Spy: a British TV series made in 2004 called ‘the most addictive thing on TV at the moment’ by The Daily Telegraph.  According to the Producer’s Alliance for Cinema and Television it had been sold to 129 countires by April of 2005.  On this ‘reality show’ eight recruits undergo espionage training, psychological challenges, and dramatic tensions in order to demonstrate their potential as covert agents.  The single grand prize among the competing recruits is the satisfaction of knowing they have what it takes to be a real spy.

It comes on Sundays at midnite on PBS.  Talking to Ming over the weekend my reponse to the show was one given by many people after watching many kinds of things: "It was stupid and yet I sat there watching all the same."  What was it that captivated me and yet was not at the same time there on the TV screen?

Those who know me might point to my degree in criminology for an easy answer.  But this show’s international success suggests to me the answer is not (only) personal.  Here’s a description of episode five:

For their latest mission, the recruits must use all their spy skills and put their professionalism to the ultimate test in a one-on-one surveillance mission in Brighton. They don’t realize until the last minute that their target is actually their closest friend or family member whom they haven’t been allowed to see since starting the course. They must somehow attach a note on the body of their loved one without at all being detected by them.  If they allow their personal feelings to compromise the mission, they risk being thrown out of spy school.  The trainers emphasize throughout the show that a good spy must mentally separate their job’s objective from their personal life, and this challenge serves as the test.

I’m prone to understand the attraction of the show in terms of the post 9/11 ascension of the citizen-soldier: that new subjectivity that has been everywhere created by the echoing call heard throughout BART and all airports to, "report suspicious people to the police;" the willingness with which we acquiesce to abandoned civil liberties through ubiquitous surveillance and government subterfuge and fabrication; and the new activities sanctified in emerging camps like Guantanamo Bay.

But in Spy’s detailed portrayal of how to be a good spy we also get to feel a little less humiliated by our new found paralysis within the global economy.  That is, spy asks us to think how well we’d be at separating our personal life from our job’s requirements.  But more importantly, it allows us to take for granted that we will respect and honor, even desire to emulate, those who enforce such decisions upon our own personal lives every day.

However, read this story about First Lieutenant Ehren Watada: the first American soldier to refuse to go to Iraq:

“I was in this situation where I knew something was wrong,'’ he said, “but I was being forced to do it anyway. It felt like I was in an invisible prison of my own making. It’s a terrible place to be.'’ 

Watada does not blame the Army as much as he blames the administration. The Army does what it must to function. Military culture always has presumed that individuals lose certain kinds of freedom when joining the armed forces.

“The idea is when you put on a uniform, you put your personal opinions to the side,'’ said Kathleen Duignan, executive director of the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington, D.C.