One of the things I've found incredibly annoying is the hypocrisy about representation in media, but you know that. If you've been reading me for more than a month, you've likely read a piece or two of mine pushing back against this very thing.
But what makes it even worse is the fact that this hypocrisy around representation is done with full displays of hubris.
Disney droned on endlessly about getting the representation and accuracy for the Maori culture right for their Moana live-action remake. The commentary around that became such a feature of the interviews about it that it went well past "just letting you know" territory and well into obsessive virtue signaling.
However, the legacy media's entertainment sector has zero regard for "accuracy" and respect for others' cultures if that culture is even remotely white. Suddenly, Helen of Troy is black, Ariel of the Little Mermaid is black, and even real historical figures like Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn are black too. Suddenly, these people must be swapped out racially because nothing is more important than "inclusion" and "representation."
And you don't have a problem with that because you're not racist... right?
When you notice the only race getting that ol' representation reimagining, you can't help but realize that racism is a massive factor in these race swaps, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Nor should you.
The fact is, racism is not okay, no matter who it's happening to, and we've become so programmed as a society to accept racism if it's against a certain group of people. Do you think the multicultural map of New York City that left off Little Italy was an accident? Of course not. They knew what they were doing; you were just supposed to lie down and accept the erasure.
READ: Mamdani Accused of ‘Cultural Erasure’ — Sparks Outrage for Scrubbing Little Italy From NYC Map
Next on the list — or, at least he's been a hopeful get for a while — is James Bond.
Calls for "modernize" and "reimagine" Bond have been circulating for a while. Conversations about Bond becoming black have been in the works for years now, and of course, being replaced by a black woman has been considered the ultimate goal.
"No Time to Die" was, in my tinfoil hat opinion, the testing ground for that change. If there wasn't enough pushback, then the famous character would've been replaced with a black woman in the next go-round. However, it was pretty clear that Bond fans and even casual movie-going normies weren't for it. Still, the push is ongoing and is talked about even today.
According to Variety, Debbie McWilliams, the casting director for the last 14 James Bond films, was given the question during an on-stage interview, and you can tell it's a question she's gotten quite a bit, because her feet were pretty planted about Bond continuing to be a white man:
Speaking at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in an onstage interview moderated by Variety, the casting director was asked by an audience member whether the spy could be a woman or a person of color. “Not in my opinion. No,” she responded firmly. “Ian Fleming wrote a character, and that’s the character that stays. That’s what I think. I mean, other people might think otherwise, but I don’t think that.”
With McWilliams having retired before Amazon’s acquisition of the Bond franchise, the search for the next 007 actor falls to casting director Nina Gold and director Denis Villeneuve. However, McWilliams still has strong views on the subject as the question and answer session at the Czech festival demonstrated.
The fact that she's still getting the question and the fact that she's no longer the one in charge mean trouble. Denis Villeneuve is one of my favorite directors, but even he has flirted with race and gender swapping in the past, including in his Dune films.
If they do race swap Bond, or gender swap him, then there will be no Bond. The character might be named James Bond; it might even have some of his characteristics, but it'll be a cheap knockoff. It won't be THE James Bond, and yes, it will be because he's not a white male... because Bond is a white male.
If they want someone like a Bond character, then they should create one.
But they don't want to do that. They want to take an established white character and strip him or her of their whiteness and replace it with someone else?
Why?
Because they're racists. There are far more nuanced reasons, many of which I've covered, but ultimately this is what it boils down to.
These people are racists against white people.
