Tag Archive for: James Bond

New James Bond Novels Replace 007 With a Disabled Black Gay Superspy and Pakistani Muslim 009

“Do you expect me to talk?” No, I expect you to go woke.”

Earlier this year word came that Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, which controls the rights to the deceased author’s novels, hired sensitivity readers to go through his books and purge anything that might offend the souls who write angry letters to the BBC over reruns of Fawlty Towers. (The ‘war’ must forever go unmentioned as ‘The Germans episode was pulled by the BBC.)

The newly republished novels warn those with thin skin looking for politically correct adventures that, “this book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace.” Various awkward racial references had been scrubbed away leaving a bowdlerized Bond that could be safely read in any safe space.

Now that old Bond is dead, a new woke Bond can safely rise. Even though Ian Fleming has been dead since 1964, the estate turned to other authors to prime the giant money pump. Initially new Bond novels were written by prestigious writers like Kingsley Amis or former military men like John Gardner, but in more recent years turned to anyone willing to write woke for cash.

The latest of these come from Kim Sherwood, a University of Edinburgh lecturer who is interested in “women’s stories” and was authorized to write a feminist James Bond trilogy.

How do you write a feminist trilogy around one of the least feminist fictional characters around?

Easy, get rid of him.

Sherwood’s feminist trilogy of Bond novels has the superspy go missing while she invents new zeroes to take his place. Sherwood’s “feminist perspective” on James Bond gets rid of the white man and offers an “ensemble cast of heroes who we can all identify with.”

Ian Fleming Publications Ltd and Sherwood might want to look back at how that gimmick worked for the Pink Panther movies made after the death of Peter Sellers. But Bond didn’t actually die, he’s just been canceled. When he’s not turning woke, he’s just making way.

“I want to bring a feminist perspective to the canon,” Sherwood pitched, to “create a space for all of us to be heroes.” The technical term for that is a “Mary Sue” character. But do female readers of the Bond novels really want to be superspies, gunning down villains and surviving torture?

Ready or not, Sherwood debuted the new zeroes who prioritize “inclusivity, female heroes, and heroes of colour” including a black gay disabled 004 and a Pakistani Muslim 009.

Sid Bashir, the Muslim replacement for James Bond, remembers standing by his mother’s side at an Islamic cultural fair under a banner reading, “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic.” Another scene quotes the Koran and has Bashir saying, “May Allah bless your family.”

“I was born poor, black and gay, I know about hard times,” 004 who, it is important to note, is black and gay says. This isn’t just bad writing, it reads like a right-wing parody of wokeness.

In the new feminist novels, Miss Moneypenny has been promoted, Q has been replaced by a computer, and Bond by a woman, a black man and a Muslim man.

One scene takes place in a police station overrun by a leftist mob where “feminists, anarchists”, socialists and advocates for climate justice” have turned it into an “anti-capitalist party center.”

This is the woke utopia. Inclusivity means erasing everyone who doesn’t fit into this leftist vision of the ideal society.

“Bond has always been a fantasy, but it’s a fantasy that can reflect us and shape us and I’m so excited to get to be part of that for a contemporary world,” Kim Sherwood argued.

The thing about fantasies is that they have to be grounded in something. The old Bond was a series of fantasies grounded in the Cold War and some espionage experience by Fleming, but wokeness is already a fantasy and Bond authors no longer know anything except politics.

Politics in Bond novels used to be subtext, but now it’s text.

Earlier this year, Ian Fleming Publications Ltd rushed to publication a new novel, On His Majesty’s Secret Service, to mark Charles III’s coronation. Every monarch gets the 007 writer that he or she deserves. Queen Liz got Fleming while King Charlie has to make do with Charlie Higson, a comedian, who famously accused Winston Churchill of being secretly gay.

The Bond novel celebrated Charlie’s coronation, dubbed “King Charles the Woke”, by going up against COVID conspiracists, immigration opponents, and critics of Black Lives Matter and the transgender movement who asked things like “What are we going to do about the Muslims?”

Conservatives are a pretty reliable demographic for James Bond novels, but much like the film industry, publishing is making it clear that it not only doesn’t want them as writers, but even as readers. That is even more true of the Big 5 publishing industry in the United States.

If Ian Fleming, the actual Bond author, were alive today, he would be one of the villains. Fleming was anti-union, opposed to the welfare state and a conservative. But the old Bond novels upheld the primacy of Britain while in the new woke novels, the touchstones are no longer patriotism and country, but diversity.

