Last week a Cold
War spy thriller with a twist debuted on the FX television network. The twist
is that the bad guys – the Soviets – are the stars, and that the show’s
producers are hoping to get American audiences to root for the KGB. But if
that’s their aim, they failed miserably in the season premiere; the real twist
is that The Americans turns out to be
refreshingly pro-American entertainment.
The Americans is a gripping, action-filled drama about two
Soviet spies living undercover as a normal American couple in 1981 Washington,
D.C. Their two children, oblivious to their parents’ true identities, are being
raised as typical American kids. In between getting the kids off to school and taking
them out for ice cream, the husband and wife discuss things like when to kill
the defector bound and gagged in their garage, or whether the FBI agent who
just moved in across the street is on to them.
According to an article in the entertainment trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter (THR), executive producer Joel Fields expressed his hope for the
show’s impact: “It might be a little different to believe and get used to, but
we want you to root for the KGB. They're going to try to get the Soviets to win
the Cold War.”
It’s unclear
whether the phrase “hold a grudge” is THR’s
or originated with the producers, but it is a phenomenally poor choice of words.
“Hold a grudge” about the Cold War? We’re talking about our epic conflict with a
totalitarian world view that resulted in the deaths of countless millions and
which took us to the brink of nuclear war. As FrontPage’s own Daniel Greenfield
wrote, “This isn’t like the Yankees and the Red
Sox.” Nonetheless, the producers
think we’ve had time to “get over it.”
“If you tried to
tell a story like this about al-Qaeda now,” Fields continued, “it would be
impossible; no one would want to hear it. I feel even the same could have been
said up to 10 years after the cold war ended.” The stunning implication here is
that, given a few more years, American viewers will come around and embrace a
show in which they are expected to “root for” al Qaeda protagonists. Similarly,
the producers think we’re all emotionally healed enough now to put the Cold War
behind us: “This is a show where the enemies are the heroes, with all
the questions that come with that,” said creator Joe
Weisberg, a former CIA agent. “You couldn't do that right after
the Cold War. But you can do it 30 years later.”
To compel viewers
to root for the enemy, Weisberg says he wants viewers to “take a hard look at
both sides of the Cold War,” as THR
phrased it. I don’t know what his politics are, but it’s typical of
progressives to want to recast America as the bad guy in any given conflict. He
calls the opposing sides in that war “really competing value systems,” which is
putting it mildly, and suggests that capitalism isn’t all it’s cracked up to
be: “There’s no question that repressive socialism failed, but unbridled
consumption hasn’t exactly led to great satisfaction – and one problem is how
do we express that dramatically.”
Note how he said
“repressive” socialism failed, which could be interpreted to mean that a non-repressive socialism – as if there
were such a thing – would work. This is characteristic of the progressive
mindset: forever unwilling to admit that Communism is inherently disastrous,
and forever determined to get it right this
time. As for “unbridled consumption,” no one claims that consumption alone equals
happiness - but standing in line to buy
a big-screen TV in a capitalist society is much more satisfying than standing
in line to buy bread in a socialist society.
These comments
led me to believe that the show would be blatantly anti-American. That
impression was completely off-base. In
its first episode, The Americans describes
Reagan’s America as “strong and capable.” Patriotic citizens are shown singing
our national anthem and waving flags, without the slightest tinge of ridicule
from the filmmakers. FBI agents are shown as decent men dedicated to national
security, rather than corrupt and thuggish. A government official declares, “We
have truth and justice on our side, and we will prevail” – without a hint of
irony or sarcasm.
Contrast that
with the movie Superman Returns from several
years ago, in which the filmmakers altered Superman’s famous tagline from
“Truth, justice and the American way” to the flippant, cynical “Truth, justice and all that stuff.”
After many years
undercover, “the American way” is starting to seduce the show’s husband. In one
riveting confrontation, his wife, an ice-hearted true believer, is aghast when he
suggests that they betray the motherland, take the money the American
government is offering defectors, and embrace the good life. “America’s not so
bad,” he argues. “What’s so bad about it? The electricity works all the time,
food’s pretty great… We would have a great life because we would have money.”
He accuses her of resenting the Americanization of their children. “I’m not finished with them yet,” she replies,
revealing the totalitarianism at the heart of her ideology. “They don’t have to
be regular Americans. They could be socialists -”
“They’re not
gonna be socialists,” he shoots back. “This place doesn’t turn out socialists.”
Sadly, in 2013 it does; we have even installed one in the Oval Office itself.
Maybe we didn’t win the Cold War in the long run after all.
The show’s Soviet
spies may be compelling protagonists, but they are not portrayed as “the
heroes,” despite the creator’s claim, and America’s role in the Cold War is not
called into question. Not yet, anyway; anything could happen in the remainder
of the series, of course, including Hollywood’s predictable anti-American sucker
punches. But based solely on this first episode, I can’t recommend The Americans highly enough to viewers
who want to root for the real good
guys.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 2/4/13)
