Traversing the ever-changing world of 1973, Bond finds himself a fish out of water (alligator out of a swamp?), opposing villains undergoing their own crises of identity. For once, being a white straight guy might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

If this is your first time reading a re-view on LicenceToQueer.com I recommend you read this first.

‘Inspired by Live and Let Die’ by Herring & Haggis

“The "paper tiger" hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the "White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet. James Bond feeds on that secret little anxiety, the psychological white backlash, felt in some degree by most whites alive.” - Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, 1968

“White face in Harlem. Good thinking Bond.” - Harold Strutter, Live and Let Die, 1973

I’ve heard gay white men like me say that being gay automatically gives them an expert insight into what it must be like to belong to an ethnic minority. My reply is usually a four letter word - and they’re full of it.

The idea that the oppression African Americans have faced, and continue to face, is directly comparable with the oppression of gay men is, to put it mildly, naive. Even the author of a controversial 2008 article entitled ‘Gay is the new black?’ in queer publication The Advocate called the notion “facile”.

Don’t get more wrong: I applaud anyone who makes an effort to understand the world from the point of view of someone different from ourselves, but we should never assume someone else’s experience of the world is exactly the same as ours, especially if they belong to different stigmatised group to us.

In the course of researching and writing this piece, I came across a lot of different world views, some of which I vehemently disagreed with. For instance, the black civil rights activist I quoted above, Eldridge Cleaver, was disturbingly misognyistic and rampantly homophobic, labelling homosexuality a “sickness”. That doesn’t mean I should immediately discount everything he has to say. His views on James Bond may make for uncomfortable reading, but I was nodding along in agreement to his critique of the character.

If no one went out of their way to establish good relations with and find out more about between people different to them, positive social change would stagnate. I am fortunate to live in a country where characteristics such as sexual orientation and race are protected, equally, by law. But I am also realistic: homophobia and racism are entrenched in many institutions. James Bond is one of these institiutions.

That does not mean that we should ‘cancel’ James Bond. If you cancel something, you shut down the debate.

In this piece, my point of view is that Live and Let Die foregrounds the idea of ‘difference’ by showing black and white characters interacting in each others’ respective spaces. Although not directly comparable, I believe racial difference in this film could be seen as analogous with queerness. For me at least, the scenes where Bond enters black spaces and receives enquiring looks have always struck a chord with my experiences of entering straight, hypermasculine spaces. I would imagine some straight people would feel similarly self-conscious entering queer spaces, such as gay bars, or a pride event.

This raises another uncomfortable truth: treating any marginalised group of people as homogenous is grossly distorting. Black Pride has existed as a separate celebration in the UK since 2005 because so many people of colour feel excluded by mainstream Pride events. All queer people are not all treated the same way in society. People like me (white, middle class, gay, cisgendered male) occupy a relatively privileged position. I’ve faced considerable homophobia in my life but I know this is nothing compared with lots of other queer people, especially people who aren’t white. I could, if I wanted to, integrate more or less fully into society and ‘pass’ as a straight white man, a phenomenon Lisa Duggan calls homonormativity. That I would rather stand out and challenge institutions that perpetuate heteronormativity (James Bond is one of those institutions!) is my choice, one I am privileged to be able to make. It’s what this website is all about. I wanted to make a safe space for queer Bond fans - and not just white queer Bond fans.

In most of the spaces I inhabit in my daily life, the majority of people around me look more or less like me. More than 80% of people in the UK are ‘White British’ and even though I live in one of the most diverse places in the country, almost 60% of the pupils I teach are white. The closest I have come to feeling like a fish out of water is when I’ve been on holiday to China, and people were staring at me (mostly in a curious, rather than judgemental way) because I was holding hands with another man (my husband). My pallid complexion and ginger(ish) hair were of less interest, although a lot of total strangers did ask me to pose for photos with them at Shanghai Disneyland. Perhaps they thought I was Neil Patrick Harris.

I shall try not to be like Bond in Live and Let Die, blithely blundering into a space where he is not, to use Cleaver’s phrase, “lord of the land”. If I fail, please don’t hesitate to start a dialogue with me. I am very interested in hearing the views of all Bond fans, especially those from underrepresented groups.

“The name’s Bond, Flaming Bond?”

My own experiences of social exclusion as a white gay man hardly equate with those who exist at the intersection of two or more socially stigmatised groups. The first ever formal study of gay black men in Harlem, a key setting for Live and Let Die, concluded that the men were “doubly marginalised”. And Harlem is a place with a rich queer history and a reputation for being more tolerant of queerness.

