SAINTS PRESERVE US

Secret Worlds Awry

The recent news footage from Portland, OR has been passing strange. On my own one evening eight years ago in Ottawa, ON I bought a ticket at the Bytown Theatre’s box office for an absurdist European sci-fi film called Iron Sky. The film’s premise amused and intrigued me: Near the end of the Second World War the Nazis, aided by their expertise in primitive rocketry, established a secret base on the dark side of the moon. They bided their time there until it was opportune to invade the United States whose sitting president in the movie is Sarah Palin. Her Oval Office décor triggers a cringe reflex beyond Tina Fey’s devastating condemnation of her foreign policy expertise: “I can see Russia from my house!” Iron Sky’s Nazi space costumes are eerily similar to those worn by federal agents in Portland, masks included: I’ve seen all this before.

America’s existing security and intelligence apparatus is massive and massively expensive. Buckle up, here come the deep state acronyms: the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the ATF (an E for “Explosives” is a recent addition although it’s yet to be absorbed into the existing vernacular acronym) and the DHS (our friends in Portland). Each of these agencies has their particular mandate and jurisdiction. But they compete for budgetary allocations and their duties frequently overlap and so they tend not to scheme well together; they don’t like to share. Remember too that the various branches of the military have their own intelligence services. Realize too that any form of intelligence is both a commodity and a weapon and it’s been privatized, there are contractors.

Canada’s security services include the RCMP, CSIS and the CSE, sometimes CCSE – which did not officially exist until recently, even though it always has, and whose budget remains a state secret. The United Kingdom’s watchers and eavesdroppers include MI5, MI6, the NCA and the GCHQ. That’s how a few of the good guys line up. The bad guys of course possess equal and opposite agencies.

Little wonder then that the secret world is Klondike gold for writers, readers, filmmakers and filmgoers: lodes of material, big brother. Of course, any largely unaccountable and entrenched bureaucracy manned by paranoid apparatchiks is easily mined for parody and satire. Pandemic Netflix evenings here at the Crooked 9 have lately been filled with a sub-titled French production called A Very Secret Service (Au Service de la France).

The series (two short binge-worthy seasons) begins with the recruitment of a young agent into the French secret service. He can never know his job description because that is confidential information. This is satire in the vein of Our Man in Havana and The Tailor of Panama rather than Get Smart, Austin Powers or Johnny English. And because it’s French, there are rich dollops of pathos and existential angst.

It’s the dawn of the swingin’ sixties. The Cold War could very well turn hot. France is attempting to exert her influence in post-war Europe and retain it in her African colonies. The ghost of the Vichy regime hangs in the air like an alcoholic fog. But the times they are a-changin’. The new recruit is mentored by three more experienced colleagues and together they bungle enough missions to precipitate the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs and the overnight construction of the Berlin Wall. The dirty work is conducted with a haughty arrogance and for the greater glory of France and General de Gaulle. The plot of each half-hour episode is not so far-fetched; the agents smoke and drink a lot.

A fair number of Canadian viewers will suffer laughter hernias when the FLQ delegation turns up at headquarters seeking the Deuxieme Bureau’s aid in their fight against their Canadian oppressors. Parisian French meets Quebecois joual: “What language are they speaking? They’re like the Africans. And yet they seem to understand us?”

Farce, be it crude or sophisticated, is something best experienced through an arts lens. Something silly could’ve happened. Something silly could happen. Farce is something of a participle, past or future, not present. Should farce unfold in actual time in a Portland place or behind the barricaded fences of an international landmark like the White House, well, it’s too absurd to be funny.

           

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of paranoia since 2013. This blog post will self-destruct in five seconds. Don’t sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, stay safe.