139 replies to this topic

[danielcraigisjamesbond007]

First off, I didn't see a similar thread, so I thought I'd start one.
Secondly, my question is simple. Do you think that Live and Let Die, if not some parts of it, are racist? Why or why not?
My opinion is that no. The movie is not racist. Although the villains are African-Americans, that doesn't make the movie racist.
The only "racist" part of the movie is when Sheriff Pepper says something about a "swamp full of 'Black Russians.'"

I understand that it was made during the beginning of the seventies, and that "blaxploitation" films were popular, so maybe that's why the producers decided to make Live and Let Die. If anything, the race issue of the film makes it more believable, if you will. Having the entire "black" community run by a criminal made the movie interesting for me.
On top of that, the novel was written during the fifties, when the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s hadn't happened yet.
Perhaps I'm ranting. What is your opinion???

[Fan]

I second your 'no.'

[Matt_13]

If you find that offensive you should check out the source material.

[danielcraigisjamesbond007]

I don't find it offensive, Matt_13.
Here's the story: I was watching it with a friend and he claimed that it was racist. I don't find it offensive and I tried to find out where it was. I honestly don't know how this movie is offensive.

[Matt_13]

I don't think it tries to be, but by having Sheriff Pepper present the filmmakers do acknowledge that the racial aspects of the film are definitely a bit heavy handed, to the point where they felt it necessary to insert an "amusing" white character. So racist? Absolutely not (the book a wee bit). Does race play a big role in the set up of the film? Yes.

[clinkeroo]

Sure. It portrays Anglo-Saxons as bumbling, out of touch idiots who can't even tell when a guy is wearing a rubber mask.

[Righty007]

Was Sheriff Pepper a bigot? Yes.

Was the film racist as a whole? No.

The villains were African American because of the source material plus the producers wanted to capitalize on the Blaxploitation genre that was popular at the time. I believe that era peaked sometime between 1973/1974.

[dinovelvet]

I assume the otherwise irrelevant character of Harold Strutter was thrown in just so there could be a "good" black character in the film, in case they were accused of being racist.

[I never miss]

Quarrel Jnr was probably written in for the same reason.

Look, the film's not racist. It's heart's in the right place. LALD is light entertainment. Sure, it would be made differently today, but everything changes over time.

This is not aimed at anyone who has contributed to this thread (or any other here), but in my life I've met a few people who were obsessed about things being 'racist' (when said things blatantly weren't), and very sad individuals these people were too.

Edited by I never miss, 22 May 2009 - 06:58 AM.

[dee-bee-five]

No, is the simple answer. Nor was the book. Not when they were made/written. To our eyes, sure, there are some parts of both that grate. Just as the depiction of gay characters in the books and early films can jar.

But this is the problem with political correctness. It is absurd to try and impose prevailing social mores on films and books produced fifty years ago. There was some nonsense a while back about Gone With The Wind being racist. But I think most intelligent people saw it for the nonsense it was.

Half the time, I think we get these academics trotting to television studios to denounce this or that piece of popular culture as racist or sexist just to grab their 15 minutes of fame. They're tiresome, but they can be ignored.

This is not aimed at anyone who has contributed to this thread (or any other here), but in my life I've met a few people who were obsessed about things being 'racist' (when said things blatantly weren't), and very sad individuals these people were too.

Quite. I get tired of those who scream "homophobia!" at every imagined slight when, in 40 plus years on this planet, I've encountered none. And I'm hardly in the closet...

[Sniperscope]

No, is the simple answer. Nor was the book. Not when they were made/written. To our eyes, sure, there are some parts of both that grate. Just as the depiction of gay characters in the books and early films can jar.

But this is the problem with political correctness. It is absurd to try and impose prevailing social mores on films and books produced fifty years ago. There was some nonsense a while back about Gone With The Wind being racist. But I think most intelligent people saw it for the nonsense it was.