Although some people resist making any comparisons, others have correctly observed that the fight for LGBT rights was directly inspired by the earlier fight African Americans faced, and it’s common to find a lot of overlap in the language used to describe both civil rights movements. Little wonder when you can consider that many of the most important LGBT activists have been people of colour, although this is still something that gets overlooked.

In recent surveys in both the UK and USA, considerably more members of the public said they would accept a black James Bond than a female or gay James Bond. Should we take this as ‘proof’ that the character’s race is of less importance than his gender or sexual orientation? We should be wary of drawing conclusions from such limited data. Although this was not an option in either survey, I would put money on their being very little public support for a James Bond who was both black AND gay. At least in No Time To Die we will have a black AND female 007, although even that news was not universally well-received when it was first revealed.

The sad fact is, that if you’re black AND belong to another minority group, you could be several times more likely to be neglected (at best) or discriminated against by institutions. And not all queer black people are treated equally: black trans and gender non-conforming people are particularly stigmatised, and regularly murdered.

The last thing I want to do is trivialise these real-life horrors by drawing facile comparisons with James Bond, a fictional character, getting a bit roughed up in an alleyway and getting saved by a black character. But as a walking personification of white, heteronormative privilege, I think it’s worthwhile zooming in on what happens when Bond gets a taste, for brief periods at least, of what it might be like if he lost his white, straight, male privilege.

Sociologist Elijah Anderson observes that, in the United States, “White people typically avoid black space, but black people are required to navigate the white space as a condition of their existence”. Here, Bond cannot avoid black space; it’s a condition of his mission. And although he’s merely a tourist in black space, he spends quite a lot of Live and Let Die not picking up on the codes of behaviour he might be expected to adopt.

Ahead of the film’s release, movie industry newspaper Variety declared that the then-in vogue Blaxploitation genre was a good fit for a Bond movie because many of the Blaxpolitation movies themselves resembled “Bond in blackface”. The implications of this being taken literally by the producers, and literally putting Bond in blackface, are too horrifying to contemplate (although this didn’t prevent them Japan-ifying Bond only six years before).

Even so, Bond stands out like a sore thumb (or, as Strutter says, a “cue ball”) because, he does nothing to mitigate his difference. Is this admirable (he’s being true to himself) or arrogant (privileged white man invading the safe spaces of others)?

One might reasonably expect a secret agent to do everything possible to fit in. But in Live And Let Die, Bond doesn’t even try. The least he could do is dress a little more appropriately.

Except for the dev-uh-stating double denim and white vest ensemble he wears while staying on San Monique (gorgeous!), the clothes he wears in Live and Let Die are mostly on the dour side, at least as far as colour palette is concerned. Clothes are important signifiers. So when he’s being fitted for new suits and he selects a clutch of new ties but steadfastly refuses one of them because the pattern is a little “frantic”, we have to wonder what he’s afraid of. Too black? Too gay? A mixture of both?

Bond’s fashion choices seems absurd when almost everyone - even Felix Leiter - is opting for primary colours. The extreme example is singer B J Arnau arriving on stage in a rainbow dress which is (obviously) fab.u.lous, even if Bond is having none of it.

Although the filmmakers had no qualms about what we now call ‘cultural appropriation’ when fitting Connery for a kimono, perhaps they were wise to avoid putting Bond in tiger-print trousers. The only time he gets adventurous is when he appropriates Solitaire’s outfit and drags up in her ceremonial robes and headdress.

Even if he ‘plays it straight’ with his clothing, Bond is usually unafraid to try the local drinks. In the Harlem Fillet of Soul restaurant he at least goes for bourbon but gets prissy about there being “no ice”. While this is a direct reference to Bond’s drink preferences in the Fleming novel and a way of distinguishing Moore’s Bond from Connery’s (there are no Martinis in the whole of his run), it also makes Bond appear as if he is refusing to acclimatise to the space he finds himself in. Even Felix Leiter chastises him later on when they’re in New Orleans (“Where’s your sense of adventure?”), overriding Bond’s order of another bourbon with two Sazeracs.

Unlike Leiter, Bond is ill at ease in the French Quarter of New Orleans, just as he was in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York. At the root of his discomfort is his feeling of difference in these spaces.

As it happens, these spaces have been safe(r) spaces for queer, black people through specific periods of their history. Harlem in particular was the epicentre for a cultural Renaissance in the early 20th Century, with many black lesbian, gay and bisexual writers and performers flourishing. Several of the gay and bisexual male creatives frequented a gay bathhouse in Harlem and in the 1950s the black novelist James Baldwin is rumoured to have brought Marlon Brando there. In terms of queer connections, Harlem is probably most famous for being the hub of the New York City drag scene, which dates back to at least 1869. Drag has long offered a sense of identity and belonging to queer people of colour and the drag that has become relatively mainstream today owes a lot to the Harlem scene.

