"James Bond is a serial rapist."
"No, he's not. The women consented. He seduced them. Bond never raped anyone."
"I'm afraid you're wrong. You'll have to read the books again, with a more careful eye. It's not so much the text as the subtext you need to pay attention to."
"That's bullshit. You can read a book, looking to fulfill a particular theory, and you'll see what you expect to see. You're trying to turn James Bond into a rapist, and I'm not playing your game."
"In 'Casino Royale', Bond says something about the 'sweet tang of rape'. That hardly strikes me as subtle. It seems pretty blatant."
"The real question here is why you would want to think of Bond as a rapist. What sick psychological purpose does that theory serve for you? Why would you want to turn a hero into a villain? Are you threatened by his prowess, as a man, and a spy? Maybe you feel a resonance inside of you -- you want to be like him. You want to gamble, kill bad guys, and fuck beautiful women. Terrified by your desires, you try to turn him into a rapist. Is that your game?"
"It's no game. Or, that is, it's only a game in so much as it's about analyzing a text for its deeper meaning. The meaning which is entirely there, if you're willing to see it."
"Oh, you're sick. You're fucked up. First it's Bond the rapist, then what? Cookie Monster, the compulsive eater, binging to escape the knowledge he's a monster?"
"That is a valid interpretation of Cookie Monster. Why else would he eat so much?If he is a monster, of some sort, it only makes sense that he..."
"Stop. Just stop. Bond is not a rapist, okay? He just likes to fuck. It's his thing. Cookie Monster likes cookies. Bond likes to fuck. He's a spy. He doesn't get to settle down. He's sent on missions. Okay?"
"Nothing happens without a reason, a purpose. Even in works of fiction. Ian Fleming wrote Bond as sex obsessed. A rapist. We can either examine Bond on his own terms, or look at Bond as a cultural product and ask what he does for our culture. Or we can look at Ian Fleming and ask what aspect of his own psyche is served by a serial rapist with a license to kill."
"Or we can look at Cookie Monster and speculate what trauma lead him to become a binge eater. Was he raped? Is he brain damaged due to some kind of head trauma or assault? That would certainly explain his broken speech patterns. Me like cookie. Me love cookie. Me rape cookie, because me like James Bond."
"You're mocking me, but you really could interpret Cookie Monster that way. Seriously. The thing about fiction is that you can always take it further. As long as it's consistent and the story fits, it's valid. Bert and Ernie could be gay. Why not?"
"And James Bond is a serial rapist?"
"Couldn't it fit the facts we have?"
"I guess. But it pissed me off. It takes a symbol of masculine power and perverts it, makes it evil. There are fewer and fewer positive role models as time goes on. Fewer heroes. Everything becomes jaded and cynical and negative. You're trying to do that to Bond."
"You have a point there. Rewriting fiction is often about taking positives and turning them negative. Revealing opposites. That's why people add porn to Harry Potter and Star Trek. They want to see what never gets shown. So they take the story there. The hero becomes the villain."
"Do you think James Bond would rape the Cookie monster?"
"I would."
"Me too."