I think you can go a little far with that line of argument DB5.
Certainly when a text is produced, by the standards of its context it may not have been intended as racist, but if the text persists to this day then we are all more than entitled to judge it by our contemporary standards, with the knowledge that, in the past, this was how people saw the world.
Of course a book or film should not be dismissed out of hand because it doesn't accord with my views today, but by the same token we shouldn't turn a blind eye to something that by modern standards could be deemed offensive.
That's not "Political correctness" -it's simply a fair recognition that attitudes change - and always will.

In this regard I think LALD (book and film) are products of their times and to me from a modern perspective are a little cringe-worthy in parts, largely because of their character stereotypes - and I include Pepper in that too.

Edited by Sniperscope, 22 May 2009 - 08:39 AM.

[dee-bee-five]

No, is the simple answer. Nor was the book. Not when they were made/written. To our eyes, sure, there are some parts of both that grate. Just as the depiction of gay characters in the books and early films can jar.

But this is the problem with political correctness. It is absurd to try and impose prevailing social mores on films and books produced fifty years ago. There was some nonsense a while back about Gone With The Wind being racist. But I think most intelligent people saw it for the nonsense it was.

I think you can go a little far with that line of argument DB5.
Certainly when a text is produced, by the standards of its context it may not have been intended as racist, but if the text persists to this day then we are all more than entitled to judge it by our contemporary standards, with the knowledge that, in the past, this was how people saw the world.
Of course a book or film should not be dismissed out of hand because it doesn't accord with my views today, but by the same token we shouldn't turn a blind eye to something that by modern standards could be deemed offensive.
That's not "Political correctness" -it's simply a fair recognition that attitudes change - and always will.

I wasn't arguing against that, per se, but I think a lot of nonsense is being bandied about by the loathesome PC lobby. My problem with all this is where does it end? Is Othello racist? What about The Merchant of Venice? Or Oliver Twist? This doesn't just apply to popular culture but classic literature, too.

[Sniperscope]

I wasn't arguing against that, per se, but I think a lot of nonsense is being bandied about by the loathesome PC lobby. My problem with all this is where does it end? Is Othello racist? What about The Merchant of Venice? Or Oliver Twist? This doesn't just apply to popular culture but classic literature, too.

Well it's a big area to discuss really, DB5!
I'm very familiar with all of these texts and certainly a strong argument can be made for OTHELLO being racist by today's standards, as much as both OLIVER TWIST and MERCHANT do obviously have anti-semetic elements.
It's all a matter of changing perspectives, but if someone is neither black or Jewish (in this instance) or empathetic they may never notice these issues as being potentially offensive...
When any of these stories were written they reflect the perceptions and biases of the times - they're time capsules that cannot be divorced easily from their eras.
But the recognition of this fact should not necessarily invalidate them as worthwhile literature (and that's where PC can go too far in its dismissal of their worth as cultural products) but, as I've said before, we shouldn't willfully ignore those issues either out of respect and fair justice for all.
So I do think we need to soberly say "yeah well there is a certain cultural mindset on display here that we need to recognise as different from our own (and even offensive)" and then judge the book or movie on its own merits...

As to LALD...
It's got to be said that, from my view, Fleming seems to want the average English, middle-class, reader of the book in 1954 to feel more than a little racially alienated (there's constant references to "negro" in the book as apparently a synonym for "man") and ethnically threatened by "the capital of the negro world" (as Leiter put it).
A simple example of LALD's racial elements, that could easily be found offensive, is in all the "Yassuh" "Nossuh" dialogue.
On the one hand you can (probably rightly) say that this is an accurate phonetic rendering of the idiosyncratic pronunciation of that period - so it's a kind of time capsule.
But on the other hand, you could (also rightly) wonder why hasn't Fleming rendered everyone's speech in phonetics? Of course that would be ludicrous and barely readable but one of the core components of racism is negatively highlighting someone's difference in contrast to a so-called cultural norm. Bond's speech is never phonetically rendered because he is assumed to be a normative standard that "we" can directly relate to - not only because he is the protagonist but because he is "one of us."

