Citizen Spy: Television, Espionage, And Cold War CultureU of Minnesota Press - 236 pages In Citizen Spy, Michael Kackman investigates how media depictions of the slick, smart, and resolute spy have been embedded in the American imagination. Looking at secret agents on television and the relationships among networks, producers, government bureaus, and the viewing public in the 1950s and 1960s, Kackman explores how Americans see themselves in times of political and cultural crisis. During the first decade of the Cold War, Hollywood developed such shows as I Led 3 Lives and Behind Closed Doors with the approval of federal intelligence agencies, even basing episodes on actual case files. These “documentary melodramas” were, Kackman argues, vehicles for the fledgling television industry to proclaim its loyalty to the government, and they came stocked with appeals to patriotism and anti-Communist vigilance. As the rigid cultural logic of the Red Scare began to collapse, spy shows became more playful, self-referential, and even critical of the ideals professed in their own scripts. From parodies such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Get Smart to the more complicated global and political situations of I Spy and Mission: Impossible, Kackman situates espionage television within the tumultuous culture of the civil rights and women’s movements and the war in Vietnam. Yet, even as spy shows introduced African-American and female characters, they continued to reinforce racial and sexual stereotypes. Bringing these concerns to the political and cultural landscape of the twenty-first century, Kackman asserts that the roles of race and gender in national identity have become acutely contentious. Increasingly exclusive definitions of legitimate citizenship, heroism, and dissent have been evident through popular accounts of the Iraq war. Moving beyond a snapshot of television history, Citizen Spy provides a contemporary lens to analyze the nature—and implications—of American nationalism in practice. Michael Kackman is assistant professor in Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas, Austin. |
From inside the book
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Page xvii
... , that myth of agency is an impos- sible ideal , utterly unattainable , not only for the reader ( you don't ... you don't ... MAY 196 PRICE 75 Laquire : a special issue Esquire xvii Introduction: The Agent and the Nation.
... , that myth of agency is an impos- sible ideal , utterly unattainable , not only for the reader ( you don't ... you don't ... MAY 196 PRICE 75 Laquire : a special issue Esquire xvii Introduction: The Agent and the Nation.
Page xviii
... ideal citizen - subject . The spy was both the ultimate “ freeman ” and a symbol of the wrenching anonymity of life as a corporatized postwar American “ organi- zation man . ” The figure of the spy is an index of profound ...
... ideal citizen - subject . The spy was both the ultimate “ freeman ” and a symbol of the wrenching anonymity of life as a corporatized postwar American “ organi- zation man . ” The figure of the spy is an index of profound ...
Page xx
... ideal citizen emerges out of a mythic American past that legitimates and reinforces his authority . These programs ' combination of narrative and documentary realism , how- ever , wasn't always stable and coherent . The stylistic ...
... ideal citizen emerges out of a mythic American past that legitimates and reinforces his authority . These programs ' combination of narrative and documentary realism , how- ever , wasn't always stable and coherent . The stylistic ...
Page xxi
... ideal . Get Smart not only portrayed a bumbling agent , unable to live up to the national ideal ; the show was also one of the first public forums that registered a growing public dismay over the interventionist tactics of the CIA . The ...
... ideal . Get Smart not only portrayed a bumbling agent , unable to live up to the national ideal ; the show was also one of the first public forums that registered a growing public dismay over the interventionist tactics of the CIA . The ...
Page xxii
... ideal national citizen . In I Spy ( NBC , – ) , this ideal is reinvigo- rated by a turn toward cultural relevance , diffracting spy programs ' interroga- tion of agency onto ongoing cultural debates over African American ...
... ideal national citizen . In I Spy ( NBC , – ) , this ideal is reinvigo- rated by a turn toward cultural relevance , diffracting spy programs ' interroga- tion of agency onto ongoing cultural debates over African American ...
Contents
Homegrown Spies and the Red Scare | 1 |
2 I Led 3 Lives and the Agent of History | 26 |
3 The Irrelevant Expert and the Incredible Shrinking Spy | 49 |
4 Parody and the Limits of Agency | 73 |
African Americans and the CitizenSubject | 113 |
Mission Impossible and the International Other | 144 |
Spies Are Back | 176 |
Notes | 191 |
Index | 221 |
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Common terms and phrases
Ackerman Papers African American agency American national American spy audiences Batman Bruce Geller Called citizen citizenship civic civil rights movement Closed Doors Cold Cold War Communist conflict Cosby critical discourses domestic drama episode espionage espionage programs Farago federal fictional Folder Geller Papers gender Girl from U.N.C.L.E. global Harry Ackerman Herb Herbert Philbrick historical Hollywood Ibid ideal ideological Illya Impossible increasingly Led 3 Lives masculine Mission narrative national identity NBC Collection Newsweek norms official parody patriotism Philbrick political popular culture producers protagonist racial Ralph Cohn realism Red Scare representations Robert Vaughn Scotty Screen Gems script secret agent semidocumentary sexual show's SHSW Smart social Solo Soviet spies Sports Illustrated spy programs spy shows story studio subversion syndication television program tensions tion Treasury United University Press Vaughn Vietnam viewers World of Giants York Zacharias
Popular passages
Page xxii - From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe.
Page 77 - Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody's ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic.
Page 190 - Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and WJT Mitchell, ed., On Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
Page 21 - Nothing will ruin the country, if the people themselves will undertake its safety; and nothing can save it, if they leave that safety in any hands but their own.