Live And Let Die

I used to be a big James Bond fan when I was younger. I still have the whole video collection from Dr No right up to Tomorrow Never Dies and I used to be quite the wee James Bond geek when I think about it. However I kind of fell out of the loop after Pierce Brosnan's Die Another Day and I must admit I've not seen any of the more recent Daniel Craig films.

Recently though, I've had a bit of a craving to return to the films and see how I would react to them nowadays. So the other day when I had nothing better to do I went to the video cupboard and had a look to see what I wanted to watch. And for whatever reason I chose Roger Moore's debut Bond movie, Live And Let Die, made in 1973.

It was never one of my favourites really but it was quite good to watch it again with some of the knowledge I have now. One of the main things that struck me about the film that I wouldn't have noticed too much when I was younger was the amount of racism contained. The story takes place in New Orleans, Harlem and a fictional Caribbean island and as such there are a lot of black characters. The film was almost ridiculously stereotypical at some points I noticed though, with almost every black character being involved in the undercover ring of drugs smuggling. Obviously there's nothing wrong with having black villains in films but when it gets to the point that you don't doubt every single black person of being involved with the baddies you know there's something wrong. I did a bit of research into it, well I googled "Live and let die racism" and read a few of the different sites and articles about it and sure enough, Time Magazine blasted the film when it was released even calling Bond's new character a "racist pig".

I also read quite a bit about how the film was released at the time when blaxploitation films were very popular. And it seems that Live And Let Die was a kind of reversal of that genre where the white man had to come and save the world from the black gangsters and drug dealers. Some critics have even questioned whether the film was a direct reaction to the blaxploitation genre.

However, although there were clearly some issues with Live And Let Die I don't think you can extend this to the rest of the James Bond films as this seemed quite an exceptional case. It was quite coincidental though that I would choose to watch this particular film even though it had never been one of my favourites because it does relate to a lot that we have been learning in class about how different people are portrayed on screen.