I haven’t found time to get to the cinema to watch the latest James Bond film No Time to Die so I have been listening to the Art critics on their podcasts assess the film.
Bond films have developed into milestones marking the length of our lives. Each one is set in a slightly different cultural period, and mirrors the cultural changes. The latest Bond persona, and for Daniel Craig the last, has moved a long way from the hard-drinking ruthless womanising glamour-spy of previous decades. We were warned by all the social critics that this is a Bond for these times.
Of course, these times have a short shelf life. It’s six years since the previous Bond film was released, and cultural expectations of what is allowed or frowned upon have moved fast in that time. Today’s Bond is more sensitive, more tortured, more self-aware.
Without wanting to spoil the plot for anyone who has not seen the film yet, he may, or may not, turn out to be the last James Bond. The more progressive critics are asking whether or not it is time for a colour-blind casting of Jane Bond, but that has to be resolved by the world of cinema. No doubt there will have been some even more exotic and far-reaching cultural changes by the time of the next instalment. The studio had to choose between hard core Bond culture and audience numbers. It decided to water down the sex scenes, reduce the gratuitous violence, and clean up much of the asterisked language in order to obtain a 12A rating.
In a film with a U rating, the guidance warns parents that “God, Jesus Christ, damn and hell” are likely to appear. The British Board of Film Censors wrote: “We know that some people find these words particularly offensive”
In a film with a U rating, the guidance warns parents that “God, Jesus Christ, damn and hell” are likely to appear. The British Board of Film Censors wrote: “We know that some people find these words particularly offensive” they comment, “but our research shows us that the majority of parents are comfortable with their children hearing them in U rated films.”
It’s no bad thing perhaps that the Bond franchise has smoothed out some of the more offensive and abrasive elements of bad-boy Bond, but it’s sad that blasphemy is exempt. The Bible takes blasphemy very seriously. So does Catholic tradition, which echoes the anxiety over the preserving respect for the holiness of the name.
In 1843 a Carmelite nun called Sister Marie de St Pierre, reported having visions of Jesus in Tours, where St Martin had been based to such powerful effect. Jesus appeared to her to ask her to lead a movement of reparation for blasphemy against and in praise of the holy name of God. He taught her the use of this prayer:
“May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable,
most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God
be forever praised, blessed, loved, adored
and glorified in Heaven, on earth,
and under the earth,
by all the creatures of God,
and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ,
in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Amen.”
It’s always been difficult to know how to react when a friend, colleague or mouthy stranger takes a deep breath and spits out a curse using the name of Jesus. It seems so prissy to cough, shuffle one’s feet and say in deep embarrassment “look do you mind old chap?” And we can never quite decide if is better or worse just to flinch inside, and hide behind a cool public insouciance.
At this point, Sister Marie de Saint Pierre may come to our rescue. There is something rather attractive at the prospect of breaking the silence not with puritanical censure, but by instead adding a counterpoint, by bursting out with an equal focus and rather more cheerful enthusiasm “May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable….”
It is not in our religious DNA to send a cohort of Carmelite nuns to the local film studios to wave wimples in protest
But just because it is not in our religious DNA to send a cohort of Carmelite nuns to the local film studios to wave wimples in protest, Catholics are not bound to be completely supine in the face of distressing blasphemy.
I wonder what the film board censors might do if in cinemas around the country, in Bond films or more widely, each time the name of Jesus was used as an oath, Catholics in the audience quietly stood up in protest, crossed themselves and prayed quietly but firmly out loud: “
“May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable,
most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God
be forever praised… etc.”
If the Bond franchise can learn a few new tricks to further their own evolving public engagements, there is no reason by Catholics can’t do the same.
Gavin Ashenden is a former priest of the Church of England, and a former continuing Anglican bishop. He was an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen from 2008 until his resignation in 2017.
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