Secrets Without Agents: from Big Brother to Big Data
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Center for Advanced Research in Global CARGC Papers Communication (CARGC) 7-2021 Secrets Without Agents: From Big Brother to Big Data Aniko Imre [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers Part of the Communication Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, and the Slavic Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Imre, Aniko, "Secrets Without Agents: From Big Brother to Big Data" (2021). CARGC Papers. 15. https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/15 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/15 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Secrets Without Agents: From Big Brother to Big Data Description Spies have made a remarkable international comeback in popular film and TV since the early 2010s. Many of the recent TV series and feature films that er volve around spying and surveillance also draw on the Cold War for historical parallels, antecedents or representational elements to convey a decidedly contemporary sense of ambiguity, allegory and dystopia that is associated with the global crisis of neo- liberal markets, the erosion of trust in democratic institutions and the emergence of autocratic leaders worldwide. Originally delivered as CARGC 2019 Distinguished Lecture in Global Communication, CARGC Paper 15 by Anikó Imre probes this association further and ask why and how the memory of the Cold War is resurrected through its favored genre to lend a representative platform to current, globally shared structures of feeling. On the one hand, the implied historical parallels yield a contemporary reevaluation of the Cold War as much more complex and more thoroughly networked among national and other agents than the triumphant Western narrative of two warring empires has long suggested. On the other hand, the comparison between Cold War and contemporary manifestations of spies and spying guide us to understand significant ecentr transformations in the nature, effects, and experience of surveillance. The comparison between Cold War and contemporary spies highlights a radical transformation of the technological and media networks themselves from nation-based broadcast networks to streaming platforms that are themselves active facilitators of a more widespread, insidious, and inescapable sense of surveillance. In particular, Imre argues that there is a synergy between the structures of broadcast television and Cold War representations of spying on the one side and contemporary, digital, SVOD delivery and the structures of spying represented by streaming services on the other. This feedback loop between spying as content and technology compels a serious critical and historical understanding and requires creative pedagogies of interruption. Keywords spying, surveillance, Cold War, Netflix, streaming, algorithm Disciplines Communication | Film and Media Studies | Slavic Languages and Societies Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This book is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/15 CARGC PAPER 15 Secrets Without Agents: 2021 From Big Brother to Big Data Secrets Without Agents: From Big Brother to Big Data CARGC PAPER 15 2021 It is my distinct pleasure to introduce work has appeared in Feminist Media Anikó Imre’s CARGC Paper 15, Studies, Media Industries, Television and “Secrets Without Agents: From Big New Media, The Journal of Popular Film Brother to Big Data.” This paper and Television, amongst many others. was originally delivered as the Center She co-edits the Palgrave book series for Advanced Research in Global Global Cinemas and sits on the boards Communication’s 2019 Distinguished of Cinema and Media Journal, Global Lecture in Global Communication on Media and Communication, Television and September 19, 2019 at the Annenberg New Media, VIEW Journal of European School for Communication, University Television History and Culture, NECSUS_ of Pennsylvania. While at CARGC, European Journal of Media Studies, global-e: Anikó Imre taught a masterclass Twenty-First Century Global Dynamics, and for CARGC fellows on popular other key publications. media, populist nationalisms, and xenophobia. She also led a professional CARGC Paper 15, “Secrets Without development workshop for our Agents,” examines the recent postdoctoral fellows. comeback of spy figures in television series and feature films, a global Anikó Imre is a Professor of Cinematic phenomenon particularly remarkable Arts in the Division of Cinema and since the early 2010s. A quintessential Media Studies in the School of agent of Cold War popular media, Cinematic Arts at the University of cinematic spy fiction’s