Why are Anglo-American cultural offerings like James Bond so seductive?

The new Bond is almost upon us. The publicity drive has picked up pace ahead of the launch of No Time to Die on 30 September. Daniel Craig has given his farewell speech to the crew as he says he won’t be doing Bond again, and declared that Bond should not be played by a woman.

A posse of royals, including Prince Charles, Camilla, William and Kate, are going to the premiere – and as a symbol of these times, the film has been billed as the most “woke” Bond ever by Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond novels.

It is all good stuff. And it needs to be. The launch has been delayed for 18 months and since it has cost upwards of $300m to make, apparently it needs to earn $900m just to break even. The entertainment industry is big business.

So there is a commercial story here, but even more importantly, there is also a cultural one. The commercial story is that the creative industries earn a lot of money for the UK, and indeed for UK actors such as Daniel Craig, who is estimated to be worth about £120m.

For the creative industries as a whole, not just films, total added value was estimated by the government to be £32bn in 2018. That is big, but you have to see it in the context of an economy that generated £2,142bn that year.

But the more extraordinary story is the cultural one, where the UK is the key partner to the US in an Anglophone enterprise. In 2019, the last normal year before the pandemic struck, UK films accounted for 36 per cent of the US market, while US films were half the UK market. No one else was in the game. India accounted for 1.2 per cent of revenues, Europe 1.1 per cent, and the rest of the world 0.5 per cent.

By contrast, the UK and US export a lot of films and TV shows to Europe. This is resented. While the UK was part of the EU there was not much that could be done about it, but now there is a push to try to cut down British exports. Whether it is a great idea for any country to try to limit its citizens’ access to the intellectual output of other nations, or whether it is actually possible unless you adopt the Chinese approach of blocking the airwaves, is another matter.

But the resentment is understandable. If your people spend their time watching English-language stuff, to some extent at least they will absorb the cultural values of the Anglosphere. The US in particular spreads its values through the entertainment industry.

Of course it is not entirely a one-way street. It was a Dutch company, Endemol, who created the “Big Brother” concept, though it would be a stretch to suggest that reality shows are exporting the cultural values of the Netherlands – indeed, rather the reverse. But the days when young Brits swooned over the nouvelle vague French films of the 1960s are long gone.

So is Bond exporting US/UK cultural values? Well yes, in the sense that the cars are Aston Martins, and that Craig is British. The characterisation has progressed since Ian Fleming created Bond but there is still an Anglo-American ethos overlaying the action. If this is indeed the most woke Bond yet, that too is exporting a current dominant theme in US culture.

For a Briton all this seems normal. These are the films we watch. It seems normal that Harry Potter should have the global success it has had, even though it is set in a British (actually, Scottish) independent boarding school. It is fantasy, just as Bond, or Tolkien, or Game of Thrones is fantasy. But it is our fantasy. Viewed from Europe, let alone India or China, it must be a bit odd.

The big question, surely, is this. Why is Anglo-American culture so seductive? It must be partly language, because English is the most widely spoken language, with more than 1.5 billion people, of which a billion are non-native. It must also have something to do with the scale and excellence of the English-language entertainment industry, particularly Hollywood.

But there must be something more – something about the culture of the Anglosphere that appeals to the world. The UK is the junior partner in the relationship, but as the Bond franchise shows, a significant element of it. Enjoy the show.