It's a big topic, this one...

Edited by Sniperscope, 22 May 2009 - 11:45 AM.

[Sniperscope]

[deleted double-posting]

Edited by Sniperscope, 22 May 2009 - 11:03 AM.

[tim partridge]

The film also seemed to give a lot of work and good press to the Black Stuntmen's Association.

I think you could call the film racist if they had hired Peter Ustinov and Clive Revill to black up as the villains, or something like that.

Personally, I felt the depiction of North Korea in DAD to be far more offensive. I think this is especially so given that the only North Korean who is a glowing Western sympathiser gets tastefully electrocuted in an over the top (and unimpressive) special effects scene. He's then completey forgotten about after that.

Edited by tim partridge, 22 May 2009 - 11:16 AM.

[danielcraigisjamesbond007]

I'm sure that, when you watched it thirty years ago, the racial issue may not have been evident. Now that we're more "politically correct," maybe those racial issues have become more clear...

[Sniperscope]

I'm sure that, when you watched it thirty years ago, the racial issue may not have been evident. Now that we're more "politically correct," maybe those racial issues have become more clear...

You know, it's got nothing to do with being "politically correct" - that's an overused euphemism for BS.
It's just about being a little more knowledgeable about the world at large and realising that the views of 30 years ago were - the views of 30 years ago...
As a very big fan of "Blaxploitation" cinema I have very few problems with LALD, the film, within that context. The book on the other hand I have more problems with because I really can't relate to the values of 1954... but that's just me!

Edited by Sniperscope, 22 May 2009 - 12:00 PM.

[Zorin Industries]

I'm sure that, when you watched it thirty years ago, the racial issue may not have been evident. Now that we're more "politically correct," maybe those racial issues have become more clear...

Without misreading your thoughts here, I take a great stance against anyone or anything claiming we are "politically correct" now. Of course it is a mental zeitgeist that has raped and looted intelligent thought and discourses to the point that someone somewhere is wondering if LIVE AND LET DIE is racist. Of course it is not. Dee Bee Five is most correct when he brings in the gay angle (and what an angle it is!!)... are WINT and KIDD homophobic? No of course they are not. Is KANANGA a racist creation? Of course he isn't.

LIVE AND LET DIE was made for the same reasons that GOLDEN GUN emerged during the Kung Fu craze, GOLDENEYE was very retro and nostalgic in a decade that thrived on it and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE emerged during the time when the Far East was exotic and far flung - the 007 films tap into the cinematic zeitgeist of the day. That is all LIVE AND LET DIE was doing.

It would be more "racist" for KANANGA and his goons to be some white notion of black identity. Or worse still - never feature an all black villainous group for fear of painting the wrong picture to the world. People and audiences are more intelligent than you think. And if you want to go down the politically correct route which limits and fragments everything into a nanny state where all opinion is supressed in favour of someone somewhere's notion of normality then claim that a piece of mainstream entertainment such as LIVE AND LET DIE is racist. And I don't buy into the idea that "look at it then and look at it now". Its' levels of "racism" remain the same - zilch.

I think that actually, the question should not be whether LIVE AND LET DIE is racist, but is it actually one of the more pressing, prevalent and politically immediate of all the Bond films? ROYALE and SOLACE can reference 9/11 and dodgy world banks fine, but LIVE AND LET DIE actually features a blatantly Black Panther esque (note I said 'esque) leader in a time when Martin Luther King was only five years dead and the Black Panther movement was in full swing. And the visual politics and connotations of a black man 'dating' a white virgin teenage girl are brave on Eon's part to say the least for 1973. It wasn't that long ago before LIVE AND LET DIE that TV networks were panicking over UHURA and KIRK sharing a kiss or even fretting that they cannot sack Nichelle Nichols because they have one girl too many in the STAR TREK cast and sacking the black girl will be seen as being racist. That is what politically correct "thinking" does to culture (though "thinking" is the last thing the PC brigade want any of us to do).

