The Bureau and the Realism of Spy Fiction

Introduction

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] The question is not new, but it is particularly acute when it comes to the genre of espionage. Whether in their ability to fit into a certain state of the world, or to refer to reality through internal criteria or contextual elements, spy fictions^[2] are especially prone to an enmeshment of imagination and references to the world since the appearance of the genre at the beginning of the twentieth century.^[3] This indeterminacy, the fact that espionage fictions constantly play on both sides – that of factuality and fictionality – gives them an equivocal epistemic and ontological status. They are assigned all sorts of vices or virtues in the field of knowledge, and they exist in and have effects on the empirical world, despite their fictional nature.

This ambivalence of spy fiction has already been noted by scholars, who have all underlined the importance of cultural artefacts in structuring collective representations of secret intelligence.^[4] The main reason they give to account for this power of fiction on opinion is the lack of information regarding actual intelligence activities, a shortage that is somehow naturally offset by the extraordinary amount of spy fiction available to the public. While some researchers have anchored their analyses in the preservation of a border between the realm of facts and the realm of fiction – a border that does not exclude, in some cases, a certain porosity between fact and fiction^[5] – others have proposed to emancipate themselves from such a frontier under the influence of postmodernism, seeing in this emancipation the promise of an intellectual and ideological deliverance.^[6]

The aim of this article is to propose an alternative to these approaches, by connecting the problem of spy fiction to contemporary philosophical debates regarding realism,^[7] theories of fiction and TV series studies. The realism of spy fiction that I defend here is based on the capacity of spy fictions to fix shared representations instead of offering a possible conformity of spy fiction to true statements or empirical reality.^[8] Such a conception moves away from the common considerations of realism, where only the correspondence with reality or presumably true (or perceived as true) statements matter, to replace them with an approach that puts individual and collective agency back at the heart of the analysis. If fictional artefacts are often seen as a framed version of reality, an idea that incidentally founds the necessity to analyse them in order to reveal the different messages they convey, cultural artefacts are also the framework through which we experience reality, both individually and collectively.

This is even truer of television series,^[9] given the large place they occupy in viewers’ lives, along with the space they take in today’s ordinary conversations and public debates.^[10] Over the past twenty years, there has been a growing interest in the question of the serial format, in connection with the so-called “Golden Age” of television series, and the rise of the American TV channel HBO.^[11] While some scholars include TV series in the long history of serialized fictions, seeing them as the twenty-first century’s version of newspaper or magazine serials,^[12] others have emphasized their specificity, from both a narrative point of view and in terms of their modes of production or consumption.^[13] Recent studies have addressed practices of consumption of TV series in connection with a larger reflection on “popular culture.”^[14] In addition, a number of empirical studies have looked at TV series within the broader context of New Media studies:^[15] this includes analysing viewing modalities in connection with the digital revolution, and studying audiences and how spectators understand subtext and paratext of TV series.^[16] In France, highly engaging studies have tackled the question of attachment, often based on logics of fandom.^[17] A few publications have also examined the particular modes of production and writing of TV dramas in France and in the Anglo-American world,^[18] but this remains an understudied question when compared to sociological reception studies.

Drawing on the vast and already well-established field of television studies, in addition to ongoing debates in philosophy and philosophy of film, this article proposes a redefinition of “realism” anchored in an understanding of the serial medium. Specifically, it argues that spy TV series are “realistic” not because they correspond to reality but because of their impact on reality. Yet 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, however, 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 nevertheless retains its own ontology. This perspective highlights the open and sometimes problematic character of interpreting fictional works, while retaining the possibility of a critical examination of the moral and political questions that underlie such fictions.

To support this claim, I will rely on the French TV series The Bureau (Canal+, 2015–2020), one of the most popular spy series in France and abroad. Beyond its unique mode of production for the French context^[22] and its high quality – both narratively and aesthetically, the ever-growing interest in the series also stems from the official support of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), the French intelligence external service, to the project. For the first time in the history of France, an intelligence service that is hitherto known for its great opacity agreed to support the showrunner Éric Rochant and his team in their quest for “realism,” a term that comes up throughout all stages of production. This unusual collaboration,^[23] which has been skillfully put forward by The Bureau’s team and the DGSE, foreshadows an authenticity of the fictional discourse never achieved before, yet poses the question of being confronted to a propaganda operation.

