December 5, 2011 • 25 mins
How have women's roles in spy film and TV changed over time? Join Cristen and Caroline as they take a look back at the history of the spy genre and famous fictional female spies.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From House Towards dot com. This podcast is brought to
you by Audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider of
audio books, with more than eighty five thousand downloadable titles
(00:21):
across all types of literature. For stepmom Never Told You listeners,
Audible is offering a free audio book to give you
a chance to try out their service. One audiobook to
consider is bossy Pants by comedian Tina fe Fas. Story
is a great example of a woman who goes after
what she wants and gets it, albeit with pitfalls and
humor along the way. That's bossy Pants, available from Audible.
(00:44):
To try Audible Free today and get a free audiobook
of your choice, go to Audible podcast dot com slash
mom Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot com slash mom Stuff.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm
Kristin's Kristen. I love what we're about to talk about.
(01:05):
We're about to talk about spy ladies on TV and
I wanted to cover this topic because there was a
recent article on Slate asking why there are so many
women spies on television. But I also hold this topic
near and dear to my heart because I currently on
my shelf at home have every single DVD of um
(01:28):
usas the fem Nikita sitting there, and I'm washed and love.
I had no idea about the secret lovel with fem Nikita.
There's all this stuff you don't know about me kristin
Romance Nikita. It goes on and on. But I want
to talk about why spy ladies are so intriguing. But
(01:49):
I mean, first we should probably back up and talk
about the spy genre in general and how it got
its start and how it inspired so much film and
TV and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Um, the spy
genre kicks off not surprisingly really with Ian Fleming, who
created the James Bond figure and dr No. The first
(02:12):
James Bond movie premiered in nineteen sixty two, which really
kicked off the spy craze, and um, the peak of
the spy, the early spy craze, so nineteen sixty two
to nineteen seventy three. But it wasn't just serious spies
like James Bond, right, Yeah, it kind of it took
a turn after a little while, once the once the
(02:34):
spy craze emerged, they started being slightly less serious, maybe
kind of buddy comedies, buddy comedy type spy shows, and
then there were parodies and and it keeps kind of
of circulating like that. I feel like, um, now we've
kind of now we've kind of gotten back more to
the serious, serious spies. Although there was that movie remake
(02:56):
of Get Smart with Steve Carrell, so so it's it's
cycling around, it comes and goes. Um, But we're really
here to talk about the women in these uh and
these spy films, especially women in spy shows on television. Right. Well,
you mentioned the dawn of the spy craze, which is
(03:18):
in the sixties and seventies, and Tom Losanti and Louis
Paul investigated this period. Um. They have a book called
film Fatale Film not not film film film film film fatale,
little play on words. I know, indeed, that's why I
tripped over it. Women in espionage films and television from
nineteen fifty two to nineteen seventy three, and they broke
(03:40):
down the four types of women that most frequently occurred
in these shows. And movies. Now, keep in mind, this
was before we had the butt kicking women of today,
like like Nikita and like Piper Parabose character on covert Affairs. Um.
So there breakdown was with the following four women. Number one,
we have the hell full spy slash secret agent slash operative.
(04:03):
She supports the hero, the quote unquote hero because the
women aren't heroes yet um and sometimes pays for it
with her life. Oh. Then we have the innocent, who's
usually a civilian who inadvertently stumbles into the action, is
mistaken for a spy, has secret information the enemy is after,
or has revenge on her mind. I feel like this
would be me accidentally stumble into something really like guys
(04:24):
this the party? Oh no, mafia. No. This reminds me
that innocent trope reminds me of Scarecrow, and Mrs King
reminds me of the Mrs King character. It was a
Ganga family favorite. Okay, I uh what, I don't know
what that is. She was this She was just like
an innocent, you know. And then she's got Scarecrow, this
(04:46):
handsome guy who happens to also be a secret agent
and has to protect her. But really the whole spy
thing is just um a framework for their budding romance, right,
as it often is in some of these movies. Yeah, okay,
Well we also have the bad girl turned good. She's
usually assigned to kill the hero, but after seducing him,
(05:07):
they end up joining forces, and she typically ends up
being killed either by her former bad guy boss or
by the hero himself. And that probably happened in quite
a lot of James Bond movies. Yeah, seduction, the sexy
seductress is overwhelmed by oxytocin wants say intercourse, and the
bonding ensues and then she dies. Right, I hate when
(05:31):
that happens. And then, last, but not least, we have
the villainous slash film Fatale, slash assassin, who, according to
these two gentlemen, is pure evil and she is sometimes
a double agent, so she's a double crosser and she's
trying to outwit the hero, and of course she fails
and she dies. So they always died, all of these like,
she's really good and she dies, she's evil and she dies.
(05:53):
It's just it just happens. So yeah, anyway, Um, and
one there was a quote too in the film Fatale
that I thought, uh, summed up that period really nicely,
they wrote, and this is in relation to the spy
agent craze from six seventy three. They write, without the
women to allure, entice, seduce, and sometimes destroy our heroes,
(06:16):
where would the entertainment be. For the most part, women
in the spy genre where used as mere window dressing,
but decked in some of the most outrageously mod fashions
and hairstyles of the sixties. It was hard, You're keep
hard to keep your eyes off of them, no matter
how absurd the plot. So even though the women were
often second tier to these handsome action male spies, they
(06:37):
were necessary to drive the plot arc exactly and had
a little eye candy. Sure thing. Now let's get a
little more serious, break it down, um. Rosie White wrote
a book called Violent Films another another play, Yeah Yeah,
Women as Spies in popular culture, and she writes a
(06:58):
lot about femininity and masculinity and how spying and being
under cover sort of plays into our gender roles, and
how female spies are supposedly you know, they're playing on
really feminine traits of like deception and using their charm
and beauty, you know, just exactly exactly, and and um
(07:24):
more masculine traits of of the action hero and being
brave and getting in on the action and all that stuff.