[tim partridge]

The other thing to consider I think, which in my opinion kind of counterbalances the negative portrayal of Black Americans in LALD, is that all of the white Americans (Felix aside) are oblivious and ignorant, British viewed stereotypes. Hamilton has an element of this in all of his Bond movies, where he stops the plot to indulge in crass, US cultural observational humour (which I think he must have picked up from Hitchcock) but especially here with the deep South backdrop. Hamilton punctuates the boat chase with that gratuitous old timer in a jalopy gag (which is only there as a joke in itself), has a totally middle class white American wedding annihilated by the boat chase (and the only person who doesn't suffer loss in that is the black waitress diving out of frame), that batty old woman with the plane tutorial, not to mention JW Pepper...

Note that Solitaire is a Brit too, and not an American. Note also the black on black violence when Rosie is killed, with not an eyelid batted.

The Black villains by contrast are the evil minority of San Monique, sophisticated hitmen and drug smugglers, who have manipulated and oppressed their countrymen with Voodoo (are they liberated by Bond at the end? I cannot quite remember). Bond's mission is as much about saving San Monique as it is killing Mr Big/Kananga.


In conclusion, I do think that LALD is more racist against White Americans than it ever could be against black Americans.




By the way, not to beat the dead horse, but when I saw DAD at the cinema in 2002 I found the portrayal of North Koreans to be cheap, exploitative and offensive, and quite inappropriate for Bond. At least San Monique was fictitious.

[Jim]

Political correctness depends on the politics of the time. In thirty years a lot of what is deemed to prevail now will doubtless have its own "ist" label.

Live and Let Die is only racist in so far as it has no appealing white characters whatsoever. They're either clots or dim or permanently way off the mark or all three. Whitey a fool.

Probably more racist if it was deemed that black people couldn't ever be villains. I want to be Dr Kananga - a role model if there ever was one.

[Zorin Industries]

I want to be Dr Kananga - a role model if there ever was one.

Me too. And I'm white... scottish white too (which is almost transparent), but just think of the tailoring and the wheels.... perfect!

[dee-bee-five]

I'm sure that, when you watched it thirty years ago, the racial issue may not have been evident. Now that we're more "politically correct," maybe those racial issues have become more clear...

Without misreading your thoughts here, I take a great stance against anyone or anything claiming we are "politically correct" now. Of course it is a mental zeitgeist that has raped and looted intelligent thought and discourses to the point that someone somewhere is wondering if LIVE AND LET DIE is racist. Of course it is not. Dee Bee Five is most correct when he brings in the gay angle (and what an angle it is!!)... are WINT and KIDD homophobic? No of course they are not. Is KANANGA a racist creation? Of course he isn't.

LIVE AND LET DIE was made for the same reasons that GOLDEN GUN emerged during the Kung Fu craze, GOLDENEYE was very retro and nostalgic in a decade that thrived on it and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE emerged during the time when the Far East was exotic and far flung - the 007 films tap into the cinematic zeitgeist of the day. That is all LIVE AND LET DIE was doing.

It would be more "racist" for KANANGA and his goons to be some white notion of black identity. Or worse still - never feature an all black villainous group for fear of painting the wrong picture to the world. People and audiences are more intelligent than you think. And if you want to go down the politically correct route which limits and fragments everything into a nanny state where all opinion is supressed in favour of someone somewhere's notion of normality then claim that a piece of mainstream entertainment such as LIVE AND LET DIE is racist. And I don't buy into the idea that "look at it then and look at it now". Its' levels of "racism" remain the same - zilch.

