Abstract
In Dr. No, Ian Fleming’s 1958 novel, Cold War hero James Bond must defeat the Cold War villain Doctor No and his Jamaican Chinese henchmen, who Fleming calls “Chinese Negroes” or the “Chigroes.” This article examines the characterization of hybridity as a threat to British purity and empire represented in Doctor No, who is of German and Chinese ancestry, and his mixed-race African, Chinese minions. Set in Jamaica, the novel, the sixth of the James Bond series, provides a fascinating, intimate portrait of pre-independence Kingston and Afro-Asian intimacies. Though the representation of these Afro-Asian intimacies are largely erased from the 1962 film, Dr. No, the first of the major James Bond movies, race is coded in various Orientalist forms, including yellowface. In many ways, both the novel and the film can be viewed as responses to the crisis of decolonization for Britain. The Chigroes and Doctor No come to represent a Black and Yellow Peril perhaps triggered by the Afro-Asian coalitions that were beginning to form at conferences such as Bandung in 1955 that threatened to decenter Europe.
Highlights
Cover Page Acknowledgments Many thanks to Professor Anne-Marie Lee-Loy for editing this special issue of Anthurium on the Chinese in the Caribbean, and for her guidance and feedback
As Diana Fuss defines it, the process by which identity forms out of “the detour through the other that defines the self,” in the sixth novel of the James Bond series, Dr No, the Cold War hero takes a detour through Jamaica to define and restore his sense of identity and self
A “constant visitor,” Fleming spent a few months at Goldeneye every year from 1946 until he died in 1964, and it was there that James Bond was born
Summary
Tao Leigh (2015) "007 versus the Darker Races: The Black and Yellow Peril in Dr No," Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal: Vol 12 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. The role of Annabel Chung is played by a black woman – the reigning Miss Jamaica 1961, Marguerite LeWars, who is of African and European ancestry While it doesn’t appear that she is in yellowface like Zena Marshall, the white British actress who plays Miss Taro, LeWars wears a pink qipao, orientalizing her, signifying her association with Chineseness and Doctor No. The other significant Chinese female character, Miss Taro, is a secretary at King’s House, the government offices. It is telling that the women Chigroes are installed as insiders in powerful institutions of Jamaican society, the government and the press, while the male Chigroes such as the Three Blind Mice are trespassers There is yet another class of gendered and racialized workers inside Doctor No’s subterranean lair, represented by two Chinese women, Sister Lily and Sister Rose. Dr No is the journey, the detour, of Bond’s identification through the racial and sexual difference of the other so that he can assert his masculinity as a heteronormative English man and as a sex symbol
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