James Bond & Miss Moneypenny
Growing up with T.V. and film has meant that I have often romanticized my life and the relationships I’ve had with other people. This was particularly true in my teens when I would draw parallels between relationships and situations I had with the people around me, in particularromantic ones with girls, to characters and situations from T.V. shows and film. I guess I did this because it somehow gave my relationships some sort of relevance and meaning. Itwas an unconscious effort to ‘romanticize’ my very normal and boring life.
Thinking on this I today I considered a relationship I have with a particular girl I know and tried to draw a parallel between our relations and a relationship or situation from T.V. and film. The closest I could get was the relationship between James Bond and Miss Moneypenny.
I’m Miss Moneypenny.
People have often commented on the romantic tension between James Bond and his work colleague Miss Moneypenny, but I think it’s clear that Moneypenny is smitten with James but for him it’s just flirtation. For whatever reason he appears to have no inclination to sleep with her. She doesn’t possess the qualities that James looks for in a woman, which in his case is good looks because James Bond is shallow (not saying that in my case I’m no good because looks is a factor —I’m just talking about James). So as a friend and work colleague he flirts with her because it’s fun and they both enjoy the attention they get from the other (or is that just in my situation with this girl?). Or maybe James is an even bigger pig than we realise and she’s like a B-plan for him; something he saves for a rainy day when perhaps his charm and his looks aren’t working for him anymore.
But then again I think I’ve got Moneypenny all wrong. I think Miss Moneypenny is smarter than we give her credit for and has known James long enough to know that he’ll sleep with almost anyone, because to him each woman is nothing more than a conquest. Once he’s had his way with a woman he casts them aside and looks towards the next one. Miss Moneypenny has no intention of being one of James’s conquests so instead she’ll play the flirt game with him and lead him along. She’ll turn herself into the ultimate ‘lay’ that he’ll never have.
If that’s the case then I’m not Miss Moneypenny at all and the girl in my life is not James Bond. In fact, trying to create an analogous relationship between my life and the life of an M.I.6 super-spy and his boss’s secretary, or any other fictional relationship or situation from TV and film, is a very childish and ultimately meaningless thing to do, because in the end it brings no extra meaning to my relationship with the Girl. If anything, comparing the complexities of real life to the far more simple fictional realities offered to us by film and television cheapens real life relationships.