It’s a shame the screenwriters of Live and Let Die didn’t find a way to make Bond attend a drag ball (Live and Let Slay?).

New Orleans has attracted gay men, if not other queers, since at least the mid-19th Century when white poet Walt Whitman wrote about his male-to-male sexual encounters. The city even has the United States’ first gay bar, opened in 1933 and still running today. On the wall is a letter sent by a Captain of the US Navy in 1966 declaring to the owners that the bar is out of bounds to sailors because of its reputation as a “hangout for persons of undesirable character”. It must be said that when I visited New Orleans in 2015, many of the businesses flying rainbow flags were mostly patronised by other white gay men. And, like many cities, neighbourhoods are pretty segregated on racial and class lines. Nevertheless, there are several black, queer creative people associated with the city, including pianists Tony Jackson and James Booker.

In contrast with queer-friendly Harlem and New Orleans is Jamaica, the shooting location for the fictional San Monique, and second home for Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming. Since the mid-19th Century, homosexuality has been illegal there (thanks to Britain), although there are hopeful signs that this is starting to change. Homosexuality being illegal did not prevent Fleming’s gay friends from visiting him at Goldeneye of course. When you’re white and rich you can do pretty much what you want.

Bond is white and, while not rich, doesn’t worry about money, so it’s interesting to see him floundering a little. He’s a little out of his depth for much of Live and Let Die. Perhaps it’s fitting that this film introduces Bond literally at home, where he has all his creature comforts. Pretty soon he’ll be half a world away from his bachelor pad kitchen with its modern gadgets and his monogrammed robe.

Most of the locations Bond visits in other films are wide open to him - he gets to pass through unhindered, sometimes by ‘passing’ as someone he’s not. But Live and Let Die presents him with many situations where he feels ‘other’. How we take this as viewers probably depends on our own characteristics. Personally, I find it quite satisfying to watch him (and what he represents) flounder a little. The film itself invites us to feel the this, particularly through the character of Strutter (see Allies, below). But in the end I empathise with Bond, as I believe we all do. Feeling like an outsider is something we can all relate to - some of us more than others.

Friends of 00-Dorothy: 007’s Allies

Until Bond visited M’s home in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, they had kept their relationship strictly professional. Here, M returns the favour by visiting Bond in his flat, almost discovering him in the arms of his latest lover, Miss Caruso, who is promptly hidden out of sight in the closet. Even allowing for the passage of time and changing moral standards, it’s hard to believe that Bond would be that concerned with his boss/father figure learning he’s having consensual sex with a unmarried woman. We know M always disapproves of 007’s womanising but Bond’s concern is comically exaggerated here. Now if Caruso had been a man, that might be a different story…

Moneypenny is instrumental in sparing Bond’s blushes. Actress Lois Maxwell once said of Connery and Moore that she would prefer Moore’s Bond to be her husband and Connery’s to be her lover, although it’s not clear if she meant both at the same time.

Quarrel Jr. is more of an equal than his predecessor in Dr. No. They’re one and the same character in the novels but as Dr. No was made into a film first Quarrel had rather inconveniently been killed off in the film series. In the novel of Live and Let Die, Quarrel gives Bond vigorous rub downs and naked massages every day after he’s been training his body for the swim to Mr. Big’s lair. The most intimate they get here is, according to Bond, sharing a hair brush, which, to be honest, is pretty intimate. They also like to go fishing together (see: Brokeback Mountain).

Felix Leiter’s involvement usually entails him clearing up Bond’s messes. We won’t see him again until The Living Daylights, presumably because he’s still completing the reams of accident and injury paperwork.

Despite his brief screentime, Harold Strutter, played by musical star Lou Satton, is a memorable character, perhaps because he’s so straight-talking. There’s a clever use of cutting to mislead us into thinking Stutter is an agent of Mr. Big in the sequence where he follows Bond into Harlem. As he drives he tells the unknown listener on his radio, that following Bond is easy, drawing attention to his queer out-of-water-ness: “Can’t miss him. It’s like following a cue ball.” It’s only later, we realise Strutter isn’t ‘bent’ and he’s trying to help Bond. Strutter is Bond’s guardian angel whenever he crosses into black spaces. At the end of the scene where he saves Bond from Big’s men in the alleyway behind Harlem’s Fillet of Soul, we’re invited to look on Bond through Strutter’s eyes as a somewhat pathetic, needy figure. Crucially, Bond only really gets into deep trouble when Strutter is not around to save him. Just prior to Bond and Felix entering the New Orleans’ Fillet of Soul, Strutter becomes the second vicitim of the jazz funeral assassins. Without his black ally, someone who can operate effectively in black space, Bond is vulnerable and is hauled off to a crocodile farm. If only Strutter had been there to save him.