And um, she says that spying is an appropriate trope
to employ when discussing gender, as femininity like masculinity is
always undercover, and you know, female spies are allowed to
be violent, which goes against the whole stereotypical understanding of
(07:45):
what it is to be feminine. And UM, A lot
of the commentary on the evolution of female spies in
television and in popular culture UM relates back to this, um,
this gendered our argument and basically says that you can
sort of use that evolution to track social changes among
(08:06):
women's roles in the workforce and just in their daily
lives as well, sort of the tracking the empowerment of
women over the years. Yeah, and they talk. There's definitely
a moving away from the seductress the film fatale of
villainous to the good female spy quote unquote and the
new woman who was often um, she's killing for the
(08:28):
right reasons, for her government, for her country, for her agency,
whatever underground secret thing it might be, or the CIA
or whatever whatever that particular show is using. But um, Yeah,
this new woman, White writes is rarely depicted as maternal,
and she's more often situated within the professional workplace. So
it's a woman going to work and work just happens
(08:51):
to be a secret spy agency, which is super cool,
which means that it's really handy for TV shows to
have these these spy characters because they can just do
whatever they want because one day she could be at Langley.
The next day for the next hour, I don't know,
she could be in China or cord it's so easily
(09:14):
be in China in an hour because that's spy technology.
You can't also can't argue with spy technology, right, if
it doesn't make sense, it doesn't matter. It's for spies. Yeah.
I just watched The Guineas last night, and you know
that one kid has oil that comes out of his shoes.
I mean they might have something like that, but rockets
come out of their shoes. Yeah, and you can get
to China in an hour. Yeah, thanks to that. And
they're always pretty well dressed. But at the same time,
(09:35):
it seems like too there's a lot of conflict in
their personal life. You know, they're really busy and they're
obviously like well educated and smart and can shape shift
and speak different languages. But when shape shift, when the
when the mission is over, all they have is a
cat to feed. Ah dang, that's like a batman with
(09:56):
Cat Woman. She's not a spy, but she comes home
to her cats and way, that's not that's off topic,
but it made me think I kind of had my
own own theory about all this sort of riffing off
what Rosie White was writing about in Violent Films is
that it's also this whole spy genre as it applies
to women is also kind of I don't know a
vehicle for talking about that whole women can have it
(10:19):
all conflict of having like the killer cool job and
the jet setting and everything like that, but there always
seems to be some kind of some missing piece in
these characters lives. Unless your Cinnamon Carter from Mission Impossible
and she just keeps it cool all the time. She
never seen it. Mission Impossible in nineteen sixty six premieres.
(10:39):
That's when during that first spy craze, when things kind
of shifted back to from the farce with Gets Smart,
which came out in nineteen sixty five, back to Mission
Impossible and oh man. I watched a lot of Mission
Mission Impossible on TV Land and it's good stuff. Yeah,
I I have a much more limited experience with spy characters.
(11:03):
I pretty much was was La fem Nikita all the
way and I really haven't. I haven't identified with the
news by my sister in law. I got her into
the fem Nikita and then she started watching Alias and
she tried to get me into it. She's like, it's
just like the fem Nikita and some apparently saying some
of the characters came over, like the woman. If any
of you out there watched the fem Niquita, the woman
who played Madeline was also on the show, and then
(11:25):
then she was also on twenty four because a lot
of the fem Nikita Femniquita people went over to twenty four. Anyway,
I think, do you have a secret fan blog from Niquita? No,
but I did. Used to have a geo Citi's website.
Sorry you can't find a geo Cities got blown up
by the internet, um where I talked a lot about it.
He doesn't exactly fancy still exists. I don't know. I
(11:48):
lost a whole piece in my life, but I feel
like we do need to go back before fem Nikita,
to those early sixties female spies, especially the ones in
The Avengers who not only um brought about the whole
female spine in a cat suit when when we had
to start wearing leather cats suits because obviously it's so
(12:08):
easy to move around in an entire leather body suit
and it's breathable. I'm surely no sweating um. But a
lot of these uh commentators, but a lot of these
writers attribute m Appeal, Modesty Blaze and Mrs Emily Polifax
for really changing the narrative for female spies on television
(12:29):
because they were a lot more serious and yes they
were attractive and stylish and mad, but they were getting
the job done. Yeah, and they were emerging as real
protagonists and heroes rather than just being like the Bond
girls emerging from the surf and bikinis down Barry Um.
But yeah, so m Pele her character was brilliant, known
(12:50):
for her cat suit, and that show The Avengers was
stuff had a pretty good run. And while The Avengers
was set in the UK, we had Get Smart, which
was the American which was an American setting with agent
and I have his vivid memory of watching an episode
(13:11):
of Get Smart, and Agent ninety nine played by Barbara
Feldon is trapped in this telephone booth and she's wearing
a diamond ring. She's like, what am I gonna do?
