Public attitudes toward government spying have correlated to popular cultural trends ever since the 1821 publication of The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground, the first American spy novel written by James Fenimore Cooper, the first prominent American novelist. As Brett F. Woods explains in his essay on the novel: To offset the early nineteenth century perception of spies as ignoble, inglorious creatures, Cooper attempts to portray Birch as an icon of American patriotism appropriate to historical adventure. To accomplish this, one of Cooper’s ploys is to have morally unassailable characters compare Birch favorably to soldiers. Thus the righteous rebel trooper from Virginia, Captain Lawton, praises Birch: “He may be a spy — he must be one...but he has a heart above enmity, and a soul that would honor a gallant soldier” . . . . This passage likens spies to soldiers, a significant new concept proposed by Cooper. When a soldier breaks moral laws by killing he is absolved by his country, and Cooper seeks to place Harvey Birch in this same category. Spies were further elevated in a slew of American novels in the late nineteenth century, and became central heroes in the English-speaking world in the twentieth century thanks largely to films such as those in the James Bond franchise. Whereas in early American history, government spying faced a largely negative public perception, the professionalized modern spying of our era has been glorified in the vast bulk of TV and movies featuring government agents using their omniscient technological gizmos to apprehend the bad guy just in the nick of time. The post-Cold Era saw a return of skepticism toward the surveillance state, especially in such films as Enemy of the State, in which the NSA is portrayed as nefarious. Since 9/11, most of the current has gone the other way.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 00:47:15 +0000
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