Mister 8

A few journal articles, some of which offer links to full text, some of which only have excerpts or abstracts:

Bidlingmeyer, L.M. (2007). Agent + image: How the television image destabilizes identity in TV spy series. Master’s Dissertation, MIT Comparative Studies. [PDF]

Excerpt:

…The repeated use of “pure” geometric forms announced an additional level of formal Modernism that challenged the naturalism of the on-location adventure series, suggesting that the program should be “read” on the level of the symbolic. For example, forced perspective and a single, central vanishing point were consistently used to create pyramid-shaped compositions out of stairways, halls, and roads, communicated more directly by architectural elements like the flat pyramid behind the speaker’s chair in the town hall. Likewise, circles — the sinister “rover” sentinels (actually white weather balloons), the round, flashing mechanical “eye” of Number 1, the brain-washing lamp over 6’s bed, the entire dome of Number 2’s chamber complete with round Eero Aarnio chair ascending from a circular hole in the floor — proliferated throughout the series. Among conventional-looking scenes of dialog and action were inserted shots that isolated and distilled objects from their contexts, abstracting their surroundings to reveal these items’ symbolic import. An entire modernist architectural infrastructure, complete with spare and geometrically-perfect tunnels, antechambers, and high-tech control rooms, was implied to lie behind the postmodern architectural pastiche of William Henry Clough’s Hotel Portmeirion, which comprised the series’ exterior.

Corcos, C.A. (2001). “I am not a number! I am a free man!”: physical and psychological imprisonment in science fiction. Legal Studies Forum. 25.

Excerpt:

The use of language in The Prisoner limits the hero’s ability to contest what is presented as reality. Places do not have distinctive names; they are “the town hall,” or “the store.” The only individualism allowed is that of the Village itself (it is the only Village and represents the bounds of the universe) and of the villagers’ individual names: for the time that they are in the Village, people have unique numbers. For the inhabitants of the Village, the Prisoner is Number Six. For us, the viewers, he is the Prisoner. He is the only prisoner, because he is the only individual who knows he is imprisoned–that there is a world outside. He believes that he once lived there, and that he was (relatively) free, and that he can return. He does not believe that he dreamed it, any more than he believes, like Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s hero in La Vida Es Sueño, that his current presence in the Village is a dream. It is an open question whether there are any inhabitants of the Village who are not window-dressing; if there are, they are remarkably good at keeping secrets. If at least some of the inhabitants of the Village are also prisoners, Number Six is doubly alone, since he never connects with any of them. Thus, while others may also be prisoners and have their own imprisonment stories, his story is truly individual and he is truly isolated.

Morreale, J. (2006). The spectacle of The Prisoner. Television & New Media. 7:2, 216-226.

Excerpt:

The Prisoner presaged Debord’s warning of the dominance of the spectacle, and it affirmed Debord’s pessimistic conclusion, which arrived twenty years later in his Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, that there is no free agency, no place to escape. Debord asserted that as we consume the object-images that circulate, we become part of, and thus unable to resist, the entire economic ecology that is the society of the spectacle. While The Prisoner’s formal and thematic structures attempt to interpolate active viewers, its narrative conclusion and its subsequent fate as a commodified “cult”vtext consumed by devotees ultimately suggest that it is impossible to resist. Just as the final episode’s denouement implied that the prisoner could not escape the society in which he was produced, The Prisoner as a televisual text could not escape its institutional constraints nor could it stand outside of the spectacle to critique it. The Prisoner became imprisoned by the spectacle–it became an object of consumption with “special” status–the very thing it was attempting to escape/critique. It demonstrates the way that detourned images are reappropriated and reassimilated back into the spectacle they initially attempted to disrupt.

Woodman, B.J. (2005). Escaping genre’s village: Fluidity and genre mixing in television’s The Prisoner. Journal of Popular Culture. 38:5, 938-956.

Excerpt:

When examining the “Living in Harmony” episode of The Prisoner, it quickly becomes apparent how complexly different genres can be combined on television. In this Western-themed installment, the show is able to move beyond its normal association with the spy and science fiction genres by playfully combining Western themes and structures into the original format of the show. When examined according to text, production, audience, and social context, the complexity of such a mixing of genres becomes more apparent. Careful scrutiny of an episode’s use of genre from many different angles reveals that simple manipulations of genre can have a sizeable impact on the understanding of an individual episode. Such a use of genre can confound viewers, express the makers’ political concerns, and challenge the cultural status quo. Thus, by simply inserting another genre into the already hybrid Prisoner format, the series’ overarching themes and meanings are explored in new and effective ways.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

I found this article in the NY Times Historical Database, and thought it might be a good introduction to discussing The IPCRESS File (remember, our discussion starts on Monday!). This is a brief overview of the state of spy fiction a few years after publication of Len Deighton’s first novel, with astute commentary by mystery writer / editor / Borges translator / reviewer extraordinaire Anthony Boucher. There are inevitably a number of thoughts and questions this article raises, that I’d be happy to discuss in the comments, although I plan on touching upon them in my discussion of IPCRESS.