I'm stuck in this booth. Oh yeah, I'm wearing a diamond.
Diamond stronger than glass. So she cuts herself out of
Oh it was a sitcom. I'm covering. I'm covering my
(13:31):
my headphone because I don't want to I don't want
to hear this kind of that. But she cuts herself
out of it. And and that's when I learned that
diamonds can really get you out of a jam educational programming,
unless it's a blood diamond. Oh yeah, we don't want
to mess with that with the whole other podcast. Yeah,
she was. She was protecting the gentleman on the show.
Um a lot of the time. She had to sort
(13:53):
of rescue him from himself because he was kind of bumbling.
He was such a goof, goof. Uh yeah. And then
if we're going chronologically, we had La fem Nikita with
Nikita played by Peter Wilson. That show ran from ninety
seven to two thousand one. We have Alias, which is
right after that which Jennifer Garner played Sydney Bristow from
(14:15):
two thousand one to two thousand and six. And what
I thought was interesting was that there's this quote by j. J. Abrams,
who was the creator of Felicity, and he said that
he would have loved to make a show this is
pre Alias. Obviously, he would love to make a show
where Felicity was a spy. And so here she is
like this innocent little college girl in love with torn
between these two guys, Ben and Nol. Yeah, Been and Noll.
(14:40):
And you know how fun would it be if she
like went off and had spy adventures that her boyfriends
didn't know about? Would she wouldn't? But Jennifer Garner co
starred one season on Felicity as Knowles like former flame
and ended up marrying Noel briefly in real life and
really and then Netflix, we're putting together all the nieces
(15:02):
of this spy history almost sort of fit together. Um.
But yeah, so I thought that was cool, Like he
had it in his mind that he wanted to make
this spy show with this like sweet college girl, and
he and sunmaking a show Alias where a girl who
has just a woman woman who has just graduated college
or grad school or something, is recruited. Yeah, and she
she kicks, but yeah, wears wigs and stuff. And it's
(15:25):
on from two thousand and one to two thousand and six.
So yeah, in the early two thousand's, that's when it
seems like we have this, uh real shift in the
number of leading female spies on television. And I believe
it's Rosie White who attributes that to UM the earlier shows,
including Buffy the Vampire Slayer which came out it was
(15:49):
on from two thousand three, so there's some overlap, but
shows like Xena, Buffy, UM, even the remake of Charlie's Angel,
she says, and Laura Croft tamb Reader's care Her helped
fuel this new female action hero that then possibly bled
into this female spy genre, right, And Buffy is and
(16:11):
was so incredibly popular. I mean, I know, I watched
pretty much every episode until like I kind of stilly
towards the end, like she got a sister that she
didn't have before. Careful at no, I know, not not
to insult. Maybe I just don't grew it. I don't know.
But yeah, so there's like this whole slew of butt
kicking ladies, and well, I was just watching Felicity. God,
(16:31):
I love Hey, don't I loved Felicity. I watched that too. Yeah,
I was just thinking the other day that I would
I would watch all of that on Netflix again if
it were available. I don't know if it is, you know, well,
not that I have time, but if I did anyway.
So now, nowadays we have Covert Affairs starring Piper paarabout
as Annie Walker, and she is super undercover, like she's
(16:55):
the traditional thing we think of when we think of
a spy, like she works for the CIA. None of
her friends and family know that the spy. Yeah, they
just know she has this job like whatever, doing whatever,
working with the government maybe, But yeah, she actually has
to lie about being a spy. And there's all these
rules for her life, like she's very structured. She can't
date foreigners and you know, all sorts of stuff like that.
But she has great hair. Meanwhile, she was looks very
(17:15):
sharp in her suit. That's the thing with all of this. Uh.
I actually ran across a Marie Claire article that was
how to dress like a spy because they're always female.
Spies are always so well dressed on television exactly. We'll
get back, like, I can't go much longer without talking
about her. And then we've got to mention Sarah Walker,
the character in Chuck that's been on since two thousand seven,
(17:38):
and she kind of falls under that helpful spy operative
because she has to, um, she has to protect the
bumbling hero, right, just like Age nine nine. Um. And
then we have a show that's actually gotten a ton
of positive attention in the media, which is Homeland starring
Claire Danes as Carrie Matheson, and that just started this
(18:00):
season on Showtime, I believe, and her character suspects that
a recovered prisoner of war is an Al Qaeda operative,
and so she's trying to prove all this stuff. Meanwhile,
she has bipolar disorder, but she can't take medicine for
it because if it gets out that she's taking medicine,
then she could compromise her credibility and all this stuff. Okay,
(18:24):
so we're talking about, um, you know, femininity, masculine traits,
being a spy, being undercover, being tough and beautiful and
you know, having it all and um, what's interesting is
a look at taking a look at Nikita. Uh, particularly
Peter Wilson's character, because that's what I know everything about. Um. Anyway, Um,
(18:44):
she was taken straight out of jail, taken off the streets,
and taught how to be a proper quote unquote proper
woman because she was this really rough, like punky street
urchin type girl who was falsely accused of murdering a
police officer. So she's in al she's going to be executed,
and uh, they they somehow get her out of jail
(19:04):
and she wakes up in this cell and she is
trained how to be a killing machine. But she has
the character of Madeline teaching her how to be like
proper because you know, she's she's really rough. She's kind
of rough round the edges. She's taught how to do
her hair, to her makeup, were a sexy dress, charm,
you know, live if she needs to. Um. But yeah,
(19:25):
then she's also taught how to totally kill politicians and
you know, world leaders and whatnot. So it's it's interesting
the the the dichotomy. And similarly, Rosie White from The
Violent Fems Well from the book Not the Band Um
writes about Sydney Bristow from Alias that she represents the
(19:48):
new woman in the twenty one century economies of white
collar labor. She writes she's fetishized as a femay tal,
an active woman who kills yet also occupies the role
of central protagonist and world touchstone. Right, Yeah, because, um,
both of them are are sort of thrown into these situations.
