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Honor Among Spies: The Cold War ‘Mom’, Family, and Identity in The Americans
- Theory & Event
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 21, Number 3, July 2018
- pp. 590-606
- 10.1353/tae.2018.0036
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
This essay examines the conceptual nexus between honor, espionage, and the formation of identity through a close narrative reading of the FX drama The Americans, a Cold War period drama set in the 1980s. It complicates the often-uncontested linkage between honor and espionage by examining the show’s portrayal of motherhood within the context of Cold War discourse of mothers as a source of corruption. Such a reading of the complex issues of motherhood, identity, and the challenges of family in The Americans reveals a deeper anxiety at the core of the need to sustain such simple narratives of patriotic honor.