Page - 133 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

part Bond films have sequences and plots that are implausible, but in them everything takes place in the natural world. In addition to the Samedi episode, perhaps the closest moment to a break with realism appears when Bond is able to feign a cardiac arrest in Die Another Day – something that is left unexplained in the film. In comparison with relatively similar adventure films such as the In- diana Jones series (Steven Spielberg, US 1981–2008), Bond films take place in a much more naturalized framework.52 Voodoo, tarot and other supernatural settings are reserved for the villains and/or superstitious non-moderns locat- ed outside “the West”, thus contributing to the construction of the difference between rational (predominantly white) moderns and non-rational “religious” others.53 The exception to this rule is a certain kind of Christianity. WRONG AND RIGHT KINDS OF “RELIGIOSITY” IN THE WEST: EVANGELICALISM AND CONFINED CHRISTIANITY I have suggested that “religion” is much more prominent in Bond films when the events take place outside “the West”. Thus in Goldfinger, which takes place in Europe and the United States, “religion” is reduced to Bond’s comment made after Goldfinger has died that the villain is playing his golden harp. How- ever, “religion” is not fully absent from the West: it is present in both “wrong” and “right” ways. In Licence to Kill “religion” is present in the United States, but in the “wrong” way. The villain sets the prices for drugs through his employee Profes- sor Joe Butcher, who operates as a televangelist preacher. While seeking pledg- es on television, he also sets prices for drugs. His preaching is largely a front for the illegal drug business. The portrayal of fake “religiosity” is enhanced by Butcher’s running the Olympatec Meditation Institute as a cover for the drug trade. In addition, in one scene Professor Joe shows his own private meditation chamber, constructed from the sacred rocks, to a woman; it is clearly a place of seduction.54 Through these depictions, the film frames evangelical Christianity as hypocritical and laughable and strips it of all sincerity. This is the only substan- tial description of evangelicalism in the history of Bond films, and it suggests that there is little to appreciate in this kind of “religiosity”. It is the wrong kind of Christianity as it emphasizes intense emotions and experiences (as opposed to rational reflection), requires personal conversion (as opposed to taking “reli- 52 Black 2005, 177. 53 There is a long history of juxtaposing “our” approved lifestyle with voodoo in American cinema (Weisenfeld 2007). The key difference is that the elevated side of the binary used to be explicitly Christianity, rather than “our” modern and rational lifestyle (that can be Christian at least implicitly), but racial difference applies to both binaries. 54 See Black 2005, 155. Reading Bond Films through the Lens of “Religion” | 133www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 119–139