The Agency of the Agent in Spectre the Heroic Spy in the Age of Surveillance
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Agency of the Agent in Spectre The Heroic Spy in the Age of Surveillance BARBARA KORTE Secret agents have a special agency that also makes them a special kind of hero.1 In common understanding, heroes are defined by their capacity and willingness to perform deeds that exceed the determination, courage, endurance, and cap- abilities of more ordinary human beings and have more far-reaching effects. !his goes hand in hand with other "ualities traditionally associated with heroic agency such as autonomy and leadership. In his famous lectures on Heroes, Hero- Worship and the Heroic in History #published in 1$%1&, !homas 'arlyle emphasised the (free force) of the ideal great man and the (lightning” with which he is al- legedly infused #1*++, 1,&. 'arlyle deplored how this heroic force was increas- ingly restrained by the advance of modern civilisation. -evertheless, the heroic has survived into the twenty-first century in the productions of popular culture as well as in real life, if not without criti"ue and the observation that .estern so- cieties have had a post-heroic bias at least since the end of the Second .orld 1 !his article was written in the context of the collaborative research centre (/eroes, /eroi0ations and /eroisms) at the 1niversity of 2reiburg #S23 *%$, funded by the German 5esearch 2oundation, 6247 see https89/www.s:*%$.uni-freiburg.de/?page=1. It continues my discussion of the #meta&heroic elements in Skyfall #=orte >?1%&. I should like to thank -icole 2alkenhayner for helpful comments on an earlier dra@. Barbara Korte is Professor of English Literature at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She has published on travel writing, the literature of World War One, popular history and Black and Asian British culture. Vol. I, Issue 1 · Spring 2017 ISSN 2514-2178 DOI: 10.24877/jbs.7 Distributed under CC BY 4.0 UK .ar.> It is in this context, which perceives heroes sceptically while also still seek- ing and desiring them, that the spy, the secret agent, becomes significant as a fig- ure that highlights the precariousness of the heroic generally and for the specific cultural moment of the twenty-first century. 'onversely, the "uestion as to the heroism of secret agents sheds light on the cultural perception of spies and espi- onage in a given social and historical constellation. !his article reads the Aames 3ond film Spectre #>?1B& as a diagnosis of secret agency at a time when the heroic and specifically human element of this agency appears to be superseded by non- human, machine- and data-based forms of surveillance. THE AMBIVALENCE OF THE SECRET HERO Spies make ambivalent and paradoxical heroes because they have to perform their deeds secretly and o@en with deceit. 5ather than projecting their glamour on the world, spies are spooks, as the 3ritish vernacular phrases it8 spectral fig- ures like the shady enemies they fight. Dperating in and from the dark, spies are not simply admirable but always under suspicion that they might be (turned) and change their position from friend to rogue. 3ecause of the covert nature of his or her operations, any spy might turn out to be a double agent and is there- fore not naturally trusted. Secret agents are also denied the classical heroEs fame even when they are beyond suspicion and perform the most brave and noble deeds., Aames 3ond may be (licensed) to kill for his country like a soldier, but unlike the case of a soldier, his achievements cannot be made known to the pub- lic he serves, at least not within his fictional world. Dnly as fiction can we know the secret agent as hero at all, and then even this fiction notes that the heroism of secret agents is characterised by having to remain a secret. In Ian 2leming’s From Russia with Love #1*BF& the 5ussians are "uite correct when they remark that (GtHhis man 3ond is unknown to the public” #>??%a, %*&. So, although the spyEs agency is essentially based on seeing and watching others,% his own agency and its effects must remain unseen. !he spy fails when > !he German political scientist /erfried Iünkler #>??B7 >??+& has been a leading voice in the international debate about the post-heroic society. , See Geoffrey 'ubittEs definition of the exemplary hero as (any man or woman whose existence G...H is endowed by others, not Cust with a high degree of fame and honour, but with a special allocation of imputed meaning and symbolic significance K that not only raises them above others in public esteem but makes them the obCect of some kind of collective emotional investment) #'ubitt >???, ,&. % !he Oxford nglish "ictionary traces the origin of the word spy to the “Middle Lnglish shortening of Dld 2rench espie Mespying’, espier Mespy’, of Germanic origin, from an Indo-Luropean root shared by Natin specere Mbehold, lookE). 