“Bond was struck by something. It was a long while since he’d been at any kind of function that was almost exclusively full of men. It felt strange. There was not even a pretence at diversity here. Athelstan hadn’t been the least bit concerned about ensuring that half of the people he’d hired to carry out his coup should be women, or non-white, or disabled,” the novel has him say.

Fortunately, the new Bond novels more than make up for it with women, non-white and disabled superspies who battle the forces of ignorance and skepticism about mutilating children.

Heroically they penetrate super-secret fortresses and uncover plots to say politically incorrect things on social media after Islamic terrorist attacks. And they always take time out to remind you of their suffering as black, gay, disabled Pakistani Muslims who are the real victims.

Who needs Bond, James Bond, when we’ve got Victim, Woke Victim?

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘The Name Is Bond. James Bond. My Pronouns Are…’ 007 Novels Get Woke Makeover

All the way back in that simple, innocent world we lived in on Feb. 19, I wrote: “They started with Roald Dahl, perhaps because no one will be too concerned about the works of an author of children’s books. But make no mistake: the bowdlerizers are by no means finished.” It took less than a week for this prediction to be proven true: it has been revealed that Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, which holds the rights to the novels that gave rise to the never-ending James Bond movie series, has given the master spy a woke makeover in new editions that are set to be published this April. Once again, make no mistake: Woke Bond won’t be the end of this madness, either. The censors are just getting started.

The UK’s Telegraph reported Saturday that the bowdlerizers have shredded, pureed, and reformulated the James Bond novels in order to shield the dwindling number of millennial snowflakes who actually read books from “racial references” that don’t suit contemporary Maoist sensibilities.

It’s certainly understandable that some of the Left-fascists who control the culture and almost everything else these days would think this had to be done. Ian Fleming, the creator of the James Bond character and author of the novels, was an Englishman who died in 1964. He couldn’t possibly have foreseen how sensitive we have become, or how fragile, how vulnerable to “microaggressions,” how mired in “systemic racism” we are. He was part of a generation that lived through two world wars and was made of sterner stuff. A few quips, a few jibes, a few chuckles – so what? Sticks and stones and all that, old man! But those days are gone. Long gone.

It seems that Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, seeing the writing on the wall in terms of how restricted the freedom of expression has become these days, actually brought this on themselves by commissioning a coterie of what are known as “sensitivity readers” to give the Bond books a once-over and deep-six the offensive archaisms. “Sensitivity readers” are actually genuine human beings who make a living by weeping over imaginary slights done to imaginary people by the words of works of fiction, and who oversee the revisions of those works to remove the slights so as to suit the ever-changing sensibilities of today’s supremely intolerant Left.

The new, toothless, Leftist Bond books will carry a small disclaimer that packs a large wallop: “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.” They could just as well have said: “You’re not actually holding a James Bond book as written by Ian Fleming. You’re holding an approximation of a James Bond book, as revised by people who had neither the talent, nor the wit, nor the vision of Ian Fleming, but are arrogant enough to think that they can arrogate for themselves the right to prevent you from seeing what they think is offensive.” They would, however, never dare to be that honest.

What’s odd about the bowdlerizers’ work on the Bond books is that it doesn’t seem to have been thorough or consistent. The Telegraph tells us that “the changes to Fleming’s books result in some depictions of black people being reworked or removed.” However, “dated references to other ethnicities remain, such as Bond’s racial terms for east Asian people and the spy’s disparaging views of Oddjob, Goldfinger’s Korean henchman.” Not only that, but “references to the ‘sweet tang of rape’, ‘blithering women’ failing to do a ‘man’s work’, and homosexuality being a ‘stubborn disability’ also remain.” Why the inconsistency, Ian Fleming Publications Ltd? Either you’re going woke or you aren’t. Half-measures aren’t going to satisfy either your Leftist masters or anyone else. Either give us Bond as written, or give us fake woke Bond and let us know in big letters what we’re getting so we can avoid the new editions and hoard the old editions.

Some of the revisions in the new Bond books, as these things go, are just silly. In the original Live and Let Die, Bond refers to some African criminals as “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much.” The woke Live and Let Die has him saying, “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.” Why on earth? Can’t have Africans appearing to drink too much, apparently. Then when Bond hits a Harlem nightclub, in the original, he “could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.” What? People in Harlem likened to pigs? Can’t have that! (Because no white people have ever, ever been likened to pigs, doncha know.) So now, “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.” Booooorrrring.

