Cleopatra Jones: Black, Beautiful, and Bond
Cleopatra Jones was released well along in the blaxploitation cycle and therefore displayed most elements of previous blaxploitation films. The film revolves around the character of Cleopatra Jones, a "special agent" for the United States government.

The film has Cleo globetrotting to Turkey where she oversees the destruction of large poppy fields controlled by the lesbian drug lord, Mommy (played by Shelly Winters). Mommy becomes outraged and enacts revenge against Cleo by having the police bust a drug rehab center run by Cleo's boyfriend. Cleo continues to get into Mommy's business and Mommy keeps on trying to have Cleo killed. The film ends with a typical brawl of good versus evil with Cleo dispatching Mommy and her agents.

Cleopatra Jones View an animated GIF from Cleopatra Jones (32 frames, 245KB).

In odd ways, Cleo's outrageous outfits are also analogous with Bond's dinner jackets and playboy wardrobe. Cleo's three foot hat brims and flowing fur robes are treated with respect and awe within the film, just as Bond's refinements are looked upon as the height of good taste. Also, both their wardrobes connote each one's sexuality but to different degrees. While Bond is often decked out in refined clothing that connotes his English-ness and power as man, Cleo's clothes connote her as sexually available through their fetishistic qualities. Her frequent use of fur also links her sexuality to black misrepresentations of animality.³

Cleopatra Jones and The Casino of Gold is another excellent example of the influence of Bond on the spy thriller. Here, Cleo has been sent to locate two black government agents who were posing as heroin buyers in Hong Kong. They contact an Asian drug lord named Chen, who is trying to take over the Hong Kong drug trade from Mr. Big, who turns out to be Ms. Big, a white lesbian drug lord named the Dragon Lady. The Dragon Lady busts up the drug deal and kills Chen who has betrayed her. She then takes the two agents captive until she can verify their credentials as actual drug smugglers. She houses them in her casino where they are pampered in luxury by her Asian sexual slaves, who also turn out to be her adopted daughters. This fact doesn't prevent the Dragon Lady from incestuous lesbian love scenes however. Cleo escapes from several traps set for her by the Dragon lady and she eventually pays a visit to the Dragon Lady's casino, where she rescues the two agents and kills the villain.

The Casino of Gold reflects its Bond influence in several ways. The character of the Dragon Lady is also known as Mr. Big. The male title calls to attention her lesbianism but it also resonates with the villain in both the novel and film of Live and Let Die. The title itself recalls two words often associated with Bond. Gold is used throughout Bond as a recurring factor (Goldfinger, The Man with the Golden Gun, Goldeneye.) Oddly, gold plays no part in The Casino of Gold's narrative. Of course casinos appear with regularity in most Bond films (including the first Bond novel, Casino Royale). In Bond, the gambling table serves to demonstrate 007's superior wit, refinement and luck. In The Casino of Gold similar elements can be attributed to Cleo, however an intertext with other blaxploitation films complicates matters. Gambling is used throughout black films as part of "the life." When Cleo sits down at the gambling table, she not only recalls Bond, but also the craps games so prevalent in other blaxploitation films. This serves not only to align Cleo with Bond, but also keeps her firmly rooted in the tradition of blaxploitation characterizations. By being aligned with Bond she is also aligned with his whiteness. The intertextual element of gambling, along with mis-perceptions of black animality and Cleo's firm rooting in blaxploitation characterizations, keeps her aligned with blackness, and specifically blackness as seen in blaxploitation.

The importance of Cleo being separated from Bond lies in the area of co-optation itself. Cleo is not simply a black James Bond. While the Cleopatra Jones films have co-opted Bond, they avoid a total fusion of her character with that of Bond. As will become evident after the discussion of Live and Let Die, the co-optation in the Cleo films is not just a simple borrowing of tropes, it is also a critique of Bond ideology. Of the Bond films of the 1960s, Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott have posited:

Drawing together and working upon a series of ideological tensions in relation to the nation, gender and the Cold War, they operated both to shift and stabilize subject identities at a time when existing ideological constructions had been placed in doubt and jeopardy, when, if you like, the articulating principles of hegemony were in disarray and alternatives had not been successfully established. (280)