Das unsichtbare Visier – A 1970s Cold War Intelligence TV Series as a Fantasy of International and Intranational Empowerment; or, How East Germany Saved the World and West Germans Too
This article addresses a franchise of intelligence films in the former Communist East Germany. Under the general title Das unsichtbare Visier—The Invisible Visor—they were produced for television and very popular. In general, the Cold War East produced a rich array of its own intelligence heroes, wh...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Michigan Publishing
2023-01-01
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| Series: | Global Storytelling |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/gs/article/id/2489/ |
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| Summary: | This article addresses a franchise of intelligence films in the former Communist East Germany. Under the general title Das unsichtbare Visier—The Invisible Visor—they were produced for television and very popular. In general, the Cold War East produced a rich array of its own intelligence heroes, which cannot be reduced to mere derivatives of Western models. Yet there were commonalities and interactions across Cold War divides. One of these common features that Visier shared with many intelligence films globally was the depiction of abroad as both an “invisible front” of dangers and temptations and an exciting realm of adventure and consumption. Visier could not but also be a fantasy about East German citizens encountering, withstanding, and also enjoying the dangers and temptations of the Western Cold War Other. This included their facing two peculiar challenges: a degree of international mobility unlike anything the vast majority of ordinary East Germans could experience and the West’s consumerism. Visier addressed both these issues through what we could describe as an essentially playful—and dis-playful—practical cosmopolitanism. A careful look reveals Visier as a rich artifact of Cold War popular culture, with complex messages. The image of the heroic East German agent included a running comment of compensatory wish fulfillment. Here were ideal East German citizens doing their duty and yet also getting a fair slice of the capitalist good life abroad that most of their compatriots could not reach. They also consistently punched above their weight vicariously for East Germany as a whole. Like Britain’s James Bond, these were agents of an at-best middling power doing major things in the world at large. And finally, perhaps most satisfyingly of all, they turned into gentle, benevolent guardian angels of hapless West German cousins, neatly reversing West Germany’s claims of superiority. |
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| ISSN: | 2769-4941 |