Who knows what Sheriff J.W. Pepper would think of a black man being a CIA operative. Actually, I’m pretty sure we do know. Pepper is arguably not even an ally - nothing he does aids Bond in his escape attempt. Conceived as comic relief for the lengthy boat chase by director Guy Hamilton, the character was written unequivocally as a ‘racist cop’ by Tom Mankiewicz. Racist AND homophobic maybe? The two often go hand in hand (here is the UK, the police even use the same paperwork to take statements off victims of hate crime, whether the incident was racist or homophobic or both). The embodiment of narrow-minded bigotry, Pepper takes great delight in making Adam, the most snappily-dressed of Tee Hee’s men, spread his legs, suggesting his bigotry may be a product of his own internalised fears.

Shady characters: Villains

Even when he’s not on screen, Baron Samedi haunts the film from the pre-titles until the final frames. Although he’s not seen in the pre-titles sequence, he personifies the film’s representation of Voodoo. [Please note that my spelling of Vodou reflects the spelling of the word in the screenplay and writing about the film. Some believe the ‘Voodoo’ spelling to be problematic but I intend no offence]

Live and Let Die begins with three linked killings, the third of which occurs at the end of a Voodoo ritual. We see this even before we see Bond for the first time. Towards the end of the film, we see the exact same ritual recreated (with Solitaire in place of the ill-fated British agent from the pre-titles) so we retrospectively insert Samedi into the opening scene. He was there the whole time - we just didn’t see him - just as he’s still there, even after Bond has ‘killed’ him, perched quite happily on the front of the train. He gets to have the literal last laugh.

The decision to have Samedi bookend Live and Let Die queers the whole film, undermining the feeling that we have safely packed away anything that might threaten the heteronormativity that otherwise pervades the film, and the society which produced it. Conventionally, Bond films end up with a heterosexual coupling. Live and Let Die almost does the same, but that final shot of Samedi turns everything on its head. In this way, Live and Let Die bears comparison with many horror films, where the evil often survives and leaves the viewer feeling unsettled, or at least with a sensation of iresolution.

Samedi’s survival is an explicit provocation to its intended audience, whatever their beliefs in life after death. The producers might claim that Bond movies are made for the biggest international market possible, but the reality is they are made for people raised the Judaeo-Christian cultures. Even for a series of films which thrives on getting the audience to suspend its disbelief, Samedi’s survival may be a bridge too far.

But what about the 60 million people who believe in Voodoo? Would these believers recognise the fictional Baron Samedi portrayed in Live and Let Die as the same hedonistic loa (spirit) from their religion?

Voodoo has a long history of being misrepresented on screen and Live and Let Die is more responsible than most. My own impressions of Voodoo were largely formed from watching Live and Let Die as a child, right up until I visited New Orleans on my honeymoon and was inspired to find out more about the reality.

I won’t profess to be an expert, and this isn’t the place to go into the history of Voodoo in detail, but for the purposes of this discussion: it has its roots in the part of West Africa we call Benin today. When slaves were transported to Hispaniola (modern day Haiti), their religious practices were suppressed by the Catholic French colonists. So they could continue to follow their religion, Voodoo practitioners syncretised what they believed with their Catholic equivalents. They effectively practised their secret religion in plain sight. So, for instance, they might talk about St Peter but really be referring to Papa Legba, who performed a similar role: just as St. Peter guards the gates of Heaven in Christianity, Legba gives or denies permission to speak with the spirits.

It’s a mistake to think of Voodoo as one religion, even more so than it is with Christianity, due in large part to their not being a single, sacred text to homogenise to the extent the Bible does in Christianity. So for instance, when slave descendants migrated elsewhere (including New Orleans) they took Voodoo with them, creating a distinct branch of the religion. It’s not clear in the film of Live and Let Die, which denomination is being represented, but in Fleming’s novel it is explicitly Haitain Voodoo that Bond reads about (from a less than reliable source) and forms an impression of a “dark religion” with “terrible rites”.

Although there are “terrible rights” depicted in the film version of Live And Let Die, arguably the most unsettling thing about Voodoo for the viewer is Samedi’s survival and what it represents. Despite the amalgamation with Christianity in some regards, Voodoo (in both Haitian and New Orleans forms) rejects the Christian ideas of free will and personal choice. Instead, the ‘loa’ (spirits) determine human lives. Baron Samedi is one of those loa.

