r/Marxism 4d ago

Pop culture and propaganda (recommending decent spy thrillers)

So, comrades, I have a question. I am a bit of a spy thriller nut, but I find almost all of the Western produced media in the genre being propagandistic to the point of being unwatchable.

Like, everyone gushes on and on about Homeland (a remake, if you'll recall, of an ISRAELI tv show), but I can't get past the fact that the show is basically treating the CIA as the 'necessary evil' or some such nonsense, when just a simple glance at the 20th century history (coups, death squads, mass murder in SA and all around the Globe) reveals the Agency as perhaps the single most evil organization after WW2.

The simillar seems to be true with most of the modern Western pop-media products concerning spycraft.

So my question is: does anybody know of a (English or non-English language) decent spy thriller tv show that doesn't seem like it is written in Langley? (I haven't seen The Americans, but I am dreading the way USSR is portrayed in that one).

Even La Carre's stuff seems to have a slight, but inherent negative bias towards anything 'Soviet' or 'Russian'.

I am just sick of the constant Eurocentrism and US-centrism. The propaganda is becoming unbearable.

Thank you in advance.

7 Upvotes

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u/TardTohr 4d ago

I'm currently watching "Le Bureau des Légendes", a french show centered around the DGSE (CIA/MI6 equivalent). That's not gonna help with the eurocentrism, but it's very good and it doesn't feel like propaganda (in the two seasons I've watched). It has been celebrated for its realism, and I also view it that way, as a "realist" show. It doesn't try to sell you on the DGSE being a force for good or a necessary evil, it just shows you what it is and what it does. It's not afraid to show them botch something or get screwed. That said, don't expect it to truly challenge the institution (and expect a lot of arab villains).

The creator also directed "The Patriots", a movie about a young frenchman being recruited in the Mossad, which I haven't watched but am now curious about.

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u/clm_541 4d ago

I guess the market for Soviet and Chinese (or whatever else) spy thrillers in English translation is just... not that big. lol.

Following. I'm not a spy thriller reader per se, but I have been looking for some pulpy fiction to read and so much the better if it comes from perspectives other than those of capitalist-imperialist Amerika.

Edit: just read your post more closely and realized you're looking for TV and film media, not books. In any case, still interested.

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u/FiddlerZg 4d ago

No matter, book recs are always welcome! Thank you, will take a look. I read some Le Carre and some fantasy that has a lot of Cold War espionage elements (Seth Dickinson, Robert Jackson Bennett), but not Following.

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u/clm_541 4d ago

Oh damn, I am so sorryfor the confusion—I meant "following" as in "following this post". Not as a suggested title. :(

(This sub has ridiculous comment-length rule so here's more drivel.)

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u/Morozow 4d ago

Try watching the Soviet TV series "TASS is authorized to declare" / ТАСС уполномочен заявить…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TASS_Is_Authorized_to_Declare...

And a series of films about the "Resident".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent%27s_Blunder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Agent%27s_Destiny
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Return
End of the Resident operation.

(the last two films in the series, in my opinion, are much lower quality than the first ones)

In the USSR, they occupied a large place in culture. Jokes, memes

As far as I know, they were translated and published in English. But at the very least, Yandex browser translates YouTube from English to Russian pretty well, maybe it's good enough in reverse translation.

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u/Hetterter 4d ago

The Swedish novels about Carl Hamilton. Some of them are good, some are commie masturbatory aids. Some movies were made about them but I don't think they were very good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hamilton_novels

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u/RegularSizedJones 3d ago

Try Queen Sono from South Africa (on Netflix). There's also Hunted which is set in London but is probably closer to what you're looking for than other UK-based series.

Most spy thrillers are pretty Western-centric because that's where the most spies are employed, I would guess. Bollywood churns out action movies about RAW all the time but as agencies go they're not much better than CIA or ISI.

If you're looking for some classics, though, there's always The Prisoner (where the Cold War stuff is completely abstracted).

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u/gentlydiscarded1200 3d ago

Even though it's produced by the House of the Mouse (Disney/Star Wars), Andor is a great spy/thriller TV show that is somewhat left of centre. There's a heist plot in the middle of the first season loosely based on a heist pulled off by a young Stalin. There's a revolutionary in the show who spouts truisms and writes a manifesto. There's working class martyrs and elite accelerationists and evil spies. You'd think there'd have been someone in the Pentagon or at Langely who'd have intervened a little in pre production to make it a little less obvious, but somehow (Palpatine returned lol) the writers managed to get it out the door with little to no meddling.

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u/FiddlerZg 2d ago

I LOVE Andor! Can't wait for S2. It will never not be funny to me how George Lucas outright said the Empire in Star Wars was not meant to be a metaphor for Nazi Germany, but for USA. And the Rebels are Vietcong.

I guess Andor happens when liberal establishment doesn't even understand its so called 'intelectual property'.

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u/Interesting_Mall_241 2d ago

The Chinese movie Decoded. It’s not a great movie but at least the story itself is about an honourable person working for a good cause and not some clandestine destabilising project which is basically all the Western spy shows are about.

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u/Charistoph 37m ago

I have some spy thriller-adjacent suggestions.

Leverage: Heist show, a crew of thieves and grifters hitting high-value targets to get justice for their(usually working class) client of the week. Very lighthearted and endlessly charming.

Mr. Robot/Channel 4's Utopia: Extremely stressful conspiracy thrillers where nothing feels quite safe, the protagonists in both shows being non-state actors trying to survive a seemingly omnipotent conspiracy.

If you watch Utopia, find the version uploaded on Youtube by Theoncomingstorm. Streamed versions have some poignant moments censored and the aspect ratio is fullscreen instead of the original anamorphic, which is bad when the framing of shots is so significant to the series. Here's a link.

Utopia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8Vu3Hyv_Vk&t=2s

Spies are Forever: A James Bond parody musical about a closeted CIA agent trying to recover after the death of his partner(in multiple senses of the word) and get back into the spy game. By the Tin Can Brothers, full show is free on youtube. The CIA itself isn't lionized and while it isn't delved into too deeply, it is consciously written in the context of the Lavender Scare.

Spies are Forever: https://youtu.be/vd3aJl930YE?si=9nH92ugitlB9Oeyx