And like Nikita, she is she's a tool of this agency.
(20:11):
So you know, we had kind of talked about like
the right killing for the right reasons earlier. So she's
a tool of this international agency that's meant to kill
bad guys and stuff. But she maintains her sensitivity in
that she's like, oh my god, I can't just kill
all these random people. And so she's sort of fighting
back against that, and she maintains her whole the whole show.
She's struggling to maintain her humanity and remain sort of,
(20:34):
you know, a woman underneath all of this like really
tough killing machine stuff. So and I think the same
is true for Sydney. Um, she was recruited into a
secret organization. She finds out that they're actually some bad guys,
some of the bad guys, and she goes to the
CIA with this information and it turns out that her
(20:54):
father is also in the secret organization, and but they're
both they both become double agents or her father's already
double agent or whatever, and they both come from like
really shadowy backgrounds. Nikita doesn't know her mother, hasn't seen
her mother since she was a child, and Sydney thought
her mother was dead or something, and her mother's actually
Russian spy. That's a that seems like Another commonality is
a strange relationship with one or both parental figures. Yeah,
(21:18):
or just like the hero of mythology or any story
across cultures, you know, the hero comes from shadowy backgrounds
to come up through the ranks and combat the status
quo and save the day. Yeah, and perhaps challenge gendered
stereotype in this case. Who knew. I'm getting all worked
up about about Nikita. I'm gonna have to watch that.
(21:40):
Which is I will loan you all of the seasons.
Please do use a new show. Um, well, I know
that we haven't talked about all of the uh, all
the female spy characters on TV by any stretch of
the imagination, but we just highlighted some of those leading ladies.
And I'll be really curious to see just from listeners,
(22:01):
what what women that we did not mention and shows
that we really did not UM didn't highlight if they
have a take on that, and also why other people
think that there are so many female spies on television? Yeah,
do you enjoy watching them more or less than male spies?
You know, do you like watching the ladies kick butt?
Because another contrast to UM, A lot of leading male spies,
(22:24):
a lot of times they are typically either they're they're
motivated because of some love, some long term like woman
who's either been lost or is haunting in some kind
of way. And it seems like a lot of times
with the female spies they're more romantically to t exactly
(22:44):
because if you look at the Michael character and the
fem Nikita, he had this great love that he lost
and he's like dead inside, so he might as well
be killing machine and then Nikita reawakens them. So whereas
women are often portrayed as these honeypots, these these spies ductresses,
in reality, perhaps you know, men are the motionally more vulnerable. Yeah,
(23:06):
they're they're a little damage, so they kill people. M hmm. Interesting,
so much to think about. Yeah, well, let us know
what you think about female spuzzle on television. Mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot Com is our email address,
and we got a couple of emails here to share already.
(23:27):
This is from Kevin about our romance novel podcast. I
heard you guys comment about amnesia related romance novels and
it reminded me of my friend Lara Krigger's deconstruction of
the Harlequin romance novel pregn Asia. No, I'm not making
that up. I wish I were. If you want to laugh,
here's a link to the summary of Lara live tweeting
(23:47):
the book while she read it. The plot is Da
Da Dat Special and if you want to read that,
go to storify dot com pregn Asia. It's incredible. I've
got an email here, also about romance novels, and this
is coming from Mallory, who has been reading romance for
(24:08):
about seven years and it's critically studying it in college,
she says her master thesis was on gender ideology and
romance novel heroines who cross dress. Listening, she writes, please
don't subscribe to the idea that romance is full of
heroines who are too stupid to live or who serve
as shells for the reader. There are plenty of smart, funny,
(24:29):
and high achieving romance novel heroines don't sell the genre short.
Women who read romance have to defend their reading habits
both on gender and class fronts, and the genre itself
tends to be pretty self reflective. Romance, for the most part,
is written by women, for women and about women, and
that maybe why women in particular find it so enjoyable
(24:50):
to read. There aren't many sources of pop pop culture
that put women as the heroes of their own stories
except maybe fe with that mom set. Do stuff works
dot Com is the email find us on Facebook as well,
and follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and
you can check out our blog during the week, It's
(25:11):
stuff Mom Never told You at how Stuff Works dot com.
This podcast is brought to you by Audible dot com,
the Internet's leading provider of audio books, with more than
eighty five thousand downloadable titles across all types of literature
and featuring audio versions of many New York Times bestsellers.
