Table Of Content

Citizen Spy COMMERCE AND MASS CULTURE SERIES Justin Wyatt, Editor Citizen Spy: Television, Espionage, and Cold War Culture Michael Kackman Hollywood Outsiders: The Adaptation of the Film Industry, 1913–1934 Anne Morey Robert Altman’s Subliminal Reality Robert T. Self Sex and Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media Eileen R. Meehan and Ellen Riordan, Editors Directed by Allen Smithee Jeremy Braddock and Stephen Hock, Editors Sure Seaters: The Emergence of Art House Cinema Barbara Wilinsky Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent Matthew Bernstein Hollywood Goes Shopping David Desser and Garth S. Jowett, Editors Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood Sarah Berry Active Radio: Pacifica’s Brash Experiment Jeff Land Citizen Spy Television, Espionage, and Cold War Culture Michael Kackman Commerce and Mass Culture Series University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis • London An earlier version ofchapter 2was published as “Citizen,Communist,Counterspy: I Led 3Livesand Television’s Masculine Agent ofHistory,”Cinema Journal38,no.1 (1998):98–114.Copyright 1998by the University ofTexas Press.All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2005by the Regents ofthe University ofMinnesota All rights reserved.No part ofthis publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical, photocopying,recording,or otherwise,without the prior written permission ofthe publisher. Published by the University ofMinnesota Press 111Third Avenue South,Suite 290 Minneapolis,MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kackman,Michael. Citizen spy :television,espionage,and cold war culture / Michael Kackman. p. cm.— (Commerce and mass culture series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN0-8166-3828-4(hc :alk.paper) — ISBN0-8166-3829-2(pb :alk.paper) 1. Spy television programs—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. PN1992.8.S67K33 2005 791.45'6—dc22 2005002138 Printed in the United States ofAmerica on acid-free paper The University ofMinnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Darlene, who taught me to read This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface: Doing Television History ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction: The Agent and the Nation xvii 1. Documentary Melodrama: Homegrown Spies and the Red Scare 1 2. I Led 3 Livesand the Agent of History 26 3. The Irrelevant Expert and the Incredible Shrinking Spy 49 4. Parody and the Limits of Agency 73 5. I Spya Colorblind Nation: African Americans and the Citizen-Subject 113 6. Agents or Technocrats: Mission: Impossibleand the International Other 144 Conclusion: Spies Are Back 176 Notes 191 Index 221 Preface: Doing Television History This project was sparked by my interest in the peculiar cultural politics ofthe Cold War.In part,my fascination was marked by a sense ofdistance and won- der—the hyperbolic anti-Communism ofthe early s seemed so anachronis- tic as to be comically naïve.Television,ofcourse,is central to this too-common assumption about the superiority and sophistication of the present. Shifting social norms,enhanced production values,the dated grammar ofpopular culture,and today’s ubiquitous reruns and remakes all make s and s television seem quaint,its representations diminished,its politics more charming than prescient. But this tendency to contain the past through nostalgia and irony overlooks two interlocking principles that have shaped the development ofthis book.First,the cultural Cold War’s underlying questions about national identity and citizenship, and the privileged means of representing them, are very much with us today.We need look no further than the daily headlines to see deeply impassioned arguments about who or what qualifies as “American.” Next,while the past is gone and buried,history tethers it to the present.Our ability to recognize citizens and national subjects hinges on our mobilization of history—on an articulation of values, ideologies, and identities that together cohere around the idea of America.Television,this book argues,is central to both these issues. Television is difficult to make sense of historically. This seemingly omni- present medium might be described as an economic institution,a form ofnar- rative entertainment, an electronic public sphere, a mechanism of globaliza- tion,a cultural forum,a domestic technology,or a marketing device—and each such choice would foreground different historiographic priorities.Television ix