Shaken, Not Stirred Britishness: James Bond, Race, and the Transnational Imaginary

Abstract

This chapter examines discourses of race and of blackness in the James Bond film series, starting with post-imperial, Cold War-inflected “Negrophobic” themes in 1962’s Dr. No; to the post-Civil Rights, Blaxploitation sampling deployed in 1973’s Live and Let Die; to a black Amazonian, hypersexual badass vibe on display in 1985’s A View to a Kill; to a new millennial, color-blind casting sensibility at work in 2012’s Skyfall. Of particular concern are the Bond films’ racist portrayals of black womanhood, and their aestheticized violence in depictions of the spectacularized annihilation of bodies of color. Simultaneously, this chapter acknowledges that Bond fans routinely derive pleasure from negotiating the strange spectatorial sublime of James Bond’s troubling discourses on race and otherness.