(25:32):
To try Audible free today and get a free audio
book of your choice, go to Audible podcast dot com
slash mom Stuff That's Audible podcast dot com slash Mom
Stuff the House, Stuff Works, iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
(25:53):
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From House Towards dot com. This podcast is brought to
you by Audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider of
audio books, with more than eighty five thousand downloadable titles
(00:21):
across all types of literature. For stepmom Never Told You listeners,
Audible is offering a free audio book to give you
a chance to try out their service. One audiobook to
consider is bossy Pants by comedian Tina fe Fas. Story
is a great example of a woman who goes after
what she wants and gets it, albeit with pitfalls and
humor along the way. That's bossy Pants, available from Audible.
(00:44):
To try Audible Free today and get a free audiobook
of your choice, go to Audible podcast dot com slash
mom Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot com slash mom Stuff.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm
Kristin's Kristen. I love what we're about to talk about.
(01:05):
We're about to talk about spy ladies on TV and
I wanted to cover this topic because there was a
recent article on Slate asking why there are so many
women spies on television. But I also hold this topic
near and dear to my heart because I currently on
my shelf at home have every single DVD of um
(01:28):
usas the fem Nikita sitting there, and I'm washed and love.
I had no idea about the secret lovel with fem Nikita.
There's all this stuff you don't know about me kristin
Romance Nikita. It goes on and on. But I want
to talk about why spy ladies are so intriguing. But
(01:49):
I mean, first we should probably back up and talk
about the spy genre in general and how it got
its start and how it inspired so much film and
TV and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Um, the spy
genre kicks off not surprisingly really with Ian Fleming, who
created the James Bond figure and dr No. The first
(02:12):
James Bond movie premiered in nineteen sixty two, which really
kicked off the spy craze, and um, the peak of
the spy, the early spy craze, so nineteen sixty two
to nineteen seventy three. But it wasn't just serious spies
like James Bond, right, Yeah, it kind of it took
a turn after a little while, once the once the
(02:34):
spy craze emerged, they started being slightly less serious, maybe
kind of buddy comedies, buddy comedy type spy shows, and
then there were parodies and and it keeps kind of
of circulating like that. I feel like, um, now we've
kind of now we've kind of gotten back more to
the serious, serious spies. Although there was that movie remake
(02:56):
of Get Smart with Steve Carrell, so so it's it's
cycling around, it comes and goes. Um, But we're really
here to talk about the women in these uh and
these spy films, especially women in spy shows on television. Right. Well,
you mentioned the dawn of the spy craze, which is
(03:18):
in the sixties and seventies, and Tom Losanti and Louis
Paul investigated this period. Um. They have a book called
film Fatale Film not not film film film film film fatale,
little play on words. I know, indeed, that's why I
tripped over it. Women in espionage films and television from
nineteen fifty two to nineteen seventy three, and they broke
(03:40):
down the four types of women that most frequently occurred
in these shows. And movies. Now, keep in mind, this
was before we had the butt kicking women of today,
like like Nikita and like Piper Parabose character on covert Affairs. Um.
So there breakdown was with the following four women. Number one,
we have the hell full spy slash secret agent slash operative.
(04:03):
She supports the hero, the quote unquote hero because the
women aren't heroes yet um and sometimes pays for it
with her life. Oh. Then we have the innocent, who's
usually a civilian who inadvertently stumbles into the action, is
mistaken for a spy, has secret information the enemy is after,
or has revenge on her mind. I feel like this
would be me accidentally stumble into something really like guys
(04:24):
this the party? Oh no, mafia. No. This reminds me
that innocent trope reminds me of Scarecrow, and Mrs King
reminds me of the Mrs King character. It was a
Ganga family favorite. Okay, I uh what, I don't know
what that is. She was this She was just like
an innocent, you know. And then she's got Scarecrow, this
(04:46):
handsome guy who happens to also be a secret agent
and has to protect her. But really the whole spy
thing is just um a framework for their budding romance, right,
as it often is in some of these movies. Yeah, okay,
Well we also have the bad girl turned good. She's
usually assigned to kill the hero, but after seducing him,
(05:07):
they end up joining forces, and she typically ends up
being killed either by her former bad guy boss or
by the hero himself. And that probably happened in quite
a lot of James Bond movies. Yeah, seduction, the sexy
seductress is overwhelmed by oxytocin wants say intercourse, and the
bonding ensues and then she dies. Right, I hate when
(05:31):
that happens. And then, last, but not least, we have
the villainous slash film Fatale, slash assassin, who, according to
these two gentlemen, is pure evil and she is sometimes
a double agent, so she's a double crosser and she's
trying to outwit the hero, and of course she fails
and she dies. So they always died, all of these like,
she's really good and she dies, she's evil and she dies.
(05:53):
It's just it just happens. So yeah, anyway, Um, and
one there was a quote too in the film Fatale
that I thought, uh, summed up that period really nicely,
they wrote, and this is in relation to the spy
agent craze from six seventy three. They write, without the
women to allure, entice, seduce, and sometimes destroy our heroes,
(06:16):
where would the entertainment be. For the most part, women
in the spy genre where used as mere window dressing,
but decked in some of the most outrageously mod fashions
and hairstyles of the sixties. It was hard, You're keep
hard to keep your eyes off of them, no matter
how absurd the plot. So even though the women were
often second tier to these handsome action male spies, they
(06:37):
were necessary to drive the plot arc exactly and had
a little eye candy. Sure thing. Now let's get a
little more serious, break it down, um. Rosie White wrote
a book called Violent Films another another play, Yeah Yeah,
Women as Spies in popular culture, and she writes a
(06:58):
lot about femininity and masculinity and how spying and being
under cover sort of plays into our gender roles, and
how female spies are supposedly you know, they're playing on
really feminine traits of like deception and using their charm
and beauty, you know, just exactly exactly, and and um
(07:24):
more masculine traits of of the action hero and being
brave and getting in on the action and all that stuff.
