The Americans /
Based on the actual KGB strategy of planting "illegals" into American life during the Cold War, The Americans (FX 2013-2018) focuses on Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Kerri Russell), Soviet spies posing as middlebrow travel agents in the Virginia suburbs. Groundbreaking an...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Detroit :
Wayne State University Press,
[2022].
|
| Series: | Contemporary approaches to film and television series. TV milestones.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Based on the actual KGB strategy of planting "illegals" into American life during the Cold War, The Americans (FX 2013-2018) focuses on Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Kerri Russell), Soviet spies posing as middlebrow travel agents in the Virginia suburbs. Groundbreaking and unsettling, The Americans spins its stories of espionage, violence and politics around narratives of marriage, romance, bromance and family. Exploring the series' bold merger of the spy genre and domestic melodrama, author Linda Mizejewski focuses on the characters and relationships that made this series memorable, the extraordinary women who defy the femme fatale stereotype of the spy genre, the conflicted men and perhaps most shockingly, the children who are both victims and provocateurs. Do viewers of this Cold War thriller root for "the good guys," the American agents in pursuit of the Jennings, or for the Jennings themselves, the attractive couple whose personal stories compel us even as they plot the takedown of the United States? Mizejewski argues for the importance of The Americans' portrayal of 1980s suburban life as a microcosm of the moral complexities of citizenship and national identity. Drawing on television studies and feminist media theory, this book examines the series' seamless loop of espionage violence and family melodrama, as well as its savvy uses of 1980s pop culture and music. Far from invoking nostalgia, the replication of the 1980s "look" invokes uncertainties about how, exactly, we should see Reagan's America and the Cold War. Yet the appeal of this series rests on solid footing in the Americanism it both critiques and espouses. Mizejewski examines The Americans' struggles with this ambiguity and with the contradictions of identity, gender, marriage and the meanings of home. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | viii, 113 pages : illustrations ; 18 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 103-108) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780814347430 0814347436 |