allowed to slap women or behave in the way he used to. The writers just won’t go there.
But something that should remain is the spirit of James Bond being in charge, even if he’s wrong. NTTD did this pretty well, I think. Bond doesn’t hit Madeleine physically but he’s clearly upset and leaves her at the train station. When they meet years later he smiles and extends a hand like she’s a random professional. That’s emotionally devastating stuff.
That’s what I liked about Craig’s incarnation - how he projected strength but had a greater sense of inner trauma which levelled things out. Skyfall went into more detail about this with the story about the tunnels under his childhood home. All of this can be a positive or a negative depending on what you want from Bond. I think that overall, Bond can’t be depicted as too nice. He likes woman and can be a bastard. These components need to be conveyed in some manner.
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The x-ray specs in the casino in TWINE; I suppose they have a function in establishing the joke that everyone is massively armed (did we know he had these in advance?), but there are a couple of short shots where the impression is his glances are for his own personal satisfaction. Probably doesn’t amount to much more but then I can’t recall when I last went out for a solid afternoon’s perving so I suspect I have lost my touch. Or been told not to touch.
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Yellow Pinky mentions Pierce Brosnan “biting” Teri Hatcher in Tomorrow Never Dies and you mention the X-Ray specs in The World Is Not Enough, but Stbernard’s staff did not see either of those films. They only saw GoldenEye. So those examples don’t apply in this case–even if either example is considered “pervy”.
Brosnan in GoldenEye does not fit the accusation.
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