And um, she says that spying is an appropriate trope
to employ when discussing gender, as femininity like masculinity is
always undercover, and you know, female spies are allowed to
be violent, which goes against the whole stereotypical understanding of
(07:45):
what it is to be feminine. And UM, A lot
of the commentary on the evolution of female spies in
television and in popular culture UM relates back to this, um,
this gendered our argument and basically says that you can
sort of use that evolution to track social changes among
(08:06):
women's roles in the workforce and just in their daily
lives as well, sort of the tracking the empowerment of
women over the years. Yeah, and they talk. There's definitely
a moving away from the seductress the film fatale of
villainous to the good female spy quote unquote and the
new woman who was often um, she's killing for the
(08:28):
right reasons, for her government, for her country, for her agency,
whatever underground secret thing it might be, or the CIA
or whatever whatever that particular show is using. But um, Yeah,
this new woman, White writes is rarely depicted as maternal,
and she's more often situated within the professional workplace. So
it's a woman going to work and work just happens
(08:51):
to be a secret spy agency, which is super cool,
which means that it's really handy for TV shows to
have these these spy characters because they can just do
whatever they want because one day she could be at Langley.
The next day for the next hour, I don't know,
she could be in China or cord it's so easily
(09:14):
be in China in an hour because that's spy technology.
You can't also can't argue with spy technology, right, if
it doesn't make sense, it doesn't matter. It's for spies. Yeah.
I just watched The Guineas last night, and you know
that one kid has oil that comes out of his shoes.
I mean they might have something like that, but rockets
come out of their shoes. Yeah, and you can get
to China in an hour. Yeah, thanks to that. And
they're always pretty well dressed. But at the same time,
(09:35):
it seems like too there's a lot of conflict in
their personal life. You know, they're really busy and they're
obviously like well educated and smart and can shape shift
and speak different languages. But when shape shift, when the
when the mission is over, all they have is a
cat to feed. Ah dang, that's like a batman with
(09:56):
Cat Woman. She's not a spy, but she comes home
to her cats and way, that's not that's off topic,
but it made me think I kind of had my
own own theory about all this sort of riffing off
what Rosie White was writing about in Violent Films is
that it's also this whole spy genre as it applies
to women is also kind of I don't know a
vehicle for talking about that whole women can have it
(10:19):
all conflict of having like the killer cool job and
the jet setting and everything like that, but there always
seems to be some kind of some missing piece in
these characters lives. Unless your Cinnamon Carter from Mission Impossible
and she just keeps it cool all the time. She
never seen it. Mission Impossible in nineteen sixty six premieres.
(10:39):
That's when during that first spy craze, when things kind
of shifted back to from the farce with Gets Smart,
which came out in nineteen sixty five, back to Mission
Impossible and oh man. I watched a lot of Mission
Mission Impossible on TV Land and it's good stuff. Yeah,
I I have a much more limited experience with spy characters.
(11:03):
I pretty much was was La fem Nikita all the
way and I really haven't. I haven't identified with the
news by my sister in law. I got her into
the fem Nikita and then she started watching Alias and
she tried to get me into it. She's like, it's
just like the fem Nikita and some apparently saying some
of the characters came over, like the woman. If any
of you out there watched the fem Niquita, the woman
who played Madeline was also on the show, and then
(11:25):
then she was also on twenty four because a lot
of the fem Nikita Femniquita people went over to twenty four. Anyway,
I think, do you have a secret fan blog from Niquita? No,
but I did. Used to have a geo Citi's website.
Sorry you can't find a geo Cities got blown up
by the internet, um where I talked a lot about it.
He doesn't exactly fancy still exists. I don't know. I
(11:48):
lost a whole piece in my life, but I feel
like we do need to go back before fem Nikita,
to those early sixties female spies, especially the ones in
The Avengers who not only um brought about the whole
female spine in a cat suit when when we had
to start wearing leather cats suits because obviously it's so
(12:08):
easy to move around in an entire leather body suit
and it's breathable. I'm surely no sweating um. But a
lot of these uh commentators, but a lot of these
writers attribute m Appeal, Modesty Blaze and Mrs Emily Polifax
for really changing the narrative for female spies on television
(12:29):
because they were a lot more serious and yes they
were attractive and stylish and mad, but they were getting
the job done. Yeah, and they were emerging as real
protagonists and heroes rather than just being like the Bond
girls emerging from the surf and bikinis down Barry Um.
But yeah, so m Pele her character was brilliant, known
(12:50):
for her cat suit, and that show The Avengers was
stuff had a pretty good run. And while The Avengers
was set in the UK, we had Get Smart, which
was the American which was an American setting with agent
and I have his vivid memory of watching an episode
(13:11):
of Get Smart, and Agent ninety nine played by Barbara
Feldon is trapped in this telephone booth and she's wearing
a diamond ring. She's like, what am I gonna do?