Bond films are all about self-determination and the consequences of exercising free will. And although they are empowerment fantasies, they are still grounded in observable reality. Throughout Live and Let Die, Bond is condescendingly sceptical about anything related to Voodoo. It’s assumed the audience will feel much the same way. So ending Live and Let Die not with Bond but with Baron Samedi - alive! - queers the formula. Despite Bond exercising his will (shooting Samedi), the expected consequence does (his death) not occur. It’s an ending at odds with the world view of the majority of its audience, the only instance where we are asked to buy into something supernatural in the whole franchise (unless you count Solitaire’s prognosticatory powers, see below).

Bond not being able to kill Samedi with his gun effectively renders him impotent. As we watch the credits of Live and Let Die, the world feels a little less certain. And yet, who is not thrilled by the possibilities the ending presents? What might Baron Samedi’s survival embody in the world of Bond?

Like all religions, Voodoo has so-called ‘true believers’ who misapply their beliefs to persecute others. But as Reverend Irene Monroe observes, Voodoo is, at heart, very accepting of all sexual orientations and genders. Monroe insists that the tenets of Voodoo are “queer-friendly”. This is partly because Voodoo is not a fertility-based religion. There are some Christians, for instance, who claim that the main purpose of sex is to procreate. This is definitely not the case in Voodoo. In a 2002 documentary, gay male Voodoo practitioners in Haiti explained that the goddess Erzulie made them who they are. There are even specific loa who protect gay men and lesbians. During rituals, dancers of any sex can be “ridden” by a loa of any sex, meaning a man inhabited by a female spirirt may dance with another man and a woman do the same if inhabited by a male spirit. Some spirits are understood to be bisexual.

While we see some sexualised dancing in the rituals depicted in Live and Let Die, all of it appears to be between men and women, although it does leave us with an impression that anything might happen. Interestingly, it’s men who are seen rubbing up against the poles on which sacrificial victims are tied and the phallic snakes (see Camp, below) are used to intimidate both male (Baines) and female (Solitaire) victims, although the latter is more overtly sexualised.

While few critics would try to claim that Live and Let Die’s representation of Voodoo is at all accurate, most acknowledge that it is memorable, and Baron Samedi in particular.

In real-life Voodoo, Samedi is the master of the dead and resurrection. Life and death are fluid concepts when it comes to Samedi. Liminality is the very essence of his being. Perhaps this is why he is frequently portrayed as transgressing other boundaries, including what many of ‘us’ (raised in Judaeo-Christian cultures) see as sexual and gender ‘norms’. One of these norms is what constitutes pleasurable intercourse: Samedi is not the only loa to express a predilection for anal sex.

Academics and experts like Monroe rightly decry popular misrepresentations of Voodoo, which include “racist images of zombies rising from graves, jungle drums, orgiastic ceremonies ritualizing malevolent powers of black magic”. So far, so Live and Let Die. The 1973 film is unapologetically an entertainment served up for an audience both frightened and fascinated by Voodoo. We are positioned to look on like the hotel guests portrayed in the film, watching Baron Samedi perform a fake ritual around a swimming pool. They are unaware that they are watching the ‘real’ Samedi, just as we are initially sceptical that Samedi is nothing other than one of Mr Big’s henchmen.

But Samedi is not like Whisper and Tee-Hee, who are memorable but ultimately one-note villains (damaged voice box/a claw instead of an arm, respectively). As the film progresses, Samedi draws more and more of our curiosity. Unlike Tee-Hee and Whisper, his ‘otherness’ is not as immediately apparent, especially in his first appearance as an entertainer for bored-looking holidaymakers. He pops up next as an impoverished-looking inhabitant of San Monique, albeit one who sits around in graveyards cheerfully playing their flute. He greets Bond and Solitaire cheerfully before switching his speech style to be both camp and sinister (“They’re heading for the hill”) as he reports in to Kananga/Big.

His appearance changes yet again as he appears in Kananga’s/Big’s New Orleans base. In this scene, only Kananga/Big explicitly registers that Samedi is present. Bond has been dragged away by this point and Solitaire flinches at Samedi’s hat falling to the table but she doesn’t look at him directly. Are we to think that only Kananga/Big can see him in this sequence?

It’s never clear why Samedi would throw in his lot with a drug-smuggling operation. Perhaps it’s he who is determining the actions of Kananga/Big and not the other way around. In Voodoo, the loa are often seen as advisors and Samedi seems to have this relationship with Kananga/Big. It’s Samedi who suggests Solitaire’s fate, a suggestion which is taken on board moments later by Kananga/Big, almost as if he had already reached the decision but was trying to put off making it.

In this scene, actor Geoffrey Holder really camps it up, exulting in stereotypical traits of a gay man with his gestures and flamboyant clothing, which help to add to the impression of Samedi’s otherwordliness.

