May 30, 2018

So, Is "The Americans" a Field Guide to Spotting Spies? @Variety @Danielletbd

In this article for Variety, Danielle Turchiano examines the popular culture image of the CIA on the hit FX television series The Americans (2013-2018) with the assistance of real life agents Martha Peterson and Mark Kelton. (And probably not a good idea to call them "spooks." Here's a guide to some agent lingo).

More about the show's March 28 finale in this Vox article and about the show generally in this Variety article.

A (very) selected bibliography on the spy and popular culture here.

Thomas Andrae, Television's First Feminist: "The Avengers" and Female Spectatorship, 18 Discourse 112-136 (Spring 1996).

Lisa Marie Bidlingmeyer, How the TV Image Destabilizes Identity in TV Spy Series (Thesis, MIT, 2007).

Wesley Britton, Spy Television (Praeger, 2004) (The Praeger Television Collection).

Christine Alice Corcos, "I Am Not a Number! I Am a Free Man!": Physical and Psychological Imprisonment in Science Fiction, 25 Legal Studies Forum 471 (2001) (discussing the series The Prisoner).

Luis M. Garica-Mainar, The Return of the Realist Spy Film, Cineaction 12-19 (2012).

Jon Heitland, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Book: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of a Television Classic (St. Martin's Press, 1987).

Michael Kackman, Citizen Spy: Television, Espionage, and Cold War Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2005) (Commerce and Mass Culture Series).

Stephen Keane, America (sic) Exceptionalism in Television Spy Dramas: Mainstreaming American With "I Spy," "Sleeper Cell," and "24"? (Thesis, Georgetown, 2007).

Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul, Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 1962-1973 (McFarland and Company, 2002).

J. Fred MacDonald, The Cold War As Entertainment In 'Fifties Television, 7 Journal of Popular Film and Television 3-31 (1978).

Trevor McCrisken, The Housewife, the Vigilante, and the Cigarette-Smoking Man: The CIA and Television, 1975-2001, 100 History: The Journal of the Historical Association 293-310 (April 2015).

Alan Nadel, Citizen Spy: Television, Espionage, and Cold War Culture, 60 Film Quarterly 71-72 (Summer 2007).

N. S. Stone, A Reader's Guide to the Spy and Thriller Novel (G. K. Hall, 1997).




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