But the woke arbiters of acceptable statements couldn’t care less if you’re bored. They just want to assert control over every aspect of your life, including what you read for light entertainment. They want to close off every possible way for you to have a thought that strays from their orthodoxy. That’s why, when the new James Bond books come out, James Bond as Ian Fleming envisioned him will be dead.

Much, much more of this is coming. Save your old books. Get ready to hide them. That’s coming, too.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Captain America battles the United Nations in Marvel film ‘Civil War’

spectre film james bondThere is a growing anti-collectivist theme in Hollywood films which is counter intuitive given the political leanings of those producing, directing and staring in them.

The film Spectre staring Daniel Craig has James Bond battling the “new world order (NWO).” A new world order where national sovereignty is passe and spying on everyone in the name of the collective is the new normal. Sophia Stewart from PC Magazine asks, “Can Bond survive an Orwellian dystopia where spy skills don’t count anymore and no one orders a dirty martini?”

Stewart wrote, “Spectre is a psychological battle between the old guard, the dying embers of British diplomacy, when the cut of a man’s suit, a gun, an accent and the right passport were all a chap needed to break hearts and rule empires, and the new world of surveillance networks analyzed by machines.”

Spectre is all about human operatives going after the enemies of the state (in this case including the state itself) and the growing concern about computer surveillance of everyone (including James Bond himself) by a global network controlled by the unelected bureaucrats, i.e. the NWO.

The latest Marvel film Captain America: Civil War has a similar theme. In Civil War political pressure mounts to install a system of accountability when the actions of the Avengers lead to collateral damage. The new status quo deeply divides members of the team. Captain America (Chris Evans) believes superheroes should remain free to defend humanity without government interference. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) sharply disagrees and supports oversight. the debate escalates into an all-out feud.

captain america civil war posterThe Daily Signal’s Daniel Woltornist in his column “The Conservative Lessons of ‘Captain America’” writes:

Here’s the gist of the movie—the free market does something well and the government comes in to “fix” it. And—shockingly—the government wrecks everything.

[ … ]

But before you know it—the U.N. is knocking at the Avengers’ front door telling them that they aren’t doing a good enough job staving off world catastrophes like alien invasions and complete annihilation.

To force the Avengers to do their job better, the “Sokovia Accords” are signed by 117 countries to put the Avengers under U.N. jurisdiction. This is a great idea because when aliens invade next, let’s have the U.N. debate if the Avengers should fight the alien invasion.

If it turns out anything like regular U.N. deliberations, the Avengers would never be used again because Russia or China negotiated a backroom deal with the aliens so that they would be global governors in the new alien world order.

Presented with the Sokovia Accords, the Avengers are split between those who want to maintain the status quo and those who wish to effectively handcuff the organization with regulation.

Read more.

Sound familiar? It should because this has become the Obama administrations policy. To render America’s national security to the United Nations. This policy was best summed up by Secretary of State John Kerry at the commencement ceremony at Northeastern University. Kerry said:

For some people, that is all they need simply to climb under the sheets, close their eyes and push the world away. And shockingly, we even see this attitude from some who think they ought to be entrusted with the job of managing international affairs.

The future demands from us something more than a nostalgia for some rose-tinted version of the past that did not really exist in any case. You’re about to graduate into a complex and borderless world.

This statement rings of the nostalgia of James Bond and Captain America for a Great Britain and United States of America who were the beacons of the free world, battling the evil empire (former Soviet Union).

Donald Trump embraces an America First foreign policy. Is Trump like James Bond and Captain America?

Donald Trump made a major foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. to a gathering of The National Interest Magazine, and its parent institution, The Center for the National Interest. Trump first laid out why America’s current foreign policy has failed. He then outlined his “America First” foreign policy.

Trump stated that U.S. foreign policy under President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had, “No vision. No purpose. No direction. No strategy.”

trump as captain america

Trump as Captain America from Facebook.

Trump then set the his vision, purpose, direction and strategy for an “America First” foreign polity:

  1. America is going to be strong again.
  2. We’re getting out of the nation-building business and instead focusing on creating stability in the world.
  3. I will not hesitate to deploy military force when there is no alternative. But if America fights, it must only fight to win.
  4. The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.
  5. Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war and destruction.
  6. In the Middle East our goals must be, and I mean must be, to defeat [Islamic] terrorists and promote regional stability, not radical change.
  7. Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, cannot be allowed. Remember that, cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
  8. Finally, we must develop a foreign policy based on American interests.

Is Trump’s Make America Great Again mantra shared by those in Hollywood? Looking at the latest Hollywood feature films, one would believe so. Is Hollywood getting ready for a Trump presidency? Time will tell.