* * *

Originally published: June 7, 1964

There’s A Spy Between the Covers

By Anthony Boucher

Close observers of the bestseller list on page 8 have noticed an unprecedented phenomenon in recent months: the persistence in the top sales brackets of three novels of espionage–John Le Carre’s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” Helen MacInnes’s “The Ventian Affair,” and (until quite recently) Ian Flemings “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

Actual sales figures on these books are even more impressive. The Fleming has sold over 70,000–well above any previous Fleming. The MacInnes has sold over 80,000 (and is still selling over 1,000 a week)–again well above any of the author’s earlier books. And “The Spy” has sold around 163,000, or probably about 25 times the sales of both previous Le Carré novels. The initial print order on the paperback edition will be in the neighborhood of 750,000. His first spy novel, “Call for the Dead,” is now in paperback in an edition of over half a million. The softcover edition of “O.H.M.S.S.” will be one million, bringing the total of Ian Fleming in print in this country to over 12 million.

Spy novels, even those of the acknowledged master, Eric Ambler, have never sold like this before, nor is this strictly an American phenomenon. A recent London Daily Mail bestseller list of 10, fiction and non-fiction, includes four novels, all of them dealing with espionage. (The just-mentioned Le Carré and MacInnes titles, plus the new Fleming, “You Only Live Twice”–to appear here in August–and Gavin Lyall’s “The Most Dangerous Game.”)

A spy writer, the late Jean Bruce, is the most successful popular novelist in France since Simenon; and espionage novels make up an even larger part of publishing in France than they do here, where they seem to constitute almost half of my reviewing duties in the suspense field. Two of the annual French literary prizes are awarded solely for romans d’espionnage (One of them is attractively named, in honor of the most entertaining spy of World War II, Le Prix Cicéron). And there is even a Russian spy novelist Lev Ovalov (but he got a bad review in Pravda–his American secret agent was properly sinister but much too capable).

Spy stories we have always had with us. Like everything else, they can be traced back to the Bible. (See for instance, Joshua ii for the fine story of Rahab the harlot and the spies of Israel.) There are spy narratives in the Sherlock Holmes canon (including the classic “His Last Bow”); and even before World War I there flourished such specialists in spy fiction as E. Phillips Oppenheim and the earlier and even less remembered William Le Queux.

This was all (save, of course, the Biblical accounts) in the unrealistic school of glamour-espionage to which Fleming still adheres. Still colorfully theatrical, but with some closer adherence to the laws of both life and literature, were the magnificent pursuit stories of John Buchan (”The Thirty-Nine Steps,” 1915). The first reasonably realistic stories of espionage may be in “Ashenden” or “The British Agent” (1928) by Somerset Maugham, who had himself served the Foreign Office during the war.

It was in the late 1930’s with the people of England and America becoming more and more aware of international politics ander their implications, that the spy novel came of age. First there was Eric Ambler with “Background to Danger” (1937), then Graham Greene with “The Confidential Agent” (1939); and it became apparent that a spy novel could be as well written and meaningful as an other form of fiction.
With the approaching rumbles of World War II, a number of admirable writers turned for the first time to chronicling international intrigue. Margery Allingham, Nicholas Blake, Helen McCloy, Ngaio Marsh and many others, most notably Michael Innes, saved the free world from fascism in skillfully written entertainments; and Peter Cheyney, in this “Dark series, starting with “Dark Duet” (1943), brought the bitter techniques of Hammett to this most suitable of topics. Even Kay Boyle joined the throng.

Afterwards (one is tempted to say, “between wars”) these writers returned to their usual more private violences; and it is only in the past few years that the publication of spy stories has equaled and even surpassed (in quantity, and once in a while in quality) its wartime level.

Now there are a number of writers devoting apparently full time to such fiction. Most noteworthy, aside from those already mentioned, are England’s William Haggard, who possesses, in addition to a dry wit, a fine eye and ear for the subtle intricacies of top-level political intrigue, and America’s Donald Hamilton, who demonstrates, in a series of paperback novels about a professional killer in counter-espionage, an authentic toughness of mind unmatched in this field since Cheyney (and possibly in any field since Hammett). On the more flamboyant and colorful side are England’s Desmond Cory and John Blackburn and America’s Edward S. Aarons and Stephen Marlowe.