Although he might be a villain in the world of Bond, Samedi is not a villain in Voodoo. He is associated with death but he’s also associated with life:

In paradoxical juxtaposition (and representing the full cycle of life and death), Baron Samedi is also depicted as having a particular fondness for life, and is also considered to be the lord of gluttony, sexual intercourse, insult, death, and resurrection. (Cosentino, 1987:270)

Even if we’re not aware of Samedi’s significance in real-life Voodoo, we get enough from the film itself to view him as a queer character. During the scene where Solitaire is threatened with ritual sacrifice, Bond kills Samedi twice in quick succession. But the second and ‘final’ of these deaths, with him falling into a coffin full of snakes, is intentionally anti-climactic. By now, Samedi has a hold of our imagination, and it’s a relief when he returns right before the end credits to re-open the possibilities closed down by the otherwise boringly heteronormative ending.

Dr Kananga/Mr Big are one and the same person, but who is the truer self? Or is it someone else entirely?

When we’re first introduced to Kananga, he’s an dull but eloquent politician, fond of the sound of his own voice - so much so in fact, he has recorded a lengthy speech that will play out for the benefit of the CIA as he makes his escape.

The first time Bond meets alter ego Mr Big the drug dealer ends their encounter by ordering his henchmen to “take this honky out and waste him”. His speech style is as different to Dr Kananga’s as can be imagined: he uses very stereotypical African American Vernacular English. This plays into Bond’s (and perhaps the audience’s) expectations of what a black New York drug dealer might sound like. Actor Yaphet Kotto himself expressed dismay at some of the cliched dialogue which reinforced ghetto stereotypes, for his own and other characters.

The Mr. Big persona persists when he meets Bond for a second time, before the character rips off his prosthetic face - and loses his vernacular accent and dialect at the same time.

His ‘true’ voice appears to be closer to Kananga’s but far more mannered, even effeminate. This new third persona leads me to believe that Dr. Kananga is just as much of a fabrication as Mr. Big. He repeatedly uses the elevated-sounding pronoun “one” to describe himself. When he threatens Bond with castration he refers to his genitals, euphemistically, as “more vital areas”. He is excessively polite when admiring Bond’s watch: “By the way, that's a particularly handsome watch you're wearing, Mr Bond. May I see it, please?”. Rhett Redelings finds the character “genteel” and “vaguely flirtatious” towards Bond in this scene. Furthermore, he notes that, from what Leiter says earlier in the film, Big is “a much bigger deal as a gangster than Kananga is as a sovereign, so he must spend a good bit of his life… acting a macho storm so he can pass as something he’s not in the underworld.”

Fittingly, Bond and Kananga/Big’s final encounter is in a literal underworld. Hidden away from the eyes of the world, Kananga/Big slips comfortably into the tradition of villains dating back as far as Dr. No, welcoming Bond into his lair with false bonhomie and the promise of a perfectly prepared alcoholic beverage. The character is almost always putting on a performance, either as the socially acceptable but dull Dr. Kananga or the more energised but socially unacceptable Mr Big. He can be both respectable Dr. Jekyll and disreputable Mr. Hyde, playing on ghetto stereotypes to mislead Bond (and the audience).

Although he’s physically threatening, would we take ghetto stereotype Mr. Big seriously as a Bond villain?

In a 2018 article, sociologist Elijah Anderson observed that:

“a black person’s deficit of credibility… may be minimized or tentatively overcome by a performance… or what some black people derisively refer to as a “dance”, through which individual black people may be required to show that the ghetto stereotypes do not apply to them: in effect, they perform to be accepted. This performance can be as deliberate as dressing well and speaking in an educated way.”

As I noted above, we should not - without significant caveats - equate the experiences of someone from one marginalised group with another. Nevertheless, Kananga’s/Big’s experiences could be seen by some as analogous to those of a queer person in search of their true self, vaciliating between two distinct performances, before producing a third. In Kananga’s/Big’s case, he’s doing whatever it takes to turn a profit. His plan to monopolise the drugs trade hinges on him creating a product that appeals to the widest possible customer base: “When entering into a fiercely competitive field, one finds it advisable to give away free samples. Man or woman, black or white. I don't discriminate.”

For me, neither the name Dr. Kananga nor Mr. Big are appropriate for the character. He’s prepared to be whoever he needs to be to fit into whatever society needs him to be.

You go gurls!

“For the first time in my life, I feel like a complete woman.” - Solitaire

Female virginity has held supernatural qualities in fictional works since before Shakespeare’s time. This probably has its roots in the commodification of a woman’s virginity in patriarchal societies, and not just in Judaeo-Christian cultures. Virginity arguably means something very different for many queer people, especially those who do not intend to ever have vaginal intercourse involving a penis. Research on queer conceptions of virginity is thin on the ground but a consensus seems to be that coming out is a more significant right of passage than first sexual encounters.

