“It wouldn’t pass muster now”: the ‘Bond girl’ who regrets her performance
No franchise is going to remain culturally relevant for an extended period of time by standing still, and that obligation to move with the times or get left behind has kept the James Bond gravy trail rolling since Sean Connery debuted in Dr No back in 1962.
The inevitable downside is that many of the earlier instalments exist as products of their time, carrying characters, themes, plot developments, and messages that haven’t aged well through a modern lens. One of the principal cases in point is You Only Live Twice, which took 007 on a detour to Japan.
Needless to say, the stereotypes and casual racism on display throughout the film don’t play in the modern day, and the people involved in the film are all too aware. Connery’s era may not have been defined by its flagrant sexism and misogyny because that was commonplace in mainstream cinema when he was under the tux, but it has ensured his tenure is the least likely to win over newcomers to Bond’s history based on those very reasons.
The actor disguising himself as a Japanese man during an undercover mission didn’t cause anyone to bat an eyelid when You Only Live Twice hit cinemas in 1967, and it’s excruciating six decades down the line. Tsai Chin was happy to sign on when the part of Ling was offered her way, but she didn’t look back too fondly on her experience with the benefit of hindsight.
Spending three days on set sharing a bed with Connery, the suave secret agent asks her, “Why do Chinese girls taste so different from the others?” before comparing the differences to how “Peking duck is different from Russian caviar.” Ling responds by saying “I give you the very best duck,” and the cringe is palpable.
“It wouldn’t pass muster now, thank god,” Chin admitted to The Guardian. “Then, Asian women were especially stereotyped.” She was appreciative that being a Bond girl increased her visibility in the industry, but the actor bristles at everybody asking the same question, which had nothing to do with the profession at all.
“People nowadays are so impressed that I was a Bond girl,” she reflected. “So I might as well go along with it. People also ask me what it was like being in bed with Sean Connery. I said, ‘Fine.'” Chin was hardly the first or last female star to go on record voicing their disapproval of their contributions to 007’s ongoing adventures, but You Only Live Twice, in general, has evolved into a beacon of bad taste.
Of course, criticising a film made in the ’60s for failing to stand up to scrutiny in the 2020s is a blanket statement that can be applied to movies of any genre, with Bond just one of many offenders.
