Abstract
Abstract This article addresses the issue of realism in relationship to contemporary serial fiction. Drawing on The Bureau (Canal+, 2015–2020), it argues that spy TV series are “realistic” not because they correspond to reality but because of their impact on reality. It begins by giving an overview of the many ways in which “realism,” in the ordinary sense of a resemblance with reality, served as the working framework for The Bureau’s team. It then identifies three distinct types of realisms in the series. The first is a “fictional realism,” namely the ability of The Bureau to conform to the aesthetic and narrative conventions of realistic fictions. The second type of realism, which I qualify as “ordinary,” refers to the possibilities offered by the show’s aesthetics and the enmeshment of The Bureau with viewers’ ordinary experience. The third type of “performative realism” refers to the series’ impact on shared representations and reality. By providing a common language about the secret activities of the state, The Bureau has gone from being a framed version of reality to being one of the defining frameworks through which state secrecy is experienced both individually and collectively, by insiders and the public at large.
Highlights
Contemporary media culture can hardly be reduced to a single paradigm, but the “pseudo-factual” regime, in the form of a hybridization between factual and imaginative elements, constitutes one of the privileged configurations of contemporary fiction.[1]
2 The “fictional realism” of The Bureau. In her classic study of Wittgenstein, Cora Diamond begins by evoking the non-philosophical uses of the term “realism.”[38] Unsurprisingly, most of her examples refer to the realm of fiction, so much so that she ends up drawing a portrait of what is expected of a realistic novel, and more generally, a realistic fiction: We speak of realism in connection with novels and stories; and here again we often have in mind kinds of attention to reality: to detail and particularity
Let us see whether The Bureau goes beyond the sole realistic intention and really holds the promise of fictional realism described in this initial threefold definition: an attention to particularities; things that do not happen; the significance of causation and the rational
Summary
Contemporary media culture can hardly be reduced to a single paradigm, but the “pseudo-factual” regime, in the form of a hybridization between factual and imaginative elements, constitutes one of the privileged configurations of contemporary fiction.[1]. Contrary to previous attempts to rethink the power of spy fiction,[19] this re-conceptualization of fictional realism does not decree the blurring of the boundary between the realm of fact and fiction: on the contrary, it reaffirms its importance, as a hypothesis for the production and reception of fictional works.[20] Defending this “realism” of spy fiction – in the sense of its impact on social and political reality – does not amount to saying that fictional objects merge with reality It is, a way of rethinking spy fiction in its relation to the world;[21] as a place for the elaboration of meaning that is dynamic and fully integrated into the social and political space, which retains its own ontology.
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