Perhaps then, queer viewers might see Solitaire’s transformation from sorceress into, to use her words, “a complete woman” as a parallel to coming out.

Unlike with Samedi’s supernatural abilities, the film permits us to be sceptical of Solitaire’s. If we are inclined to do so, we can write off her apparent accuracy in the early part of the film as coincidence, or a fortunate interpretation of the cards.

Nevertheless, it is real to her - indeed, it’s the thing that defines her.

After Bond has tricked Solitaire into bed with him, she feels an acute sense of loss. Indeed, in this one scene she goes through at least four of the five stages of the model put forward by Carol A. Thompson:

Accept the reality of the loss of heterosexual identity and its privileges (“So it’s finally happened… I cannot see.”)
Acknowledge specifics of the loss and look for ways to “fit in” (“The power… I’ve lost it. The High Priestess is wife to the Prince no longer of this world. It was my fate. By compelling myself to earthly love, the cards themselves have taken away my powers.”)
To feel the pain of the loss and to grieve (“The physical violation cannot be undone.”)
To adjust to life as a lesbian (“Is there time before we leave for lesson number three?”)
To integrate lesbian life into the lesbian community and wider society

Of course, Thompson is writing specifically about lesbians and the scripting of Solitaire is playing up to a heterosexual male fantasy of turning an ice queen into a nymphomaniac.

Completely unrealistically, Solitaire goes from feeling like she’s hit rock bottom to beckoning Bond back to bed. But the psychological process is mostly there, albeit telegraphed into a few minutes. In real life, it can take years to “adjust to life” following coming out. I can certainly relate to this as a gay man who, when I came out, felt that at least part of my pre-coming out self had died, and I know I’m not the only one to experience this.

The good news for Solitaire is that she has Bond to confide in. Although, could this be a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire? When Bond bundles her onto Quarrel Jr.’s boat after they have escaped San Monique the first time, he refers to her as a “valuable piece of merchandise”. Although she’s no longer a virgin, she’s still being commodified by men. She has been redefined as a sexual object. Indeed, as soon as she loses her maidenhood, Solitaire does very little besides get kidnapped, get tied up and crave sex from Bond. She loses her agency along with her power. Is this because of (to use the term favoured by the Roger Moore’s Cubby Hole podcast team) his ‘magic penis’? James Bond’s penis has excited considerable academic attention) because she’s the damaging stereotype of the queer person who, once they’ve had their first taste of sex, can’t get enough? Like a lot of queer people, she is cannot get away from being defined by sexuality, even though she’d probably much rather have a quiet night in playing gin rummy.

In the novel of Live and Let Die, Fleming gave Solitaire the white face of a “daughter of a French Colonial slave owner” but the film’s director, Guy Hamilton, was adamant that Roger Moore’s principal Bond girl would be black. Unfortunately, the United Artists executives were more concerned about the financial impact such a move would have. The move robbed us of gay icon Diana Ross potentially being cast as Solitaire, but at least it gave us the wonderfully complex Rosie Carver as played by Gloria Hendry, who checks herself into the San Monique hotel as “Mrs Bond”.

‘Interracial marriage’ had only become possible in the United States in 1967, just six years before the release of Live and Let Die. When Richard (white) and Mildred Loving (black, in the eyes of the law at least) took their case to the Supreme Court, the federal laws prohibiting ‘miscegenation’ were overturned. But, as we have seen with same sex marriage in some parts of the world, public attitudes lag behind changes in legislature, as do representations in popular media.

Miscegenation (a vile term!) had been explicitly outlawed on American cinema screens since 1934, when the Hays Code came into force. The Code was the outcome of the movie industry having to take action before the government started banning what they saw as morally corrupting film productions. Depictions of crime and violence were prohibited and movies became a lot tamer. But nothing was self-censored as much as sex. In this section, two bullet points above ‘miscegenation’, is listed ‘sex perversion’, a euphemism which incorporated homosexuality and characters in non-normative gender roles. Miscegenation and queerness were both taboo subjects for cinema. In the view of genealogical scholar Cedric Essi, both pose “a breach in the continuum of American family”.

Although it might not seem like it today, the scenes where Bond kisses and has extramarital sex with Rosie Carver were pretty taboo-breaking in some parts of the world. Carver’s character is a double agent. She’s caught between a rock (Kananga/Mr. Big) and a hard place (Bond). Her duplicity may be read as racist (you can’t trust the black character, who can be disposed of, but you can trust the white girl, Solitaire). But even after Bond confronts her with the truth (forcing her to come out in a sense) we nevertheless feel a great deal of sympathy for her, and Bond does too. We know the character could quite easily shoot her in the back as she runs away but, despite his claims to the contrary seconds before, we know he won’t.

