Ian Fleming Racism
Micky Dolenz
Posts: 15MI6 Agent
I've been devouring the Bond novels for months now but I'm sometimes turned off by the racism.
examples:
For Your Eyes Only: In the short story that shares the title with the book Fleming said the Cubans killed the English couple by firing their machines with their monkey hands. Later he says the Cuban women look like monkeys in their dresses. In Hilderbrand Rarity he calls fish ******fish. Surely, he knew the correct term for them.
Thunderball: ******fish again. There's also a passage when Bond and Felix are enjoyin the drink that says, "The barman walked away with Negro dignity". What the hell is Negro dignity?
From Russia With Love: Typical Russian stereotypes. That they are cruel cold people.
You Only Live Twice: Japanese people are so submissive and they need the help of the great English secret agent.
Live and Let Die: Anybody who read this book knows what I mean. The black Americans talk like Jamaicans.
Felix Leiter: He is made to look like he's incompetent compared to Bond. It's an allegory to make America look incompetent to Britain (Fleming, like most Britons of his time, thought the British were a race, only divided into tribes like Scottish, Irish, English, Welsh).
WHat do you folks think of the racism?
Go to my website: I have all the answers http://www.smoochbaby.com/
examples:
For Your Eyes Only: In the short story that shares the title with the book Fleming said the Cubans killed the English couple by firing their machines with their monkey hands. Later he says the Cuban women look like monkeys in their dresses. In Hilderbrand Rarity he calls fish ******fish. Surely, he knew the correct term for them.
Thunderball: ******fish again. There's also a passage when Bond and Felix are enjoyin the drink that says, "The barman walked away with Negro dignity". What the hell is Negro dignity?
From Russia With Love: Typical Russian stereotypes. That they are cruel cold people.
You Only Live Twice: Japanese people are so submissive and they need the help of the great English secret agent.
Live and Let Die: Anybody who read this book knows what I mean. The black Americans talk like Jamaicans.
Felix Leiter: He is made to look like he's incompetent compared to Bond. It's an allegory to make America look incompetent to Britain (Fleming, like most Britons of his time, thought the British were a race, only divided into tribes like Scottish, Irish, English, Welsh).
WHat do you folks think of the racism?
Go to my website: I have all the answers http://www.smoochbaby.com/
Comments
I'm sure recently released books contain things that will be seen as a "no-no" (for lack of better words) by a generation 50 years from now.
I don't blame you. It always make me uncomfortable too, just as many things do from that era. But unfortunately, those were common attitudes of the day. I cringe everytime I see Gone With the Wind with all the talk about "darkies" and how some slaveholders were nicer than others because they didn't whip their slaves. But I do enjoy the story of Scarlett O'Hara, and the movie's spectacle. Maybe the way to look at it is to focus on the fact that we now know better.
You're on shakier ground on your other gripe, I think. I guess I don't really view Leiter as being presented as incompetent, but Bond is the main character -- they are, after all, "James Bond" and not "Felix Leiter" novels. And you can hardly blame a British spy novelist for making his hero British and allowing him the lion's share of the derring-do.
Fleming thought his country and its people are the greatest in the world? Gee -- where have I heard that before?
Racism is an attitued, a genuine loathing aimed at a specific race, to me that is never apparent. Just someone using the terms of thier day. It may not be strictly PC now but thats how things were in days gone.
It's a bit like saying Tolkein was homophobic for describing things as queer.
See pages 20 and 240 (Jonathan Cape, 1964) of that very book to see why you are wrong in this statement. Other examples available.
We live in a time when most folks exposure to literature is confined to a stripped down "movie of the week" adaption of a classic book. It is understandable in that atmosphere readers can become "uncomfortable" when certain "buzz" words appear that distract them from concentrating on the stories themselves.
If you don't like Fleming, try Mark Twain, Margaret Mitchell or any other writer that put pen to paper prior to 1960. These are all quality writers, who in themselves were not "racist" souls, only writing in styles familiar to their readers. Desciptions of a particular fish as a "N" fish, was merely common usage - not intended to degrade anyone.
Flemings books are half a century old, and reflect a period of time and attitudes that no longer exist. To read his words is, for better or worse a time machine back to that era. Even then it wasn't all roses!
We need to do our part as "enlightened" citizens and treat others respectfully. Why Fleming should attract any attention for being "racist" in an era when "Rap" artists foul babble is ejected from automobiles crusing the public streets at decibels higher than a jet plane engine is frankly beyond me.
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
In contrast, we have to admit how remarkable it is that the press hardly bats an eyelash at late night talk shows that include racist jokes as routine staples.
Don Imus is a better contemporary example because of the clear malice in his "nappy" comment that caused him to get fired by CBS, since I thing that kind of racist comment is at an altogether different level from Fleming and the other examples above.
When Fleming wrote those things about certain ethnic groups he knew damn well they were derogatory. Anybody who wrote or subscribed to those types of attitudes knew damn well they were racist views. The problem is that racism was rampant, not universal. There were many people who cringed at the common ideas of the day as many people cringe now when looking at them. But those people are in the background.
