It is the incessant action or combination of mystery and intrigue ? Are the car chases of Aston Martin, always on some scenic route? The exotic places ? The beautiful ones love interests culminating in a hot encounter? Or are they just the British accents ?
Whatever, There’s something about spy movies that we just can’t resist. . Since the genre’s inception, espionage has dominated both the big and small screens, from long-running franchises like James Bond until new efforts like the series “Kingsman” or the subversive “The 355 Agents” .
On TV, the success of programs like “Homeland” , “The Americans” and the new “Slow Horses” — which begins its fourth season on Wednesday (4) on Apple TV+ — highlights our collective fascination with espionage narratives.
Even in an age where genre films have all but disappeared in favor of endless remakes and sequels, where TV shows are often canceled shortly after airing, spy stories still captivate our imaginations and studio pocketbooks.
But the genre is more than just flashy gimmicks led by a stylish protagonist. The ubiquity of these stories reveals something deeper, not just about our world, but about ourselves.
Spy stories appeal to our anxieties
As a genre, espionage first emerged from literature, where spy novels and fiction flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries along with the rise of globalization and imperial power, said film historian Samhita Sunya. An early example is Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel “Kim,” which follows an Irish boy living in India during British rule who eventually becomes a spy.
The book is an early indication of what spy novels, and later the spy genre as a whole, became: portraits of larger geopolitical fears. The genre reached its peak during the Cold War era, Sunya said, amid concerns of a nuclear catastrophe between the United States and the former USSR.
As these tensions play out on the global stage, they also play out in popular media. “Dr. No,” the first James Bond film, released in 1962, is a prime example. The titular Dr. No, part of the international terrorist group SPECTRE, is a half-Chinese, half-German nuclear scientist who is eventually defeated by Bond.
“It was almost like maintaining this balance of power, and this fear of third parties also going nuclear,” Sunya said. “And that included stateless organizations as well as anxiety about China becoming a nuclear power.”
Now, we’re experiencing another peak in the espionage genre, Sunya said. In a world of artificial intelligence and the threat of disease in the wake of a global pandemic, similar anxieties are surfacing again — and finding their way into spy fiction.
“Mission: Impossible — Reckoning Part One” and last year’s “Fortune” exemplify these modern fears. In both films, saving the world means defeating a corrupt AI or preventing an AI tool from being used for evil.
These films came out during a year dominated by AI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared before a Senate panel calling for greater government regulation of the controversial technology, and the Biden administration issued an executive order aimed at addressing the associated risks.
These perplexing anxieties, in real life and in the media, feed off each other. The lines between fiction and reality can begin to blur.
“You see it in art forms like film and TV, or books. It makes people more interested in these narratives. And then they hear in the media, or from government sources, that there is a real risk as well,” said Julia Tatiana Bailey, an art historian and curator at the Rudolfinum Gallery in Prague. “It just fuels this paranoia.”
Spy stories have mass appeal
Spy fiction isn’t just about sociopolitical subtext. These films became blockbusters for a reason. They’re global escapes — witness Italy’s grand Amalfi Coast and the hustle and bustle of Mumbai, India, in Christopher Nolan’s 2020 spy thriller “Tenet.”
Or indulge in the visual feast that is Daniel Craig walking the streets of Mexico City during a Day of the Dead parade in 2015’s “Spectre” — a four-minute scene that has alone racked up nearly 4 million views on YouTube. In 1996’s “Mission: Impossible,” some of the film’s most dramatic moments are set against the backdrop of the cobblestone streets of Prague, Czech Republic.
Of course, there are also the gadgets, the cars, the sex, even the clothes. All of this contributes to a certain erotic excitement that has become synonymous with the genre and contributed to its broad appeal.
In the 1960s, for example, Eurospy films — a genre of films that emerged in Europe as a spoof on the Bond films — became extremely popular in South Asia, Sunya said. Newspapers advertised these films as “adults only” because of their association with this kind of erotic spectacle. Yet the films became so popular that other countries began developing their own spy films, too.
The genre has thus become its own universe, existing outside the geopolitical context it plays with. We romanticize spies and the glamour surrounding them enough to ignore the political tensions and troubling questions that some stories raise.
Ultimately, most Americans don’t know much about what spies are actually doing, Bailey said. We know that covert activities happen because occasionally they are revealed publicly. Last year, for example, China claimed that a CIA spy was infiltrating the Chinese military. This activity could be all around us, existing beneath our everyday lives. That mystery is what makes espionage so compelling in fiction.
“We’re getting a glimpse through fiction into a world we know exists but simply have no other access to,” Bailey said.
Spy fiction oscillates between knowing and not knowing. On the one hand, these stories are figments of the author’s imagination. On the other, there are clandestine activities going on behind the scenes—and this secrecy also feeds our anxieties.
“There are a lot of interesting questions to be asked about what reality is, what our perception of reality is and who is controlling us,” Bailey said. “And all of these questions come up in spy stories as well.”
Spy stories are just good stories
These days, the life of a spy is far less glamorous than what may be portrayed on our screens, Bailey said. Think less thrilling car chases and more sitting at a desk crunching data.
But the image of spies chasing bad guys is fun. In spy fiction, there is a clear good guy and bad guy. The work itself is courageous and risky. Our protagonists become heroes, and we are their accomplices, trying to solve the problem of the day alongside them.
However, spy fiction and its continued popularity reveal how we use these stories to understand real-life issues, Sunya said.
“The forms and stories that this takes, even if they are extremely imaginative, exaggerated or spectacular, end up telling us something about how we are trying to understand the real world at that moment,” she said.
Of course, there are sociopolitical reasons why certain spy movies and shows are made and popular at specific times. The genre can also expose our fears about the world or our growing distrust of government institutions.
Still, let’s turn to spy fiction and all its blockbuster charm. After all, who can resist a good story?
This content was originally published in From “Mission: Impossible” to “Slow Horses”: why do we love spy stories? on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m Robert Neff, a professional writer and editor. I specialize in the entertainment section, providing up-to-date coverage on the latest developments in film, television and music. My work has been featured on World Stock Market and other prominent publications.
