Is it the nonstop action, or the meshing of mystery and intrigue? Is it the Aston Martin car chases, always along some scenic route? The exotic locales? The beautiful love interests — culminating in a steamy rendezvous? Or, is it just the British accents?
Whatever it is, there’s something about spy flicks we can’t get enough of. Since the genre’s emergence, espionage has taken over both big and small screens, from long-standing franchises like James Bond, to newer efforts like the “Kingsman” series or the subversive “The 355.”
On TV, the success of shows like “Homeland,” “The Americans,” and the newer “Slow Horses” — which begins its fourth season Wednesday on Apple TV+ — highlight our collective fascination with spy narratives.
Even in a time where the genre movie has all but faded in favor of endless remakes and sequels, where television shows are often canceled shortly after they air, spy stories still grip our imaginations and studios’ pockets.
But the genre is more than just splashy gimmicks helmed by a suave 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 was first born from literature, where spy novels and spy fiction grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, alongside increasing globalization and imperial force, 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, grew to be: portrayals of larger, geopolitical fears. The genre then peaked during the Cold War era, Sunya said, amidst worries of nuclear catastrophe between the US 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 movie, released in 1962, is a prime example. The titular Dr. No, who is part of the international terrorist group SPECTRE, is a half Chinese, half German nuclear scientist, eventually defeated by Bond.
“It was almost 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 following the global pandemic, similar anxieties are once again arising — and making their way into spy fiction.
Last year’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One”?and “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” epitomize those modern fears. In both films, saving the world means defeating either a corrupt sentient AI or stopping an AI tool from being used for evil.
These movies were released during a year dominated by AI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared in front of a Senate panel calling for increased governmental regulation of the controversial technology, and the Biden administration launched an executive order aiming to address the associated risks.
These confounding anxieties, in real life and in the media, feed into each other. The lines between fiction and reality can start to blur.
“You’re seeing it in art forms like films and TV, or books. That’s making people more interested in these narratives. And then they’re hearing 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 feeds into this paranoia.”
Spy stories have mass appeal
Spy fiction isn’t all just sociopolitical underpinnings. These movies have become blockbusters for a reason. They are global escapades — see Italy’s grandiose Amalfi Coast and the bustle of Mumbai, India, in Christopher Nolan’s 2020 spy thriller “Tenet.”
Or let your eyes feast on the visual buffet that is Daniel Craig stalking the streets of Mexico City during a Day of the Dead parade in 2015’s “Spectre” — a 4-minute scene that alone has gathered almost 4 million views on YouTube. In 1996’s “Mission: Impossible,” some of the film’s most dramatic moments are backdropped by the cobblestone streets of the Czech Republic’s Prague.
Of course, there are also the gadgets, the cars, the sex, even the outfits — all of which lends a certain erotic thrill that has become synonymous with the genre, and contributed to its wide appeal.
In the 1960s, for example, Eurospy films — a genre of movies that emerged in Europe mimicking the Bond movies — became hugely popular in South Asia, Sunya said. Newspapers would advertise these movies as “adults only,” because of their association with this type of erotic spectacle. Still, these movies became so popular that other countries began developing their own spy films, too.
The genre, then, became its own universe, existing outside of the geopolitical context with which it plays. We romanticize spies and the glamor around them, enough to ignore the political tensions and nervous questions some stories raise.
Ultimately, most Americans don’t know much about what spies are actually doing, Bailey said. We know covert activity happens because, occasionally, it’s publicly revealed. Last year, for example, China claimed a CIA spy was embedded in the Chinese military. This activity could be all around us, existing beneath our everyday lives. That mystery is what makes espionage so appealing in fiction.
“We’re getting an insight through fiction into a world that we know is there, but we just have no other access to it,” Bailey said.
Spy fiction teeters along that line of knowing and unknowing. On one hand, those stories are made-up figments of the author’s imagination. On the other hand, there are clandestine activities happening behind the scenes — and that secrecy plays into our anxieties, too.
“There’s a lot of interesting questions to ask about what’s reality, and what’s our sense of reality, and who’s controlling us,” Bailey said. “And all these questions come through spy stories as well.”
Spy stories are just good stories
Nowadays, the life of a spy is much less glamorous than what might be presented to us on our screens, Bailey said. Think less exciting car chases, more sitting at a desk looking up data.
But the image of spies running around chasing bad guys is a fun one. In espionage fiction, there’s 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 right alongside them.
Yet spy fiction and its ongoing popularity reveal how we use these stories to understand real-life issues, Sunya said.
“The forms and stories that that takes, even if extremely imaginative or exaggerated or spectacular, end up telling us something about how we’re trying to make sense of the real world in that moment,” she said.
Sure, there are sociopolitical reasons why certain spy movies and shows are made and popularized in specific moments. The genre can also expose our fears about our world, or our increasing distrust in governmental institutions.
Still, we’ll turn to espionage fiction and all its blockbuster charm. Who, after all, can resist a good story?