People like Fleming were in the foreground. He knew damn well it was snobbery and racism; to dismiss the stuff as a product of the times would be naive or cruel. Does anyone see my point?
Go to my website: I have all the answers http://www.smoochbaby.com/
Go to my website: I have all the answers http://www.smoochbaby.com/
Not as rampant in a sense that it's outward expression and practice is tolerated as it was then, at least not in the more socially "progressive" cultures; which ones, I will not even attempt to identify with certainty, but I can at least speak for the West Coast of the United States. In terms of attitudes however, in short of some decent research I am unsure how much or little internalized prejudices has changed. Movies like "Crash" and "Babel" to me are pretty good depictions of common prejudices held by people across the spectrum...which I think is really human nature that's largely conditioned by perceptions, the sharing of values and experiences.
Sure, Fleming was racist, but the distinction I hoped to get across was the level of malice that girds a person’s sentiment. I'd venture to say that even his most extreme expressions like the one made in GF about Koreans being at a level below apes, was largely shared and nurtured perhaps because of the Korean conflict that was central to global fears of nuclear annihilation...not an excuse, sure, but that's no surprise given the context.
On talk radio a few weeks ago, an African American and Caucasian (PC enough for the most basic level of sensibilities?) who were both in their late teens or early 20's when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, recounted their respective reactions over the news. The first guy of course was extremely angered, but in his prolonged struggle to understand the crux of it all he realized how the racist policies of the day were institutionalized in the name of social and political order as it was perceived, the classic rational of the ends justifying the means.
Interestingly, the 2nd guy underscored the first guy’s rationale. But first he recalled the sense of relief he felt after hearing about the shooting. Then through the passage of time that allowed for the careful consideration of facts, he realized how through consistent institutionalized indoctrination by the school system and other civic bodies, he was convinced that the Reverend King was indeed a trouble-maker who worsened the situation for whites and blacks alike and his silencing served the greater good. Does this kind of institutionalized racism still exist? Sure it does, in varying degrees around the globe, even in the "Westernized" nations as media coverage from the past decade will tell you.
Now that we established that Fleming was racist, what of it? If I'm an advocate for justice and equality for all, should I categorically reject Fleming and abandon anything he created? That's a personal prerogative I'll respect, but I guess in the end it's something that doesn't really bother me all that much.
If you don't like Fleming, toss his books in the waste can and forget him. IF's thriller writing was a reflection of a times gone by, he reported the world as he saw it, often tounge in cheek.
Apply that razor sharp critic to the "artists" who are alive today who should know better, and
enjoy the Bond novels for what they are ... an excellent series of adventures written a half century ago.
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
Fleming's many uses of the N-word, I think, are such examples of "that's what the thing is." However, it is the subtext of Live and Let Die--where there's an undercurrent of fear that black people can be easily manipulated and made to rise up against white society--where you can argue that racist thoughts abound. But such elements need to be understood as parts of the culture and politics of the times from which they came.
I think a lot of people figured out your point a long time ago, which is why so many have struggled to change those attitudes and still are today.
The point I'm missing is: what do you propose we do about Fleming and other manifestations of an unsavory past? Wear a hairshirt, like some medieval monk, to atone for the sins of the world? Or maybe erase from the modern world all traces of that past so as to not contaminate the present? There wouldn't be much left, I'm afraid. We're all tainted with original sin, and if you go back far enough, you'll find an injustice -- by the accepted standards of today -- lurks behind each and every one of us. I don't think anyone here is being dismissive or making excuses, they simply are acknowledging that that is how it was. And I think you're wrong about a multitude of people rejecting Fleming's racist and patronizing attitude to other races. Those attitudes were in fact quite common, just as it was once quite common to watch people fight to the death for entertainment. The human race is a work in progress, buddy. Deal with it.
I feel the greater point that we are missing is that today, fifty or so years later, we can at least be relieved that we as a culture tend to be more sensitive to those comments. Fleming's creation of James Bond continues to persist, through various manifestations of both literature and cinema. The racial attitudes have not. Are those attitudes preserved in Fleming's writing? Yes. Are they preserved to the same degree in our world today? No. Does Fleming's writing being still available today have the potential to reverse this trend? I don't believe so, not as long as we are willing to recognize and discuss it openly.
One thing I'd like to add is that I think that the poster, by suggesting that only a few bigshots or powerbrokers promulgated those racial attitudes while the unwashed masses of society recoiled in horror, is -- if you'll forgive the expression -- a whitewash of the facts that gives a pass to an awful lot of people.
The truth is probably more like this: Some actively hated; some actively didn't; most weren't paying attention one way or the other. Which is why human beings often wake up to find themselves in a pickle.
I was struggling to find the words. Very well said HH. {[]
This also makes a great deal lot of sense and I commend you to for clarifying things that seemed a little off to me.
Go to my website: I have all the answers http://www.smoochbaby.com/