2 International Journal of James Bond Studies · Vol. I, Issue 1 · Spring 2017 he is observed himself, and 2leming’s novels turn such occasions into moments of their heroEs deepest humiliation, most poignantly when 3ond is exposed to 6r. -oEs voyeurism in the eponymous 1*B$ novel #which became the first 3ond film in 1*+>&. 3ond is watched through portholes #that literally function as peep- holes& during his long ordeal in the doctorEs laboratory of pain, which has been designed to test how human endurance can be measured, and he perceives this observation as an indecent insult8 Suddenly, behind the glass, he saw movement. As he watched, a pair of eyes materiali0ed from behind the electric light bulb. !hey stopped and looked at him, the bulb making a yellow glass nose between them. !hey gazed in- curiously at him and then they were gone. 3ondEs lips snarled back from his teeth. So his progress was going to be observed, reported back to 6octor -o! #>??+, >B>&.B In this case, the watching and watched subjects are physically in the same space. O twenty-first-century 6r. -o would be more likely to monitor 3ondEs painful progress on computer screens, Cust like much spying is now done by a broad range of surveillance technology, including all kinds of sophisticated data-col- lecting devices. !his development has a significant impact on defining the agency of the secret agent and on the public perception of intelligence services. !he new, prevention-oriented surveillance concepts and technologies that emerged after *911+ appear to have made the agency of the secret agent even more precarious than it was at the height of the 'old .ar, and they have placed it at the centre of urgent societal and cultural concerns. !he tension between technological surveillance and human agency in the field locates the spy in a dis- cursive formation that entangles issues of security vs. insecurity, observation vs. privacy, secrecy9opa"ueness vs. transparency, and in the wider context, totalitari- anism vs. democracy. !his web of discourses entails significant dilemmas and paradoxes. !errorism, planned and executed in the dark, generates insecurity, but anxiety is also created by counter-terrorist measures that violate the privacy B !he theme of voyeurism is prominent in "r# $o. Lven before 3ondEs torture, 6r. -o is presented as personally inspecting 3ondEs and /oney 5iderEs sleeping bodies #chapter 1,&, and he says about his own eyes that they (see everything” #2leming >??+a, >?*&. + 2or a critical discussion of the security-through-surveillance situation a@er */11 see, among many other publications, Nyon #>??F and >?1B&, and NyonEs introduction to 3auman and Nyon #>?1,&. 2or prevention-oriented surveillance see also 4rusinEs concept of premediation #Grusin >?1?&. B. Korte · The Agency of the Agent in Spectre: The Heroic Spy in the Age of Surveillance 3 of those they claim to keep safe.F In the words of Qygmunt 3auman and 6avid Nyon8 If once you could sleep easy knowing that the night watch was at the city gate, the same cannot be said of todayEs (security). It seems that, ironically, todayEs security generates forms of insecurity as a by-product K or maybe in some cases as a deliberate policy; K an insecurity felt keenly by the very people that security measures are supposed to protect #>?1,, 1??&. Seen in this context, the title of the latest 3ond film to date does not only refer to the secret criminal society SRL'!5L known from 2leming’s novels and early 3ond films,$ but also, or primarily, the Coint spectres of terror and seemingly protective surveillance. !he film leads right into this ethical and a ective di- lemma, and it negotiates the dilemma by invoking the specifically human agency of popular cultureEs most popular spy. Rhrased in the terminology of 3runo La- tour #>??B&, it uses the 3ond figure to challenge a security9intelligence network in which the human actor is increasingly marginalised by technology. SPECTRE: THE SPY IN HEROIC ACTION Spectre continues several themes addressed in the earlier films of the 6aniel 'raig series. Already in 2leming’s novels, 3ond is a character sometimes in con- Sict with the regulations of his service and therefore sometimes disciplined. In the first film of the (re-booted) series,* however, he becomes expressly the object of #friendly& surveillance. O@er his first, spectacularly forceful performance in the pre-titles of %asino Royale #>??+&, 3ond is e"uipped at IEs orders with a sub- dermal 4RS chip that will be able to track all his movements, "uite in the spirit of the movement-focused surveillance to which we are all exposed in the twenty- first century,1? in order to prevent future wild performances. Skyfall elaborates F /ence the heroisation of whistleblowers like Aulian Ossange and Ldmund Snowden, who are villains in the eyes of those whose secret operations they make known.