I think that actually, the question should not be whether LIVE AND LET DIE is racist, but is it actually one of the more pressing, prevalent and politically immediate of all the Bond films? ROYALE and SOLACE can reference 9/11 and dodgy world banks fine, but LIVE AND LET DIE actually features a blatantly Black Panther esque (note I said 'esque) leader in a time when Martin Luther King was only five years dead and the Black Panther movement was in full swing. And the visual politics and connotations of a black man 'dating' a white virgin teenage girl are brave on Eon's part to say the least for 1973. It wasn't that long ago before LIVE AND LET DIE that TV networks were panicking over UHURA and KIRK sharing a kiss or even fretting that they cannot sack Nichelle Nichols because they have one girl too many in the STAR TREK cast and sacking the black girl will be seen as being racist. That is what politically correct "thinking" does to culture (though "thinking" is the last thing the PC brigade want any of us to do).

Absolutely correct. And in both novel and film, Mr. Big is portrayed as a highly intelligent and accomplished and worthy foe for Bond. And he was played in the film by a very brilliant black actor. As was Tee Hee.

I'd like to add one other small point. If you read Roger Moore's diary of the making of Live And Let Die (a marvellous book which is worth reading if you never have), Moore relates receiving a very racist letter from a woman in England following published pictures of him as Bond romancing Rosie. Read between the lines and you get a sense of Moore's quiet loathing of the woman's views. The star wasn't racist and nor, I submit, was the film.

[Royal Dalton]

"Can't miss him. It's like following a cue ball!"

Trevor Phillips would probably say it's racist.

I wouldn't.

[Zorin Industries]

"Can't miss him. It's like following a cue ball!"

Trevor Phillips would probably say it's racist.

I wouldn't.

Me neither.

Though Mr Phillips has a very dangerous and blinkered take on what constitutes racism these days...

[Mr. Blofeld]

This brings to mind an anecdote Roger Moore told about Lovelace Watkins that I believe was on the DVD somewhere: Yaphet Kotto thought that Watkins' bleaching of his hair was offensive to black people, so Roger arranged for Earl 'Jolly' Brown (who played Whisper) to crank-call Kotto as Lovelace Watkins, going so far as to send him a photo of Watkins (which Roger had signed) with the legend "To Yaphet Kotto with gratitude (or something like that), Lovelace Watkins"...

[Stephen Spotswood]

I didn't find the movie racist, just sanitized.

In the book, Bond was reminiscing about the Harlem of the war years, the Cotton Club etc., only now to have the locals spitting near his shoes.

It didn't suggest all were superstitious, just those who followed Voodoo.

Since Solitaire had to remain a virgin to remain effective as a tarot reader, it steered clear of miscegenation issues.

In the book, Bond was disgusted when he blew up Mr. Big's boat and it wasn't the neat kill he expected, but he had to watch safely from shore as torn and bleeding people screamed in the water, and then while sharks ate them.

And Yaphet Kotto was no Sidney Greenstreet; I've read somewhere that Fleming thought of Mr. Big as a black Greenstreet.

http://www.movieacto...efalcon117.jpeg

Edited by Stephen Spotswood, 22 May 2009 - 03:58 PM.

[Righty007]

I want to be Dr Kananga - a role model if there ever was one.

So you aspire to be a two-bit island diplomat?

[Jim]

I want to be Dr Kananga - a role model if there ever was one.

So you aspire to be a two-bit island diplomat?

Two-bit? Definitely.
Island? Working on it
Diplomat? ......ah.

Two out of three isnae too shabby.

I can do the white suit/red shirt thing without looking too ridiculous. And sometimes I wear a rubber mask.

I've said enough.

[ACE]

I've just seen a film where four sexyful ladies do something to Bond-san 007 Sean Connery's Jap's eye - they make him into a Japanese fisherman.

Imagine if they did the analagous thing to Roger Moore preparing him for infiltration to the voodoo fields of San Monique?

Is Live And Let Die racist?
Nossuh!

But the question is loaded. There are other Bonds with questionable moments but why is the question only asked of LALD? Is this knee-jerk agenda setter for those asking the question? But hey, it's Bond and it's just meant to be entertainment.

And, while we're on it, so-called political correctness is just modern manners.
The world evolves and so should we. As The Beatles said, "All you need is love, love is all you need...!"

[Jim]

Octopussy having Roger Moore "white up" makes it viciously racist. Or clownist.