Mexico City /
Put to imagine, imagine that you are at home hitting the key, and the visitor arrives. Good morning, sir – we are all gentlemen now – we are here to see if you are interested in writing the script for the new Bond film, James Bond. And we’re going to pay you some dough. So, interested in the pasta thing, you show them in, serve them a coffee, and sit down to discuss the terms of the matter. The truth is that I feel like it, you say, because I always really liked, both in the novels and in the movies, that touch of masculine cockiness, a trademark of the house and of the character, that Sean Connery –my favourite– and Pierce embodied so well Brosnan, even Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, but that seems to get lost in the most recent movies. Because in the last one, with the teddy bear and the tears and such, the friend Bond looks a little cute.
It’s what you say, more or less. And at that point you are annoyed that your visitors have exchanged a look of concern. Well -says one-, actually what it is about is precisely that. To adapt 007 to the current times. Do it more than now, more natural. Further trends. Hearing this, puzzled, you raise an objecting finger. Excuse me, you say, but the natural thing is that Bond is a murderer, a womanizer and a son of a bitch with an attic, a swimming pool and balconies overlooking the street, as the author envisioned him. A dangerous and tough guy, and that is what his followers, including myself for sixty years, are looking for in him. I explain?
I fear I have explained myself too well, as my interlocutors start in unison. I think, points out one – there are two, equal, man and woman -, that he does not capture the substance of the matter. It’s about taking James Bond apart and making it more affordable. Who? I ask. And the lady, or whatever it is called now, responds that the current public. to the new demands. For example? I ask again. To the destruction of heteropatriarchal clichés, is the answer. But it turns out that James Bond is like that, I reply. Ian Fleming, its author, conceived it as a heteropatriarchal cliché with a pistol and a plum tree always on the go. It’s Zero Zero Seven, bye. If not, it would be another: 003, 010 or 091. Why don’t you invent another secret agent instead of manipulating him and leave him alone, just as your readers and viewers like him to be?
Impossible, answers the man of the pair. The famous 007 is what people ask for. To that I reply that James Bond is famous for just what he is. But today’s society –replies the other– calls for new approaches: new wineskins for old wines. But that is neither wine nor is it anything, I oppose; it is watered down and tasteless, a fraud and a betrayal of character. But the kettle pretends that she doesn’t hear me. Even, she continues undaunted, we want the new James Bond, in the next film, to stop dressing smoking and other classist clothes, give up your love of gambling and casinos – your pernicious gambling, says the companion – travel in a non-polluting electric vehicle, have ecological concerns and stop killing and having sex.
I raise an adversarial hand. Let’s see, I say. Explain that to me. How can I stop killing and having sex? We are talking about Bond, James Bond. Killing people is his public professional activity and nibbling on gorgeous ladies is his private personal activity. It’s just that killing –says my male interlocutor– is a reprehensible act that degrades the character. And what about the wonderful ladies, he adds, a term that we consider sexist and misogynistic, is not advisable either. We want sex to disappear from the character, due to the connotations of aggression that its practice implies. And that the general concept is gender fluid, neither meat nor fish, nor sail nor steam. Something transversal, confirms the other: transposed, transitive, translational, transatlantic. Something, anything, that has the trans prefix. That is desirable, although we do not exclude the exciting possibility of a female James Bond: a Cera Cera Sieta. Or an elegetebeí man, rushes to apostille the other when he sees the face I put on. And if possible, point to his neighbor, an African-American of color. Or African American.
I stare at them for ten seconds while I digest that. In other words, I answer when I can speak again, a James Bond with a fluid personality, black, pacifist, environmentalist, gay, dressed by Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada and who rides a scooter? My interlocutors look at each other. That’s a very nasty way of summing it up, says one. Fascist even, adds the other as they get up. We are disappointed in you, Mr. Reverte. As it turns out, he’s not the right person.