Rosie is associated with the tarot card the Queen of Cups in an inverted position which, as the film tells us, signals she is “a deceitful, perverse woman. A liar, a cheat.” While this reading is consistent with readings in the tarot community, some queer tarot readers identify closely with the Queen of Cups, at least when placed the correct way up. Many queer variant decks of tarot cards exist.

We never discover who delivers the inverted Queen of Cups card to Bond, to warn him of Rosie’s deceitful nature, but we presume it’s Solitaire. Or is it Samedi, manipulating events unseen?

Nevertheless, her death clears the way for Bond to tame Solitaire, who is positioned as the ‘keeper’ of the two women very quickly. Bond even invokes the marriage vows from the Christian Book of Common Prayer (“til death do us part”) as his second “lovers’ lesson”, signifying to the audience that the Voodoo priestess has been converted, as much by his world view as his sexual prowess.

Camp (as Dr. Christmas Jones)

There are a lot of snakes in this film. In Voodoo, snakes have extremely positive connotations. Pythons, for instance, are symbols of strength and the loa of fertility is often portrayed as a big white serpent (and here represented by dancer Michael Ebbin, see below).

Far from being feared in Voodoo, snakes are revered. Live and Let Die, therefore, plays off the associations In Judaeo-Christian cultures, where snakes connote sexual sin and/or death.

Perhaps both sets of associations, positive in Voodoo and negative in Christianity, are at least partly due to snakes’ inherently phallic shape. It all depends on how you see a penis!

And what of queerness? Recent scholarship has shown that snakes, like many animals, exhibit behaviours we would term ‘queer’ in human beings. And one assumes early Christians were more than capable of watching snakes have sex, which is, by all accounts, ‘peculiar’.

Baines’ death in the pre-titles is consistent with these two thousand year old Christian fears - he’s killed by a snake at the ‘climax’ of an orgiastic dance, a bastardisation of a traditional Voodoo ritual. In a white dress, Solitaire almost suffers the same fate - another threat to her ‘purity’.

Hardly pure as far as heterosexual sex is concerned, Bond himself faces off against a snake in his hotel room. Interestingly, he’s naked in the bath and facing away from the snake as it slithers down, disguised behind the shower hose. And then is creeps across the carpet, aiming for a spot between his legs…

The scene play on fears of male rape. He kills the phallically shaped snake with gratuitous violence, burning it to death by lighting his aerosol using a cigar (a conventional masculine symbol). Ironically, the snake species used in this scene and elsewhere in the film were not poisonous. Gay panic indeed. The scariest thing about this scene is the massive burn mark Bond leaves on the hotel carpet. I hope he left the hoteliers an equally massive tip.

Live and Let Die is not the only Roger Moore Bond film where a wedding is destroyed for comic effect. The power boat takes impressive aim at that wedding cake (symbol of heteronormativity), almost as precisely as Bond falling through the roof of that boat in A View To A Kill.

There are a number of Hot Bond boys with bit parts, including several of Mr Big’s impeccably-tailored goons, the young police officer who gets on the receiving end of most of Sheriff Pepper’s ire and the personification of the Voodoo loa Dambala, played by dancer Michael Ebbin, who appears practically naked and waving a big snake around.

The title song is a marvellously concise tale of someone’s innonence being tainted by harsh reality before finding self-acceptance. A coming out story in other words, ending on a glorious rallying call to not care what others think about you:

When you were young
And your heart was an open book
You used to say live and let live
You know you did

You know you did
You know you did
But if this ever changin'
In which we live in

Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die
Live and let die

There’s a very smutty cut early on in the film. Immediately after we leave Bond unzipping Miss Caruso’s clothing (“Sheer magnetism darling.”) we cut to Bond’s plane taking off before an extended cross-dissolve shows Solitaire predicting his movements. Her first words are “A man comes…”

The cards also have 007 on the back. Speaking of breaking the fourth wall…

The part of Live and Let Die which never fails to get a cheer in our house is when Bond loses the top of the double decker bus by taking it under a LOW BRIDGE. It’s not often you get to see most of your surname in a Bond film. Talk about feeling represented!

Verdict: 004 (out of 007)

The filmmakers delight in making Bond awkwardly navigate his way through spaces where being a part of the white, straight establishment is not an advantage. Will he escape and reassert the dominant culture? Well, yes. This is a Bond film after all. But just as we feel the heteronormative template about to snap shut around us like the jaws of an alligator, we cut to the grinning visage of a Voodoo spirit. Queerness might treated mostly metaphorically in this film, but, like Samedi: it doesn’t die, and lives on in our memories.

Queer re-view: Live and Let Die