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Because it is coming off of Netflix streaming, I watched another mini-series that I’ve never heard of – London Spy. This is a BBC-produced drama from 2015 that was also produced to air on the BBC’s international channels, such as BBC-2 in America. I saw some hints at good reviews and, not wanting to risk any spoilage, I watched it more-or-less cold. I was in for a surprise or two.

I was not anticipating the prominent place that homosexuality featured into the plot. More unexpectedly, I did not expect the scenes featuring graphic homosexual congress. For what its worth, no harm was done to me by my watching a bit of hot dude-on-dude action. I am just glad I didn’t sit down to watch the show with my mother* or perhaps some children.

This show is a product of our age. When I was very young, the very theme of this show (with the main characters being gay lovers) would never have made it near the television. Far more recently, the sex scene featuring substantial bared anatomy as well as simulated man-love would have earned an “adults-only” rating. These days, it was feeling like more a lesson in prejudice and its lack of place in our society, courtesy of the Beeb.

The fact is, had the love scene been heterosexual, it probably wouldn’t have seemed out of place. A bit racy for family-time viewing, maybe, but not something unexpected from made-for-cable fare. One imagines that, in a more conventional scene, the skin exposure would have emphasized the woman more than the man, but the bare buttocks and writhing could probably be found elsewhere. I also am not surprised to see lesbian love scenes stuffed randomly into major cable TV dramas. A bit more cringe-worthy, I suppose, depending on whom I’m watching with, but not unexpected. In other words, isn’t it the fact that they are men on the screen, rather than the content itself, that made it so remarkable?

It seems to me they front-loaded the shock value into that first episode. This is not a scientific statement but, it seems that each follow-up episode is a little less provocative from the last. This is driven by plot itself, but also may well be an expression of the political. It also took an episode or two beyond that first one to understand how it actually is important to the story that the main characters are gay – which is just good story telling.

The screenplay was written by author Tom Rob Smith, who is himself gay. In some ways, the show muses on the acceptability (and lack of it) of homosexuality in our current times and in the past. It’s an important sub-theme and one that, I would guess, is rather personal to the author. The lead actor is also a gay man. However, I would not say that this is a LGBT-genre film, not by any means. The importance of the characters’ homosexuality is weaved in with the importance of class, loyalty, friendship, and the show’s other themes.

It is, in short, a well written, well executed spy drama. In fact, it is a spy drama with particularly British characteristics. In America, our spy films tend to involve assassins and action – lots of athletic dashing about and tense shootouts, with a overlong car chase thrown in to boot. In George Smiley’s world, its about relationships and etiquette. So it is with London Spy. The difference is, in classic spy-novel literature, this exotic world of the elites is foreign to us, the readers, but is often as not invisible to the characters, who are all immersed in this other world. Thnink of it like a tale of royal intrigue where the commoners are ignored – because why wouldn’t they be? In London Spy, by contrast, our hero is not a part of the system. He experiences this strange world as we would – as an outsider.

It is interesting to me that, throughout the entire show, no actual “spying” is ever really mentioned. We meet our share of spies, past and present, but nobody seems to do any actual espionage. Instead, the story is about the that rarefied world of power and the people who hold it. In America, we might talk about the “deep state” or the “elites.” In England (at least, as one might glean from a show such as this) the levers of power are still controlled by the mechanism of class and their ties to royalty. America’s notion of “betters” is always tinged with resentment. In Britain, it could perhaps be simply descriptive. It is to this aspect of the story that the gayness is so important. As homosexuality becomes mainstream and entirely acceptable to us regular folk, does the ultra-conservative world of the elites still resist it?

A variation on this is the role of women in the power structures of the upper class. For the first few episodes it struck me how, by populating all the major characters with gay men, women were entirely excluded from the story. Is gayness the new misogyny? By the end, I no longer see it that way… and yet, might this become a possibly aspect of the substitution of (male) homosexual experience into traditional story telling? If women are no longer the love interest or the “damsel in distress”, nor the heroine, can they be anything at all? Stock background characters, I suppose. What about always making women the villain? That won’t look so good either.

In the end, this is a show that looks good from its beginning and looks even better at the end. I think it needs to be watched in totality to appreciate some of the deeper themes – themes that are, by the way, mostly not about homosexuality. In that way, it is kind of shame that the first episode features the soft-core pornography. It’s certainly thought provoking, in that it leads to some self-reflection on prejudice. It also is necessary to demarcate, in a visual way (this is television, is it not?) the boundaries of sex, love, promiscuity, and innocence. I’m pretty sure it isn’t a bad way to tell the story although I also can’t be sure it is the best way to tell it either.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if I could write a good fiction novel. Sometimes when I’m wondering what that would entail, especially having just been reading an example of successful fiction, I wonder if I’d need to put in the explicit sexual interlude that is so common across fictional genres. I don’t think I’d want to do it, but it almost seems de rigueur. The same mandate seems to flow into film and television, particularly the “edgier” work that’s featured on cable and streaming these days. The kiss kiss, bang bang is expected, but does that mean its comfortable for the audience? Should it be?

A few months ago, I read about the word “squicky.” It’s a youth-slang term, a portmanteau of squeamish and icky, but in a way that is not meant to convey judgement. I.e, “I don’t like what I’m seeing, but I shouldn’t feel that way.” The shifting of the language (not “disgusting,” just “squicky”) is a stepping stone in the acclimatization** process – and I say that without judgement. Acclimatization can be good, bad, or indifferent and I’m not weighing in at this point. The fact is, the sexuality of today’s TV shows would have been outrageous and forbidden in the 1950s, but just shocking and unacceptable in the 1970s. At some point, hetero soft-core moved through squicky and, I think, into the welcomed and expected territory. Lesbian (or bi-curious, perhaps) displays are close behind. Is it right or wrong for male homosexuality to follow?

I’ll put it another way… While I personally don’t go for gay porn, I also don’t think our culture is served by the infusion of soft-core porn into mainstream entertainment; even versions which I, personally, go for.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

*My mother once explained she felt is was her duty to avoid any film that included vulgarity. She didn’t think it belonged in our society and felt that the only way to express that was to withhold her custom from those that would propagate it.

**This is the essence of the protests against Netflix and Cuties, whether the protestors fully appreciate it or not. What’s wrong with Cuties is not whether children were abused during the making of the picture (as far as I know, they were not – although that’s far from a given in film industry), but whether depictions of childhood sexuality normalize that behavior, as opposed to merely illustrating it. For better or for worse, the gatekeeping process for what is normal and what is forbidden has been entirely decentralized. What used to be accomplished with a few tersely-worded letters to the FCC must now work through organized protest against a multitude of privately-owned-at-operated corporations.