I'm stuck in this booth. Oh yeah, I'm wearing a diamond.
Diamond stronger than glass. So she cuts herself out of
Oh it was a sitcom. I'm covering. I'm covering my
(13:31):
my headphone because I don't want to I don't want
to hear this kind of that. But she cuts herself
out of it. And and that's when I learned that
diamonds can really get you out of a jam educational programming,
unless it's a blood diamond. Oh yeah, we don't want
to mess with that with the whole other podcast. Yeah,
she was. She was protecting the gentleman on the show.
Um a lot of the time. She had to sort
(13:53):
of rescue him from himself because he was kind of bumbling.
He was such a goof, goof. Uh yeah. And then
if we're going chronologically, we had La fem Nikita with
Nikita played by Peter Wilson. That show ran from ninety
seven to two thousand one. We have Alias, which is
right after that which Jennifer Garner played Sydney Bristow from
(14:15):
two thousand one to two thousand and six. And what
I thought was interesting was that there's this quote by j. J. Abrams,
who was the creator of Felicity, and he said that
he would have loved to make a show this is
pre Alias. Obviously, he would love to make a show
where Felicity was a spy. And so here she is
like this innocent little college girl in love with torn
between these two guys, Ben and Nol. Yeah, Been and Noll.
(14:40):
And you know how fun would it be if she
like went off and had spy adventures that her boyfriends
didn't know about? Would she wouldn't? But Jennifer Garner co
starred one season on Felicity as Knowles like former flame
and ended up marrying Noel briefly in real life and
really and then Netflix, we're putting together all the nieces
(15:02):
of this spy history almost sort of fit together. Um.
But yeah, so I thought that was cool, Like he
had it in his mind that he wanted to make
this spy show with this like sweet college girl, and
he and sunmaking a show Alias where a girl who
has just a woman woman who has just graduated college
or grad school or something, is recruited. Yeah, and she
she kicks, but yeah, wears wigs and stuff. And it's
(15:25):
on from two thousand and one to two thousand and six.
So yeah, in the early two thousand's, that's when it
seems like we have this, uh real shift in the
number of leading female spies on television. And I believe
it's Rosie White who attributes that to UM the earlier shows,
including Buffy the Vampire Slayer which came out it was
(15:49):
on from two thousand three, so there's some overlap, but
shows like Xena, Buffy, UM, even the remake of Charlie's Angel,
she says, and Laura Croft tamb Reader's care Her helped
fuel this new female action hero that then possibly bled
into this female spy genre, right, And Buffy is and
(16:11):
was so incredibly popular. I mean, I know, I watched
pretty much every episode until like I kind of stilly
towards the end, like she got a sister that she
didn't have before. Careful at no, I know, not not
to insult. Maybe I just don't grew it. I don't know.
But yeah, so there's like this whole slew of butt
kicking ladies, and well, I was just watching Felicity. God,
(16:31):
I love Hey, don't I loved Felicity. I watched that too. Yeah,
I was just thinking the other day that I would
I would watch all of that on Netflix again if
it were available. I don't know if it is, you know, well,
not that I have time, but if I did anyway.
So now, nowadays we have Covert Affairs starring Piper paarabout
as Annie Walker, and she is super undercover, like she's
(16:55):
the traditional thing we think of when we think of
a spy, like she works for the CIA. None of
her friends and family know that the spy. Yeah, they
just know she has this job like whatever, doing whatever,
working with the government maybe, But yeah, she actually has
to lie about being a spy. And there's all these
rules for her life, like she's very structured. She can't
date foreigners and you know, all sorts of stuff like that.
But she has great hair. Meanwhile, she was looks very
(17:15):
sharp in her suit. That's the thing with all of this. Uh.
I actually ran across a Marie Claire article that was
how to dress like a spy because they're always female.
Spies are always so well dressed on television exactly. We'll
get back, like, I can't go much longer without talking
about her. And then we've got to mention Sarah Walker,
the character in Chuck that's been on since two thousand seven,
(17:38):
and she kind of falls under that helpful spy operative
because she has to, um, she has to protect the
bumbling hero, right, just like Age nine nine. Um. And
then we have a show that's actually gotten a ton
of positive attention in the media, which is Homeland starring
Claire Danes as Carrie Matheson, and that just started this
(18:00):
season on Showtime, I believe, and her character suspects that
a recovered prisoner of war is an Al Qaeda operative,
and so she's trying to prove all this stuff. Meanwhile,
she has bipolar disorder, but she can't take medicine for
it because if it gets out that she's taking medicine,
then she could compromise her credibility and all this stuff. Okay,
(18:24):
so we're talking about, um, you know, femininity, masculine traits,
being a spy, being undercover, being tough and beautiful and
you know, having it all and um, what's interesting is
a look at taking a look at Nikita. Uh, particularly
Peter Wilson's character, because that's what I know everything about. Um. Anyway, Um,
(18:44):
she was taken straight out of jail, taken off the streets,
and taught how to be a proper quote unquote proper
woman because she was this really rough, like punky street
urchin type girl who was falsely accused of murdering a
police officer. So she's in al she's going to be executed,
and uh, they they somehow get her out of jail
(19:04):
and she wakes up in this cell and she is
trained how to be a killing machine. But she has
the character of Madeline teaching her how to be like
proper because you know, she's she's really rough. She's kind
of rough round the edges. She's taught how to do
her hair, to her makeup, were a sexy dress, charm,
you know, live if she needs to. Um. But yeah,
(19:25):
then she's also taught how to totally kill politicians and
you know, world leaders and whatnot. So it's it's interesting
the the the dichotomy. And similarly, Rosie White from The
Violent Fems Well from the book Not the Band Um
writes about Sydney Bristow from Alias that she represents the
(19:48):
new woman in the twenty one century economies of white
collar labor. She writes she's fetishized as a femay tal,
an active woman who kills yet also occupies the role
of central protagonist and world touchstone. Right, Yeah, because, um,
both of them are are sort of thrown into these situations.