The most austere chronicler of the slogging day-by-day dullness of much spy-activity is Simon Harvester; Len Deighton, on the strength of one book (”The IPCRESS File,” 1963) seems to be developing an odd and unclassifiably amused viewpoint of his own. Gavin Lyall (mentioned above as an English best seller) is unrivaled for vigor of storytelling and clear complication of plotting. Michael Gilbert, who has written in almost every type of suspense, is now creating a memorable series of espionage short stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

The spy story is, by and large in good shape today. So is what Julian Symons calls “the modern crime novel”–which attempts, and so often successfully, to combine the mainstream novel’s probing of character with the whodunit’s ability to puzzle and surprise. Yet there is no comparable build-up for Mr. Symons or Margaret Millar or Charity Blackstock, who are as good in their way as Le Carré. Why these phenomenal sales for only one aspect of the widely variegated “novel of suspense”? Why is everybody suddenly reading spy novels?

There are certain obvious contributory factors; such as President Kennedy’s endorsement of the work of the then only moderately successful Ian Fleming, or the superb promotional job that an enthusiastic publisher performed for “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.” But let me venture a more basic guess.

Espionage is a reality closer to the average man than at any previous time in history. The C.I.A. has had far more detailed news coverage than did ever the O.S.S. We are more aware of the spy behind the arras when we read of international affairs, and the reality of espionage presses upon us even more closely than that. Our businesses have their own methods of spying upon each other, and upon us. We know, thanks to George Orwell in prophecy and Vance Packard in recent reportage, that few moments of our lives are inaccessible to someone’s spy. We have, in short, come to accept espionage as part of the certain human condition, and thereby to accept is as a normal part of any kind of fiction.

According to Boucher’s Third Law, the microcosm repeates the macrocosm. Within the spy novel, you will find everything that you find in the novel itself, from extravagant romance to sober realism, form trash to serious literature. And all these aspects are no longer ghettoized as The Suspense Novel: Subdivision X, Espionage. Today, they are subsumed into general fiction, and sell just as they would if they were about–

Wasn’t it Jane Austen who said, “I write about love and money; what else is there?” In this world of 1984 minus 20, make it love, money and espionage.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

Ipcress File cover with Michael Caine

“You have to remember I saw my first movie at fifteen; I’ve had to make up for lost time. The first film I saw was on television, The IPCRESS File; I loved the way Michael Caine broke eggs for an omelette.”

“Broke eggs?”

Kadi nodded. “Tenderly. I’d never seen a man cook before.”

– From Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer by Dorothy Gilman

The world first met the “Harry Palmer” character in 1962, when England was then in the midst of a mod revolution led by, as culture studies scholar Dick Hebdige says, “working-class dandies.” Mod men wore their hair longer, held exacting tastes in slim Italian suits, and played with concepts of androgyny in their personal appearance. Hebdige, in his Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things refers to Palmer as, “a fictional extension of mod,” with his preference for food, clothes and cigarettes from France and Italy—the “continental cool” (75).

But the heroes of films at that time were still rugged, handsome, tough, with no time for cooking. Caine, writing in his autobiography, What’s it All About?, says that the filmmakers were overly concerned with playing down any aspect of the character that could be deemed homosexual (175):

Sid Furie the director and Harry [Saltzman] went off to ‘de-gay’ my role in the script. The supermarket cart problem had already been solved by having me use mine as a weapon. The glasses were satisfactorily ‘butched up’ by having Sue Lloyd, who played the romantic lead, ask me if I always wear glasses. I say, ‘I only take them off in bed,’ she looks at me for a moment, then reaches forward and takes them off.

But Caine as Palmer, and shortly after, Caine as Alfie, helped redefine the concept of the masculine Brit. Andrew Spicer writes in his Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema that:

Critics were reserved about Sidney Furie’s over-ingenious ‘eavesdropping’ style of direction, but admired the film’s freshness and contemporaneity, the ‘current bachelor neatness’ of Palmer’s flat, and a working-class figure whose ‘Cockney vowels’ did not preclude an appreciation of Mozart and champignons. The role established Caine as a major star and a new type whose attraction was defined by Penelope Gilliatt: ‘Intransigence and opportunism are as central now to sex-appeal in English male acting as charm and height used to be. Make a crack, cheat the boss, expect nothing, go for the lot, and never commit murder except on expenses. The girls fall like skittles.’

Followed by the androgyny of the glam period, the Palmer character seems much closer to the John Wayne end of the spectrum of masculinity. Indeed, Caine feels that, ironically, the character once seen by Saltzman and Furie as too homosexual now serves as the icon for British manliness. As he told the LA Times in 1999:

“If you think of ‘The Italian Job,’ ‘Get Carter’ and ‘Alfie,’ then to young English guys now I represent English heterosexual masculinity without any doubts. You don’t look at me and say, I wonder if he’s gay? You look at me and think, he’s a geezer [regular guy], he’s one of us.