The Timeliness of FX's The Americans: Why Cold War Narratives are Appealing to Post-9/11 Audiences

It often surprises me that I ended up becoming a post-9/11 television scholar because, at times, my historical expertise has been embarrassingly limited.  (We’ll leave the rant about how history is taught in American public schools for another post.)  Certain historical time periods and events have held my interest more than others throughout the years and I’ve sought out information on them (although, perhaps too often, like many of my peers, through media/entertainment products.  To this day I can’t help but see flashes of Ben Affleck, Josh Harnett, and Kate Beckinsale when I think of the attack on Pearl Harbor).

Of all the historical time periods that I’ve felt myself drawn to, the Cold War era, surprisingly, has not really been one of them.  At least not initially.  As an academic the McCarthy era interested me and always seemed uncomfortably relevant to the contemporary moment – especially after the passage of the Patriot Act.  But I never threw myself into studying the time period.

So when FX launched The Americans this year I was initially drawn to it because I liked the actors and I enjoy “period” shows.  Although it took a few episodes for the plot to completely hook me, I was immediately impressed by the show’s faithful depiction of the time period.  I have a nostalgia for the 80s that centers around the fashion, music, and pop cultural fads more so than the politics of the time.  So watching the program conjured up fuzzy depiction of the past – memory fragments from my childhood of family cars, parental hairstyles, childhood games, and so forth.  But as I watched on the 80s backdrop became less the draw and the narrative began to really interest me – not just as a plain old good story that asks you to cheer for the so-called “bad guys,” but as a storyline that really resonates in this post-9/11 moment.

For those unfamiliar with the show here is the description listed on FX’s website: 

The Americans is a period drama about the complex marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington D.C. shortly after Ronald Reagan is elected President. The arranged marriage of Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell), who have two children – 13-year-old Paige (Holly Taylor) and 10-year-old Henry (Keidrich Sellati), who know nothing about their parents’ true identity – grows more passionate and genuine by the day, but is constantly tested by the escalation of the Cold War and the intimate, dangerous and darkly funny relationships they must maintain with a network of spies and informants under their control. Complicating their relationship further is Philip’s growing sense of affinity for America’s values and way of life. Tensions also heighten upon the arrival of a new neighbor, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), an FBI agent. Stan and his partner, Agent Chris Amador (Maximiliano Hernández), are members of a new division of Counterintelligence tasked with fighting against foreign agents on U.S. soil, including KGB Directorate S illegals, Russian spies posing as Americans.

While many have argued that “The Americans” is primarily a marriage drama – that is only half of its draw.  But an important half.  In a Huffington Post interview with Maureen Ryan, the executive producers of the show defended this shows focus on relationships – the marital relationship between Philip and Elizabeth which rests at the core; the complicated friendship between Philip and his next door neighbor/FBI agent, Stan; and the tumultuous relationships between adolescent children and their parents (unfolding in both households on that suburban block).   Despite its 80s backdrop, it is these stories that can easily relate to viewers of today because, as the producers note, “these relationships wind up being allegories for universal experiences, just in this super-dramatized, charged prism of the Cold War.”

And the relationships are good, as well as the acting and character development.  Keri Russell’s Elizabeth is heartbreaking with her ability to constantly hide her underlying pain (from past experiences and current emotional struggles) with a cold, strong exterior mask.  Matthew Rhys’s Phillip’s ability to morph between the sentimental, brooding, emotional, even jealous, husband to the calculated, fierce, cold-blooded killer is sensational.  The surrounding characters – particularly the women (Nina, the Russian informant; Claudia, the Jennings’ handler; and Martha, the misguided FBI secretary) – are also superb.  And although the show may have made some missteps in killing off two characters with potentially great storylines – not unimportantly, as Amy Davisdson notes in an article in The New Yorker, two of the only non-white characters – there are plenty of other characters to continue developing in the coming season.  (FX has officially renewed the show for next year).

However, half way through the season I realized I was watching for more than just the character-driven plotlines.  The similarities between the 80s and the present started to fascinate me.  Unsurprisingly, this post-9/11 television scholar started seeing “9/11” motifs everywhere.

I am far from the first to see the connections between the two historic time periods.    In America Between the Wars:  From 11/9 to 9/11, Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier study the long decade of the 90s from the collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9^th, 1989 – the event which signaled the end of the Cold War – to 9/11 which launched the War on Terror.  The time in between was viewed as a victory for America and the West:  democracy and free markets had prevailed and the United States emerged as the world's triumphant superpower. The finger-on-the-button tension that had defined a generation was over, and it seemed that peace was at hand. The next twelve years rolled by in a haze of self-congratulation – what some now call a "holiday from history."  This would all shatter on September 11^th.  Chollet and Goldgeier’s text studies this in-between time, arguing that it can reveal much about not only the recent past but about the pending future as well.

Likewise, The Americans, with its portrayal of the last decade of the Cold War, can reveal much about our contemporary time period.  Being released a decade after the unquestioning wave of patriotism surrounding 9/11, the show questions uncritical ideological stances and the ethics behind national security practices.  As it depicts the start of the U.S. government’s technological ability to spy easily on not just on foreigners, but on its own citizens, it is hard not to think of the recent NSA scandal (PRISM).  I would argue that this show could not have been popular a decade ago, too soon after the terrorist attacks when rage-filled Americans still needed to have unwavering trust in the government’s ability to keep them safe from another attack… at any cost (of freedom).  That trust has eroded for many in the past decade.  Therefore, The Americans’s portrayals of Stan as an evolving anti-hero, not the impeccably moral FBI agent he seemed at the start of the series but rather one who would coerce his informant into sleeping with him and commit a revenge killing – is more palatable than it would have been in recent viewing history.  Likewise, while narratives that allow viewers to root for the “bad” guys have often been popular in the past (like many I enjoyed watching Nicholas Cage steal cars in Gone in 60 Seconds and George Clooney rob casinos in Ocean’s Eleven), this pushes that premise to the extreme by asking viewers to, in essence, emotionally invest (and cheer on) the terrorists.  The likelihood of this sitting well with viewers ten years ago is not high.  But today viewers delve into the plot, seemingly, without any cognitive dissonance.  To me this says a lot about the turning tides of the post-9/11 era, at least in terms of American sensibilities.

Of course, as always, perhaps I’m just reading too much into the show.  Perhaps viewers just like the big hair and blocky automobiles, the melodrama and the espionage.  I like that it’s that and so much more.