Because “race” and “family” are often integral parts to the story. Particularly stories with a historical context to them.
Nick Fury can be black, white or whatever because he is a character from the modern age. Just so long as he has an eyepatch.
Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America is a product of a 1940s Army super-soldier experiment. Unless that experiment was to test soldier’s resistance to syphilis, I don’t think it’s reasonable to have a black Captain America. Let’s just say that for Rogers, the most surprising thing in this scene of him waking up in 2011 is that Nick Fury is his boss.
My impression was that Connery, Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig were all “non-upper class Bonds” and that Moore was the only true “upper class Bond”. In fact, they specifically state this for Craig’s Bond in Casino Royale.
Heck, Peirce Brosnan isn’t even English, he’s Irish.
Not to mention Native Americans in London during Shakespeare’s lifetime, such as Tisquantum and Pocahontas. Granted, he might not have met those two people, but there were certainly Native Americans in Europe by this point.
(Actually Pocahontas arrived right after his death, but my point is, the sight of an American Indian was not unheard of in London).
Bond’s mother was Swiss. Are there many black women in Switzerland? Having never been there, I honestly don’t know. But socially, a lot of doors open for Bond that don’t open for, say, Idris Elba or Lenny Henry.
If my math is right (and it is not completely as data is drawn from consecutive but not identical years in polls, 2009-2010), 4% of the population is of African background, and excluding the generally Caucausian North African region, less than 2% are from the rest of Africa. The largest non-European immigrant groups appear to be Latin America and Sri Lanka. It’s not probably for Bond to be mixed race in that context but certainly not impossible.
The only stories where Bond’s whiteness really comes into play are On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (as a plot point, where he’s impersonating a viscount) and Live and Let Die (as a contrast to Mr. Big). But it’s really pretty important in those two.
On the point of plays having men playing women, or a character at different points in their life being played by actors of different races and sexes, without being part of the plot and the audience just being mature enough to roll with it.
There has to be a point where this actually hurts the work does it not? If you have a mother played by a teenage actor and the child played by an elderly actor, or other unlikely situations there is a point where the audience can say WTF where it doesn’t indicate immaturity right?
Again if you have your audience asking what the heck is going on or confused you have failed right there. I think this is a vastly different scenario than just say having Peter Parker played by a black actor.
I doubt that will be intact in the film, but it’s a crucial part of the team dynamic. If the film turns out to be brilliant, it will have been worth it, I guess, but right now that looks like a really big “if”. Fans who are invested in the characters appreciate having someone who physically resembles them cast in the role.
Then the problem becomes that so many “classics” were written at a time when nobody much cared about minorities of any kind and whether there were any on screen or page. And even when they DO appear, they’re turned white/straight/what have you, even if they’re historical figures!
So what are non white, non straight, non otherwise majority people to do?
I don’t think that really matters for the rebooted Bond - lots of the old stories are now irrelevent.
This one does count because the motto is still being used. However, you don’t have to be aristocracy to have a crest or a big old country house. Some of those families are just old families that have been wealthy for a long time but never raised to the nobility or even given a more minor hereditary title (I visit a lot of stately homes and many of them are/were owned by people without hereditary titles - and not just owned for the last few years, either, but for generations). It is not impossible for such a family to have had kids with a black partner, even if she’s Swiss.
And that’s all assuming they keep that part of the backstory for a new Bond.
I saw it. Create new characters for a new and more diverse generation of actors. Generations of white detectives on film didn’t stop anybody from making Beverly Hills Cop, and now Axel Foley is as archetypal a character as Mike Hammer or Joe Friday. Create a riveting new character that reflects your view of how the world really looks. Write a screenplay about a two-fisted gumshoe with gender issues, or a Palestinian woman who cracks open the corruption in a London police station, or heroic spy kids from Pakistan. I don’t know how to say it more plainly. The characters you think are underrepresented by Hollywood? Represent them in your own stories!
Ian Fleming was a terrible writer with a great character. So were Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stan Lee and Robert E. Howard. Their achievements can be exceeded by anyone with a keyboard, and you’re whining about how the old characters are being monopolized by The Man. Create your own characters!
… And when those characters are adapted or illustrated, some producer erases their minority status so a white person is the lead.
It happens all the time. Nobody ever objects except the minorities, and they’re roundly ignored. So why should they care about whites screaming about getting the same treatment?
I’m not disputing you - I’d just like to see some examples. Some *successful *examples: the only cases I can think of were artistic and commercial failures.
If it’s so important for Bond to be part of the aristocracy, why not have some of his ancestry be aristocracy from a different continent? I don’t think the UK is so insular as to reject the notion of foreign aristocracy.