And Lamarck Was Right. If James Bond is a codename, there's no need for that.
Edited by Medinoc on Sep 3rd 2018 at 3:47:39 PM
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."I think the "James Bond as a code name" thing isn't actually that interesting of an idea to be honest. There's no sign of it in the Craig movies for instance. And it implies James Bond is just a suit for characters, not an actual character himself (or herself).
I will say Ocean's Eight was AWESOME. I just saw it last night and it was everything I wanted from certain other reboots.
Great chemistry, timing, acting, and fun throughout.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 3rd 2018 at 7:01:23 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.![]()
Because it creates the impression that the character only got recruited as an agent because of a famous male relative and not because of any qualifications of her own.
With James Bond I feel there's a problem because the (at best) glorification of masculinity and (at worst) raging misogyny have become pretty much the cornerstone of the character. Bond is also a highly shallow character most of the time, so there's not much to gain from such a change .At this point, making him female just seems like too much trouble when you can create a different character.
See: Atomic Blonde, which is basically the best take on the "female James Bond" idea, partially because Lorraine is a character entire continents ahead of Bond when it comes to depth.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."One point of order:
People who say that Sherlock Holmes wouldn't work as a woman (or a black man etc...) set in that time are thoroughly missing what reworking a traditionally white male hero is for.
Yeah, a female Holmes in Victorian London would not be the exact same character with the exact same circumstances as the traditional male Holmes. That's the point.
If it was just the exact same character, except female, that wouldn't be a female Holmes, it would just be the existing male Holmes in drag.
Some people might say "But then why call this female character Holmes at all?" To which the simple answer is: Because the way to do a race and gender lift properly is to make it a Deconstruction of the character through the lens of a different race or gender and use that as an exploration of why these differences exist.
Angry gets shit done.I think part of the issue is the fact James Bond isn't The Paragon and if you want to treat him as such, you're missing the point of the character. James Bond is a ruthless antihero who uses whatever means necessary to achieve his mission but fully expects to die, forgotten.
Misogyny is mostly removed from the character unless we assume that The Casanova is inherently a negative idea when I call that a sex-negative idea and toxic. He's a fundamentally BAD person but that doesn't make him a bad character. Ian Fleming's racism and sexism have also been left behind a long time ago.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 3rd 2018 at 10:00:20 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Given Skyfall, released in 2012, had Bond effectively raping a Sex Slave, I wouldn't be so sure to call the character's issue done and settled. As I mentioned, the entire point of his character is that he's this assertive and bold manly man Wish Fulfillment character who goes around the world sleeping with beautiful women, drinking martinis and killing people whilst possessing the depth of a saucer plate.
Hell, moral ambiguity is nothing new. Smiley from the John Le Carre series is a much better example of a highly morally ambiguous and highly complex spy character. It's no surprise Atomic Blonde has Lorraine as a highly morally ambiguous spy, even worse than Bond because the film actually isn't just a wish fulfillment diatribe.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Indeed it did. It still has problems (that being the biggest one), but as a film it's still leagues ahead of any Bond movie put forth since maybe Goldeneye and to its credit actually did and make its main character openly bisexual rather than the Bond movies's constant chickening out of making Bond bi other than throwaway jokes.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I think Bond's motivations in that scene are open to interpretation.
But sadly that seems to have been thrown in for Fanservice.
Mind you, Bond NOT hooking up with a willing woman in Quantum Of Solace felt weird at the end.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters....a woman couldn't have been a consulting detective back then? You mean, the made-up job that Sherlock invented for himself that doesn't actually exist and never has? The one that he's allowed to perform strictly because his brilliance makes him an exception to the rules? A woman couldn't do that?
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Not realistically, no.
Victorian Britain had a completely different attitute towards women, especially regarding what was seen as "proper" behaviour for respectable woman. I once read a few police report about a murder commited in London around 1903. It was specifically mentioned that the police officers took great care to send the women away immediately before they could a proper look at the body.
Allowing a woman access to crime scenes deliberately would have created a huge outcry once the media had learned off it.
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One: Next to nobody would have hired a woman to do this kind of work. Two: Nobody would have taken a woman trying to question them seriously. Three: A woman wouldn't have gotten access to a lot of places where Sherlock turns up regularly - like a Gentlemen Club, a scientific society or even a murder scene. Way too fragile, you know.
And frankly, I would loathe it if a show would act as if a woman would have been allowed by society to do what Sherlock Holmes did exactly the way he did. It would be a gross rewriting of history.
Naturally you could come up with a female detective being active around this time or close to this time by rewriting the stories and tweaking the character. But then you end up with a character so different, you can just as well rename her. Hence me mentioning Franny Fisher, who does pretty much the same stuff Sherlock Holmes does in Australia, while tackling stories which actually address the rampart sexism during this time, and she does all of it WITHOUT the need to be sold on some other characters name.
Edited by Swanpride on Sep 3rd 2018 at 2:53:52 AM
Nobody would have hired a man to do this work. That's the point: "consulting detective" is not a real job. It doesn't exist, it never has. Holmes invented the job by being so awesome that people were willing to overlook his total lack of qualification.
I don't see how that changes if he's a woman. It's still a made-up job that doesn't exist and that the character only gets to do by being so awesome that people overlook the myriad reasons to not hire this person.
It's like saying that, historically speaking, a woman would never have been allowed to serve as a Jedi Knight. You're appealing to historical accuracy regarding a job that, historically speaking, is not a thing.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 3rd 2018 at 4:03:03 AM
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Okay, that is a BS argument. Star Wars is set in a Galaxy far, far away, everything goes there. The very point of Sherlock Holmes is that his stories are written as if he is a real character who was living in what was back then the real world. There were actually people who thought that Sherlock Holmes WAS real. For the people back then having a female doing this kind of stuff and everyone accepting it would be like there is suddenly an alien walking through the city and nobody batting an eye about it.
I’m pretty sure that historically a real Sherlock would have gotten his head caved in by a pissed off copper pretty quickly, super detective skills or not.
Also it’s not like we haven’t had Sherlock adaptions set outside of Victorian England before.
Edited by Silasw on Sep 3rd 2018 at 10:12:15 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranHolmes might have a fictional job, but he does usually interact with people realistically. Once you accept that he is a consulting detective, you can accept how people deal with him. If Sherlock was female, not only would her job be fictional, every interaction she has would be unrealistic.
Edited by Zarastro on Sep 3rd 2018 at 12:15:26 PM
I think you could believably portray a female Sherlock Holmes, provided you adjust the writing. Maybe she's pretending to be a man. (a lot of women used to do that in order to do things that usually only men were allowed to do) Maybe she's grudgingly tolerated, because she's just that good, but she's still treated with a certain amount of condescension and intolerance by most. There are quite a few stories about women in history who excelled somewhere where women were usually not tolerated, due to being extraordinarily competent.
As for diversity, I generally don't think you "need to have a good reason" to have it. Even when it genuinely makes no sense, I can't say I really care. There's an annoying Double Standard when people care about what they perceive to be false diversity a lot more than other things about the same media that don't make any sense. The Battlefield V trailer was utterly ludicrous for dozens of reasons, even moreso when the developer said it's supposed to be historically accurate, but despite all of its issues the female soldier is all that about 95% of its haters talk about. I wonder why.

Making a female agent the daughter of James Bond comes with its own bag of Unfortunate Implications, though.
We learn from history that we do not learn from history