ForgotPassword?
Sign Up
Search this Topic:
Posts: 26945
Aug 11 15 7:24 AM
What do we know about the secret world of espionage and intelligence, and how do we know it? The story that connects James Bond and Edward Snowden, fiction and reality, thrilling romance and profound cynicism or disillusionment, has been told over many years and in many ways. I’ve been thinking about this since seeing the new Tom Cruise movie “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” but this really isn’t a movie review and I wouldn’t argue that this capably crafted thriller from writer and director Christopher McQuarrie (who also directed Cruise in “Jack Reacher”) breaks any new ground or represents the ultimate distillation of anything. It’s a diverting ride, played out against spectacular locations, that repackages a whole bunch of familiar elements and attitudes: A little latter-day Bond, a little Jason Bourne, a little John le Carré, a little 1950s Hitchcock. What strikes me on a larger scale is the way that the “Mission: Impossible” franchise and many other fictional properties have served as gradual ideological conditioning, acclimating us to the rise of the national or global security apparatus. I don’t exactly mean that the whole universe of espionage fiction is a sinister concoction designed to brainwash the public – although, in the case of the fictional Agent 007 and his semi-fictional creator, former British intelligence agent Ian Fleming, that unquestionably played a role. (Allen Dulles, who headed the CIA under Dwight Eisenhower, was a huge fan of Fleming’s books, and reportedly tried to get the agency’s technicians to produce real-world versions of the famous Bond gizmos. They never worked.) It would be more accurate to say that spy fiction reflects a genuine moral confusion about the role of secret agents in modern society, but has generally succeeded only in worsening that confusion. A film like “Rogue Nation” simultaneously congratulates us for our clear-eyed skepticism about government and our loss of faith in institutions while insisting on primal movie myths about the incorruptible individual and the noble band of brothers. We may no longer feel quite sure about America or democracy or capitalism or morality or any such grand abstractions, but somewhere out there amid all the lies and chaos, Tom Cruise and other unstoppable and immortal heroes are doing the right thing – even if we have no idea what that might be. Even the movie’s subtitle provides an epistemological clue to this puzzle, if only through its total vagueness and meaninglessness. OK, yes, spoiler alert: But the “rogue nation” in this movie is not Iran or Russia or any other recognized nation-state with borders and generals. (It certainly isn’t China, since this movie was partly made with Chinese production funding, the not-so-secret channel of money that is not-so-subtly transforming Hollywood.) In fact, I can’t quite tell you what the term means in McQuarrie’s fictional universe. Maybe it refers to a sinister shadow version of the recognized intelligence agencies that is working to destabilize the world, in the old-school vein of Hydra and SMERSH. But as we know both from fiction and the real world, the boundaries between those things are none too clear and it can become difficult for intelligence operatives to tell which side of the looking-glass they’re on.
What do we know about the secret world of espionage and intelligence, and how do we know it? The story that connects James Bond and Edward Snowden, fiction and reality, thrilling romance and profound cynicism or disillusionment, has been told over many years and in many ways. I’ve been thinking about this since seeing the new Tom Cruise movie “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” but this really isn’t a movie review and I wouldn’t argue that this capably crafted thriller from writer and director Christopher McQuarrie (who also directed Cruise in “Jack Reacher”) breaks any new ground or represents the ultimate distillation of anything. It’s a diverting ride, played out against spectacular locations, that repackages a whole bunch of familiar elements and attitudes: A little latter-day Bond, a little Jason Bourne, a little John le Carré, a little 1950s Hitchcock.
What strikes me on a larger scale is the way that the “Mission: Impossible” franchise and many other fictional properties have served as gradual ideological conditioning, acclimating us to the rise of the national or global security apparatus. I don’t exactly mean that the whole universe of espionage fiction is a sinister concoction designed to brainwash the public – although, in the case of the fictional Agent 007 and his semi-fictional creator, former British intelligence agent Ian Fleming, that unquestionably played a role. (Allen Dulles, who headed the CIA under Dwight Eisenhower, was a huge fan of Fleming’s books, and reportedly tried to get the agency’s technicians to produce real-world versions of the famous Bond gizmos. They never worked.) It would be more accurate to say that spy fiction reflects a genuine moral confusion about the role of secret agents in modern society, but has generally succeeded only in worsening that confusion.
A film like “Rogue Nation” simultaneously congratulates us for our clear-eyed skepticism about government and our loss of faith in institutions while insisting on primal movie myths about the incorruptible individual and the noble band of brothers. We may no longer feel quite sure about America or democracy or capitalism or morality or any such grand abstractions, but somewhere out there amid all the lies and chaos, Tom Cruise and other unstoppable and immortal heroes are doing the right thing – even if we have no idea what that might be.
Even the movie’s subtitle provides an epistemological clue to this puzzle, if only through its total vagueness and meaninglessness. OK, yes, spoiler alert: But the “rogue nation” in this movie is not Iran or Russia or any other recognized nation-state with borders and generals. (It certainly isn’t China, since this movie was partly made with Chinese production funding, the not-so-secret channel of money that is not-so-subtly transforming Hollywood.) In fact, I can’t quite tell you what the term means in McQuarrie’s fictional universe. Maybe it refers to a sinister shadow version of the recognized intelligence agencies that is working to destabilize the world, in the old-school vein of Hydra and SMERSH. But as we know both from fiction and the real world, the boundaries between those things are none too clear and it can become difficult for intelligence operatives to tell which side of the looking-glass they’re on.
Read more @ http://tinyurl.com/o76lj5v
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
Interact