heyday Southern California, where she is culminated in the 1950s and 60s, at the also a member of the faculty advisory height of Cold War hostilities. That board in the Interdivisional Media Arts period was followed by a steady decline and Practice (iMAP) Division. She is a in the appeal of spies as representatives leading scholar of media globalization, of superpowers’ struggles for moral television, socialism and (post) superiority and political influence that socialism, gender and sexuality, as well characterized the Cold War, a loss of as race and postcoloniality. Amongst appeal corresponding roughly with her numerous publications are TV the thawing of relations between the Socialism (Duke University Press, 2016) two blocks. Why and how, then, has and Identity Games: Globalization and the the memory of the Cold War been Transformation of Post-Communist Media resurrected in countless recent TV Cultures (MIT Press, 2009). She is the shows and movies, a long list that editor of East European Cinemas (AFI includes international blockbusters Film Readers, Routledge, 2005) and such as Atomic Blonde (dir. David The Blackwell Companion to East European Leitch, 2017), Red Sparrow (dir. Francis Cinemas (2012), and a co-editor of Lawrence, 2018), The Spy Who Dumped Transnational Feminism in Film and Media Me (dir. Susanna Fogel, 2018), and (Palgrave, 2007), Popular Television in popular television dramas such as The the New Europe (Routledge, 2012). Her Americans (FX, 2013–2018), Homeland Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania 1 Secrets Without Agents: From Big Brother to Big Data CARGC PAPER 15 2021 (Showtime, 2011–), The Handmaid’s (FX, 2013—2018), Deutschland 83 Tale (Hulu, 2017–), A Very Secret Service and 86 (AMC Networks and RTL, (Arte, 2015), Deutschland 83 and 86 2015—), and The Handmaid’s Tale (AMC Networks and RTL, 2015–), (Hulu, 2017—) to show how the 1983 (Netflix, 2018–),Secret City very technological mechanisms and (Netflix, 2016–), orThe Spy (Netflix, platforms that underpin data-based 2019–)? As Imre deftly shows, the digital distribution today not only recent infatuation for nostalgic represent our structures of feeling but Cold Ward aesthetics needs to be also actively participate in creating understood as part of a complex them. As she notes, “[contemporary reevaluation of the Cold War that is spies’] struggles are magnified versions decidedly contemporary. Recent spy of the viewers’ sense of entanglement figures resonate deeply with globally in digital networks that spy on and shared structures of feeling marked shape us.” While, in the age of Big by ambiguity, allegory, and dystopia, Data, algorithmic surveillance, and which are characteristic of the current publics “held together by data,” power, neoliberal moment, itself marked by and control increasingly work through the erosion of trust in democratic dehumanized networks, Imre invites us institutions and the emergence of to consider agentic possibilities in the autocratic populisms worldwide. In increasing awareness of digital spying CARGC Paper 15, Imre complicates in our everyday lives that comes from Manichean understandings of Cold watching TV shows that visualize War spy fiction, offering a history of algorithmic surveillance. Furthermore, the spy genre that challenges dominant Imre calls for hybrid research Western-centric accounts of the approaches combining representational Cold War by focusing on socialist spy and logistical analysis to examine the dramas, produced in the East. TV “interfaces of algorithmic and human series such as Polizeiruf 110 (Police vision”’ in the age of data-based Call,1971-), 30 Případů Majora Zemana television, and clearly with CARGC (The 30 Cases of Major Zeman, 1976–80), Paper 15, she offers a great example of or Semnadtsat Mgnoveniy Vesny (Seventeen how this might be done. Moments of Spring, 1973) were major hits in the East. Such an emphasis The release of CARGC Paper 15 sheds light on their continued global corresponds with a period of rapid appeal as an “affective reference point change at CARGC. In August 2021, for understanding the widespread we are thrilled to welcome three new melancholia and anxiety produced by postdoctoral fellows: Woori Han, Ali neoliberal capitalism.” Karimi, and Ayesha Omer. Woori Han will be jointly appointed by CARGC Imre’s paper compares Cold War and the Center on Digital Culture and area spy fictions with recent takes Society (CDCS) at Annenberg, both on the genre including The Americans currently directed by Guobin Yang. Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania 2 Secrets Without Agents: From Big Brother to Big Data CARGC PAPER 15 2021 August will also mark the departures of continue as Interim