I am also dubious about "There in Fours" and would like to know if someone has a more solid reference for what Fours would mean. I hear "there in force" and assumed the spy was "head held high in uniform," standing at attention in a military unit, which would make a formidable force.
To those who ask "Why must you always make it a gay relationship?"...
Life is not simple. Life is not clean. The spy can be anyone you want, and anyone I want, and that's very powerful. So can the singer, though the voice is male.
Readers and viewers modify a story with their perceptions every time they look at it. Those of us who have an experience other than the cultural default are always looking for our own faces, to find stories about ourselves. This includes skin color, gender, relationship patterns, culture groups (how many shows can you name "the geek character"?) and a whole bunch of less obvious things. Sometimes if we can't find ourselves, we'll actually start making up versions where we are included; this leads to a lot of gay people humming love songs with reversed pronouns. This song saves us that trouble and makes it worth talking about.
I appreciate that the picture in the liner notes was of a man and a woman. That was my first take on the story, and it's a beautiful, glamorous thing. I see Natasha in an open-top car in the last stanza. Bare shoulders, a chunky bracelet, big sunglasses, dazzling smile that you know never reaches her eyes. A woman who buys secrets with her body. It's a classic.
But pretend we're in a lit crit class fifty years from now. We're not looking at the liner notes. All we have is the music itself, the lyrics as they were written, and the teacher says, "There are no gendered pronouns. When you think the spy is a woman, or when you think the spy is a man, how do you listen to it differently?"
If the spy is male, the story in my mind is darker, more illicit (due to taboos), and... potentially more honest. The singer is the same, a mid-level, mild-looking clerk in Washington DC who's minding his own business except for this one big secret.
The spy is a Russian version of James Bond from the books (Daniel Craig is pretty close), or Jack Harkness from Torchwood in one of his other lives as a military operative. A hard man, bleeding the charisma of competence. Maybe he snagged the clerk at a gay bar. Maybe he just spotted the desire and played it.
Do they love each other? Probably not. Do they have any illusions about it? Probably not. Is James Bond even into that? Probably not as a matter of routine, but he has nerve endings and some information to buy. He's a practical man.
Is the clerk helplessly, hopelessly smitten by the romance and drama of the whole thing? Oh yes.
@gement In the final singing of the chorus (at least in the live version), there is a male and female duet. It's the one right after he sings about meeting her at the embassy. That's a very solid reason to believe the lover is female.
@gement In the final singing of the chorus (at least in the live version), there is a male and female duet. It's the one right after he sings about meeting her at the embassy. That's a very solid reason to believe the lover is female.
I am also dubious about "There in Fours" and would like to know if someone has a more solid reference for what Fours would mean. I hear "there in force" and assumed the spy was "head held high in uniform," standing at attention in a military unit, which would make a formidable force.
To those who ask "Why must you always make it a gay relationship?"...
Life is not simple. Life is not clean. The spy can be anyone you want, and anyone I want, and that's very powerful. So can the singer, though the voice is male.
Readers and viewers modify a story with their perceptions every time they look at it. Those of us who have an experience other than the cultural default are always looking for our own faces, to find stories about ourselves. This includes skin color, gender, relationship patterns, culture groups (how many shows can you name "the geek character"?) and a whole bunch of less obvious things. Sometimes if we can't find ourselves, we'll actually start making up versions where we are included; this leads to a lot of gay people humming love songs with reversed pronouns. This song saves us that trouble and makes it worth talking about.
I appreciate that the picture in the liner notes was of a man and a woman. That was my first take on the story, and it's a beautiful, glamorous thing. I see Natasha in an open-top car in the last stanza. Bare shoulders, a chunky bracelet, big sunglasses, dazzling smile that you know never reaches her eyes. A woman who buys secrets with her body. It's a classic.
But pretend we're in a lit crit class fifty years from now. We're not looking at the liner notes. All we have is the music itself, the lyrics as they were written, and the teacher says, "There are no gendered pronouns. When you think the spy is a woman, or when you think the spy is a man, how do you listen to it differently?"
If the spy is male, the story in my mind is darker, more illicit (due to taboos), and... potentially more honest. The singer is the same, a mid-level, mild-looking clerk in Washington DC who's minding his own business except for this one big secret.
The spy is a Russian version of James Bond from the books (Daniel Craig is pretty close), or Jack Harkness from Torchwood in one of his other lives as a military operative. A hard man, bleeding the charisma of competence. Maybe he snagged the clerk at a gay bar. Maybe he just spotted the desire and played it.
Do they love each other? Probably not. Do they have any illusions about it? Probably not. Is James Bond even into that? Probably not as a matter of routine, but he has nerve endings and some information to buy. He's a practical man.
Is the clerk helplessly, hopelessly smitten by the romance and drama of the whole thing? Oh yes.
@gement In the final singing of the chorus (at least in the live version), there is a male and female duet. It's the one right after he sings about meeting her at the embassy. That's a very solid reason to believe the lover is female.
@gement In the final singing of the chorus (at least in the live version), there is a male and female duet. It's the one right after he sings about meeting her at the embassy. That's a very solid reason to believe the lover is female.