It’s been a few weeks since I watched the new James Bond film. I very much enjoyed it, both since it had been months since I had been in a cinema, and because it was a well-directed and enjoyable ride. A little bit of escapism during a year of lockdown has certainly been welcome. If you haven’t watched it, some light spoilers to follow!
I enjoyed the thoughtful way in which a more diverse and representative cast was chosen, whilst also ensuring that these individuals had a chance to express themselves and subvert some of the older tropes – particularly around the ‘bond girls’.
The sequence in Cuba gave Ana de Armas a great opportunity to give personality to her character and act more than just an add-on – no doubt a positive influence from bringing Fleabag writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge into the team. It made the whole section of the film feel fresher and more human then just another old-style shootout that we’ve seen many times before.
The casting of Lashana Lynch as ‘Nomi’ as a new ‘007’ was an interesting twist which highlighted a sense of changing of the guard. I certainly applaud the increase in diversity within the cast, and the fact that Nomi was able to demonstrate her Afro-Caribbean roots in real terms within the movie – indeed that is how she is introduced to us as the audience. It was seen as giving her value, as it helped her blend in and not raise suspicion – a benefit to having an ethnic minority as a spy.
That said, having worked in Government I couldn’t help the niggling feeling of how this might give an unrealistic expectation of how inclusive the UK Government and the Secret Service is. Now I know this is a fictional plot, and that in reality spies don’t go around in high stakes missions shooting up the place every day. Indeed, I remember watching with a slightly furrowed brow that Vesper was supposedly an HM Treasury official heading off to an espionage mission in Casino Royale. I’m not sure I was aware of any espionage missions from colleagues at my time in HMT, but then again I was an intern, so perhaps they didn’t tell me about that stuff?
One area that was not meant to be fictitious was the idea that a black woman would make it as a young, ambitious individual into a senior position of responsibility and gaining a key role as 007. And whilst I can’t say for definite that this is not the case – I don’t have exclusive access to personal information about those who work in the secret service – what I can say is that the UK government still a long time away to reaching the utopian space where a black woman would be able to genuinely reach senior positions without barriers to progression, particularly at a young age.
My experience in Government demonstrated that the older, less transparent parts were the most lagging in diversity and inclusion. For example, I worked in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (again as an intern) and was struck by how differently it was run compared to other Government departments. The big rooms with old statutes gave an uncomfortable feeling of colonial pride, which felt odd as an ethnic minority. Hierarchies were firm, and open and inclusive ways of working were far less advanced. This was ‘just how things were’, and since it was the Foreign Office, the rules needed to be different.
For those of us who have worked in the space of Diversity and Inclusion, one of our main measures to drive change was an open, transparent approach to the issues, using things like representation statistics of individuals within the organisation, staff surveys and public perceptions of the organisation as a means to drive positive change. Without these levers, it is tough to move a big organisation (including those in Government) to drive any real change. So for the Secret Service, an organisation which is based in secrecy, this feels an extremely uphill battle.
There are also the practical points. For example, the highest UK security clearance in the UK requires extensive background checks on family members, including distant relatives. For those of us from ethnic minority backgrounds, we are far less likely to be able to track our full family history due to the movement across countries and continents. And even when we can, it doesn’t help that many of us having relatives in ‘suspicious’ countries which plays a part. On the one hand, an extensive background check makes sense, though on the other hand I have no doubt it would particularly penalise ethnic minority individuals. And to be clear, failing these checks would mean you cannot work in these posts. There may be some way this penalty could be mitigated, but I am not convinced this has been properly explored as of yet.
I have heard that the way that the Secret Service in the UK used to recruit was quite literally a tap on the shoulder of certain individuals from Oxford and Cambridge who seemed the ‘right sort’. Now naturally things have moved on with a more open recruitment process, but these stories have an effect of what is seen as the ‘right sort’ and how the culture of the organisation plays out in practice. If you were to be a young, black woman growing up in inner city London, what are the chances that you would seriously consider working in the secret service? My guess would be that you would probably not even think that they would want someone like you, and it could be that this is the case.
So I leave with some mixed feelings around the representation of a black woman as the new ‘007’ in the film. On the one hand, representation in films is critical, and can actually do wonders in inspiring those young black women to think about such a career. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel the film gives a false narrative of how truly inclusive we are of ethnic minorities in the workplace in Government, and how far we still have to go.