And like Nikita, she is she's a tool of this agency.
(20:11):
So you know, we had kind of talked about like
the right killing for the right reasons earlier. So she's
a tool of this international agency that's meant to kill
bad guys and stuff. But she maintains her sensitivity in
that she's like, oh my god, I can't just kill
all these random people. And so she's sort of fighting
back against that, and she maintains her whole the whole show.
She's struggling to maintain her humanity and remain sort of,
(20:34):
you know, a woman underneath all of this like really
tough killing machine stuff. So and I think the same
is true for Sydney. Um, she was recruited into a
secret organization. She finds out that they're actually some bad guys,
some of the bad guys, and she goes to the
CIA with this information and it turns out that her
(20:54):
father is also in the secret organization, and but they're
both they both become double agents or her father's already
double agent or whatever, and they both come from like
really shadowy backgrounds. Nikita doesn't know her mother, hasn't seen
her mother since she was a child, and Sydney thought
her mother was dead or something, and her mother's actually
Russian spy. That's a that seems like Another commonality is
a strange relationship with one or both parental figures. Yeah,
(21:18):
or just like the hero of mythology or any story
across cultures, you know, the hero comes from shadowy backgrounds
to come up through the ranks and combat the status
quo and save the day. Yeah, and perhaps challenge gendered
stereotype in this case. Who knew. I'm getting all worked
up about about Nikita. I'm gonna have to watch that.
(21:40):
Which is I will loan you all of the seasons.
Please do use a new show. Um, well, I know
that we haven't talked about all of the uh, all
the female spy characters on TV by any stretch of
the imagination, but we just highlighted some of those leading ladies.
And I'll be really curious to see just from listeners,
(22:01):
what what women that we did not mention and shows
that we really did not UM didn't highlight if they
have a take on that, and also why other people
think that there are so many female spies on television? Yeah,
do you enjoy watching them more or less than male spies?
You know, do you like watching the ladies kick butt?
Because another contrast to UM, A lot of leading male spies,
(22:24):
a lot of times they are typically either they're they're
motivated because of some love, some long term like woman
who's either been lost or is haunting in some kind
of way. And it seems like a lot of times
with the female spies they're more romantically to t exactly
(22:44):
because if you look at the Michael character and the
fem Nikita, he had this great love that he lost
and he's like dead inside, so he might as well
be killing machine and then Nikita reawakens them. So whereas
women are often portrayed as these honeypots, these these spies ductresses,
in reality, perhaps you know, men are the motionally more vulnerable. Yeah,
(23:06):
they're they're a little damage, so they kill people. M hmm. Interesting,
so much to think about. Yeah, well, let us know
what you think about female spuzzle on television. Mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot Com is our email address,
and we got a couple of emails here to share already.
(23:27):
This is from Kevin about our romance novel podcast. I
heard you guys comment about amnesia related romance novels and
it reminded me of my friend Lara Krigger's deconstruction of
the Harlequin romance novel pregn Asia. No, I'm not making
that up. I wish I were. If you want to laugh,
here's a link to the summary of Lara live tweeting
(23:47):
the book while she read it. The plot is Da
Da Dat Special and if you want to read that,
go to storify dot com pregn Asia. It's incredible. I've
got an email here, also about romance novels, and this
is coming from Mallory, who has been reading romance for
(24:08):
about seven years and it's critically studying it in college,
she says her master thesis was on gender ideology and
romance novel heroines who cross dress. Listening, she writes, please
don't subscribe to the idea that romance is full of
heroines who are too stupid to live or who serve
as shells for the reader. There are plenty of smart, funny,
(24:29):
and high achieving romance novel heroines don't sell the genre short.
Women who read romance have to defend their reading habits
both on gender and class fronts, and the genre itself
tends to be pretty self reflective. Romance, for the most part,
is written by women, for women and about women, and
that maybe why women in particular find it so enjoyable
(24:50):
to read. There aren't many sources of pop pop culture
that put women as the heroes of their own stories
except maybe fe with that mom set. Do stuff works
dot Com is the email find us on Facebook as well,
and follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and
you can check out our blog during the week, It's
(25:11):
stuff Mom Never told You at how Stuff Works dot com.
This podcast is brought to you by Audible dot com,
the Internet's leading provider of audio books, with more than
eighty five thousand downloadable titles across all types of literature
and featuring audio versions of many New York Times bestsellers.
(25:32):
To try Audible free today and get a free audio
book of your choice, go to Audible podcast dot com
slash mom Stuff That's Audible podcast dot com slash Mom
Stuff the House, Stuff Works, iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
(25:53):
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.