[Earlier this
year, I belatedly but excitedly got into The Americans, the FX drama about
two KGB agents (the great Keri
Russell and Matthew Rhys) living in deep cover as a married couple in
Reagan’s 1980s America. It’s a wonderful and very AmericanStudies show, so this
week I’ll AmericanStudy five issues and themes to which the show connects.
Leading up to my latest Guest Post on another set of pop culture texts and
questions!]
On what’s deeply
compelling, and what’s accidentally troubling, about the show’s central
premise.
When I first
heard about the concept behind The
Americans—that the KGB had spies whom the US Department of Justice knew as
“illegals,” people who came to the US from Russia when they were very young and
stayed here for decades (ostensibly the rest of their lives), working, raising
families, and living in every way as part of American society while still
spying for the USSR—I was sure it was invented by the show’s creator Joe Weisberg. But
nothing could be further from the truth. Weisberg is a
former CIA case officer who used his knowledge of very real such
spy programs—about which a great deal has been declassified
and revealed in the last couple decades, and indeed some of which have continued
after the fall of the Soviet Union and were only discovered
and stopped by the FBI in the last few years—to craft his fictional
version. The Americans is historical
fiction in the deepest sense, the kind that adheres quite closely to known
historical realities and details while of course developing entirely fictional
characters within that frame and world.
And what an
evocative topic for historical fiction the “illegals” program is. Not just
because it explodes the easy “us vs. them,” “evil empire”
narratives (that famous 1983 Reagan speech is featured in a powerful moment
during the show’s Season
3; SPOILERS in that video review) of the US and the USSR, focusing on
people whose experiences inextricably and genuinely linked them to both nations
while still locating them very fully within the Cold War between the two
countries—although that’s a very powerful and still meaningful effect to be
sure. But also because as the show’s primary such “illegals,” Russell’s and
Rhys’s characters (Elizabeth and Philip Jennings) deal with questions of
identity and community, work and family, culture and citizenship, allegiance
and responsibility, that resonate deeply with a number of historical and
cultural issues, from the immigrant experience to stereotypes and realities of
American society to women in
the workforce to contrasting parenting styles (among many others). The show
is never not a spy thriller and a very effective one, but it’s also a great
deal more, and that’s due in large part to this very unique historical identity
and role and all that it opens up.
Yet as an
AmericanStudier, and one more and more concerned with public scholarly
connections to our contemporary moment and society, I have to admit that every
time I hear the show’s FBI agents—led by the great Noah Emmerich as Stan Beeman—refer
to their hunt for “illegals,” I cringe. I fully believe that the term is
historically accurate, but of course the show is being created in the 21st
century, and in our current moment there’s another American community to whom
we collectively refer far
too often with the term “illegals” (turning an adjective referring to laws
into a highly prejudicial noun). I don’t believe that Weisberg and company
intended this echo, and I’m not necessarily suggesting that they should abandon
historical accuracy because of an accidental problem with language. But it’s
worth noting that historical fiction is never simply about the history being
depicted, but rather also a product and reflection of the moment and world of
its creation, not least because it’s in that momen and world that audiences
will engage with and be affected by the works. Just one more complex idea with
which The Americans helps us grapple.
Next
AmericansStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other AmericanStudies shows you’d highlight?
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