James Bond, having come out the other end the #MeToo era as more effeminate and more emotional, is now set for yet another round of cultural updates to address the woke crowd’s discomfort with words.
Just days after Roald Dahl’s publishers announced they had been working with equity consultants to sanitize texts of “offensive” language, now reports are coming out that James Bond is getting the same treatment. Interestingly, the edits seem only to update language related to a specific demographic while leaving other seemingly outdated text alone.
The Independent wrote:
Racial references have been removed from Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels following a sensitivity review.
Terms such as the n-word, which featured in his writing from the 1950s and 1960s, have been edited out of new editions of the 007 books, which are set for reissue in April.
Some depictions of Black people have also been reworked or removed, but references to other ethnicities, including the use of a term for east Asian people and Bond’s mocking views of Oddjob, Goldfinger’s Korean henchman, remain.
The Daily Caller elaborated on the edits, writing that the “new edition of the book makes several edits to passages that might be deemed offensive to black people.” Again, worth noting that the only racial group getting special treatment are blacks.
“For instance,” the Daily Caller cited, “the publisher removes racial descriptors of passages which have black characters portrayed as criminals, barmen, gangsters, butlers, and drivers.” The American Tribune has previously reported that even woke Hollywood leftists are rightfully complaining that their prevention from taking on villainous roles is a bizarre form of oppression, as it limits what roles they are offered.
One example of the selective editing to the James Bond novels was offered by the Independent and came from the novel Live and Let Die, the story later adapted for the big screen when Sir Roger Moore took on the call sign of 007.
A phrase from the original novel that described African would-be criminals as “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much,” featured the edited prose of “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”
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The updated publishings will also feature a disclaimer for the safe space community, which reminds readers that books written in the past represent different attitudes about various topics.
“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,” the warning reads.
One account on Twitter noted that the phenomenon of erasing the past and updating classic stories is the two-fold result of both woke fragility as well as the result of lack of artistic creativity.
Indeed, when meaningful artwork is no longer being produced, the best the lazy minds can do is reuse the same stories but tweak it, this presenting it as something new.
“Ideological incursions aside, this is what happens when you create a world of endless reboots and retreads and sequels and spin-offs and franchises and absolutely no original content whatsoever,” the user wrote, linking to the Independent article.
Ideological incursions aside, this is what happens when you create a world of endless reboots and retreads and sequels and spin-offs and franchises and absolutely no original content whatsoever https://t.co/T7taSCMlHf
— Kat Rosenfield (@katrosenfield) February 26, 2023