Citizen spy : television, espionage, and cold war culture / Michael Kackman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kackman, Michael.

Series:

Commerce and mass culture series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spy television programs--United States--History and criticism.

Spy television programs.

United States.

Physical Description:

xxxix, 236 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2005]

Summary:

In Citizen Spy, Michael Kackman investigates how media depictions of the slick, smart, and resolute spy have been embedded in the American imagination. 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. As the rigid cultural logic of the Red Scare began to collapse, spy shows became more playful 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 complicated 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. Moving beyond a snapshot of television history, Citizen Spy provides a contemporary lens to analyze the nature-and implications-of American nationalism in practice.

Contents:

Documentary melodrama

I led 3 lives and the agent of history

The irrelevant expert and the incredible shrinking spy

Parody and the limits of agency

I spy a colorblind nation

Agents or technocrats.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-219) and index.

ISBN:

0816638284

0816638292

OCLC:

57549949