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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32806 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Next They Came for the Dead White Authors

Apparently, Ian Fleming is next on the list for posthumous editing by sensitivity readers.

I've read a bunch of Bond novels. They are hilariously and unironically racist and sexist. Much moreso than the movies, which were already notorious for being un-PC even in an un-PC era (remember Octopussy?).

The Bond novels are fun but schlocky; Fleming's output was wildly erratic in quality. Casino Royale was actually pretty good (the Daniel Craig remake was the most accurate-to-the-book Bond movie ever made), while Dr. No was just hilariously bad (and bore almost no resemblance to the movie).

I guess I don't need to say much that hasn't already been said or that most people here won't agree with.

I will point out that editing children's books to be more acceptable to modern readers is much older than Roald Dahl. For example, I read the original, unedited Dr. Doolittle by Hugh Lofting a few years ago. I was actually unaware of just how racist it was. Modern editions have removed the "niggers" and other slurs, and the plot about the little African prince who wants Dr. Doolittle to turn him white. I don't actually object to this, so long as the original is still around. In itself, this isn't some new practice that only started happening in the woke era.

But it appears increasingly that it will no longer be acceptable to acknowledge that attitudes in the past were different; a warning label won't be enough. I expect the march will continue with Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell's novel is a magnificent epic and a glorious, unapologetic paean to the Old South, and should be preserved in its entirety both for its literary merit and for being such a cringeworthy time capsule of Lost Cause mythology. The movie was actually toned down a lot even in 1939 (they removed the part where Rhett Butler literally joins the KKK, for example), but I would not be surprised if it's next on the block for expurgation.

Here is a good news/bad news thought for you to ponder: I think sensitivity readers will soon be out of a job. Why? Because scrubbing "problematic" texts out of old books seems like a really easy job for the next generation of ChatGPT.

They are hilariously and unironically racist and sexist.

Absolutely. Fleming was a raging snob and it comes through. They are pure escapist wish-fulfilment fantasy, and while they probably could indeed do with a good scrubbing, if you take that out of them you're not going to have much left. I think by now most people know Bond from the movies and very few read the original novels. There is a scene in one, I can't remember which, where Bond is tortured and it left me - a person never in the possession of testicles - wincing when reading it. It's got nothing to do with real world spies at all, it's the male equivalent of romance novels if I may put it that way. Impossibly suave secret agent leads life of globe-trotting glamour in exotic locales, wining, dining, and gambling at high-end casinos all on Her Majesty's tab, while romancing a succession of femmes fatales and gorgeous women who are not the girl next door.

It's got nothing to do with real world spies at all

Wasn't Fleming himself a former spy? I can't find the quote, but I believe at one point he referred to one of his Bond novels as "the latest volume in my autobiography" or something to that effect.

Wikipedia tells me he did work in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War, but he seems to have been mainly in administration and never a field agent. although later on he was responsible for creating intelligence-gathering units:

n May 1939 Fleming was recruited by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, to become his personal assistant. He joined the organisation full-time in August 1939, with the codename "17F", and worked out of Room 39 at the Admiralty, now known as the Ripley Building. Fleming's biographer, Andrew Lycett, notes that Fleming had "no obvious qualifications" for the role. As part of his appointment, Fleming was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in July 1939, initially as Lieutenant, but was promoted to Lieutenant Commander a few months later.

Fleming proved invaluable as Godfrey's personal assistant and excelled in administration. Godfrey was known as an abrasive character who made enemies within government circles. He frequently used Fleming as a liaison with other sections of the government's wartime administration, such as the Secret Intelligence Service, the Political Warfare Executive, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Prime Minister's staff.

If Fleming did say anything like that about Bond, I imagine it was less to do with the actual spying and more to do with the glamorous cover life; Fleming came from a wealthy background and led a fast, not to say dissipated, lifestyle. Criticism of the novel "Dr. No" seems to have been savage, with the real insult here being "suburban" - ouch!

The most strongly worded of the critiques came from Paul Johnson of the New Statesman, who, in his review "Sex, Snobbery and Sadism", called the novel "without doubt, the nastiest book I have ever read". Johnson went on to say that "by the time I was a third of the way through, I had to suppress a strong impulse to throw the thing away". Johnson recognised that in Bond there "was a social phenomenon of some importance", but this was seen as a negative element, as the phenomenon concerned "three basic ingredients in Dr No, all unhealthy, all thoroughly English: the sadism of a schoolboy bully, the mechanical, two-dimensional sex-longings of a frustrated adolescent, and the crude, snob-cravings of a suburban adult." Johnson saw no positives in Dr. No, and said, "Mr Fleming has no literary skill, the construction of the book is chaotic, and entire incidents and situations are inserted, and then forgotten, in a haphazard manner."

The rumor is that Fleming based Bond in large part on his friend and step-cousin, Sir Christopher Lee.

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