Escaping the honeytrap : representations and ramifications of the female spy on television since 1965

• Main Author: Burrows, Karen K.
• Published: University of Sussex 2015
• Subjects: 791.45; PN1990 Broadcasting
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.698661

My thesis interrogates the changing nature of the espionage genre on Western television since the middle of the Cold War. It uses close textual analysis to read the progressions and regressions in the portrayal of the female spy, analyzing where her representation aligns with the achievements of the feminist movement, where it aligns with popular political culture of the time, and what happens when the two factors diverge. I ask what the female spy represents across the decades and why her image is integral to understanding the portrayal of gender on television. I explore four pairs of television shows from various eras to demonstrate the importance of the female spy to the cultural landscape. These shows represent the female spy's birth in the era of the sexual revolution, her rise as a feminist career woman, and the post-9/11 restrictions on who is allowed to serve the country. I argue that the conflation of nation and family that occurs in each show serves to elevate the primacy of the heterosexual reproductive unit, challenging the outwardly-progressive representation of the apparently feminist spy figure. Analyzed in concert, these shows reveal the conservative bent of the espionage genre despite the higher visibility of its female protagonists.