This article is divided into four sections. The first section gives an overview of the “realistic intention” of The Bureau, specifically the ways in which realism, in the ordinary sense of a certain correspondence or resemblance with the real world, served as the working framework throughout the production of the series, which also influenced its reception by the public and the critics. The second section evaluates the different ways in which the series holds up to the promise of “fictional realism,” by demonstrating a certain attention to details, or the importance of causation. The third section highlights the ways in which the serial aesthetics is a principle of The Bureau’s “ordinary realism,” thanks to the serial-episode principle and the enmeshment of the series within viewers’ ordinary experience. The final section explores this alternative understanding of realism that I call “performative,” by looking at The Bureau’s impact on shared representations of secret intelligence and contemporary security environment.

1 The “realistic intention” of The Bureau: From production to reception

The Bureau is a French spy TV series centred on a fictitious clandestine service of the DGSE called “The Bureau of Legends” (BoL). The first season begins with the return of former clandestine officer named Malotru (Mathieu Kassovitz) to France, after six years working undercover in Syria. His exceptional abilities make him the perfect trainer for a brilliant new recruit Phenomène (Sara Giraudeau), whose perilous mission is to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, Malotru’s difficulties in readapting to normal life increasingly appear as he is progressively forced into a logic of betrayal to save the love of his life, a history professor who is about to play a decisive role in Syria’s future, Nadia El Mansour (Zineb Triki).

Malotru’s unfinished love story is certainly the driving narrative arc of The Bureau’s five seasons. If this narrative choice is not driven by a will to explore the springs of amorous feelings, it nonetheless allows for a complex depiction of complementary yet sometimes-conflicting elements: on the one hand, the slow descent into hell of a tormented hero, who is forced to betray the service he once so brilliantly embodied; on the other hand, the hunting game that this betrayal triggers once it is discovered by his former employer, who seems always caught between the loyalty for their own and the need to protect France’s national interest and security. This classic cat-and-mouse game is set against the backdrop of the contemporary international scene: the Syrian conflict (seasons 1–3), the Iranian nuclear program (seasons 1 and 2), Jihadist terrorism and the so-called Islamic State (seasons 1–3), Russia’s power politics (seasons 1–5), cyberwarfare (seasons 4 and 5). Thus, the tragic destiny of Malotru constantly intertwines with the main trends of contemporary security events, to the point that The Bureau is often considered a geopolitical drama.

This ability of the series to depict with great subtility the complexity of the contemporary security environment is certainly one of the many reasons explaining the show’s success both in France and abroad. When the first season came out in 2015, Le Monde’s critic Pierre Sérisier underlined the quality and great novelty of a spy TV show that offered “a different and credible tone,”^[24] whereas in Libération Clélia Cohen emphasized the exceptional performance of Malotru’s interpreter, Mathieu Kassovitz.^[25] In 2016, Le Figaro simply described the series as the best TV series ever made in France^[26] and the New York Times ranked the series second in their 2020 best international shows list. Season 5 slightly disappointed fans, especially the two last episodes whose writing and directing were, in a surprising move, left to filmmaker Jacques Audiard, The Bureau remains undoubtedly one of the most viewed, commented and appreciated French TV series throughout the world. The website Allociné rates the five seasons of The Bureau 4.4/5 on the basis of 6767 users’ vote, and IMDb credits the series with an overall score of 8.7/10 based on 8110 users’ vote. At the time of writing, The Bureau is distributed in over 110 countries^[27] and discussions have started in the USA, Korea and the United Kingdom for possible remakes.^[28]

Another important reason for this domestic and international success is the willingness of the real DGSE to collaborate with The Bureau’s team, a collaboration that has been cleverly put forward every time a new season comes out. For the first time the French external intelligence service, hitherto known for its great opacity and very little if no public relations,^[29] agreed to open its doors to the entertainment industry thus offering what I call a “spectacle of pseudo-transparency,”^[30] by organising meetings between intelligence professionals and screenwriters, in addition to several visits to the real premises of the DGSE for actors and other members of the series’ team so that they might soak up the spirit of the place. According to a famous anecdote, the production designer of the series managed to reproduce the different rooms that were shown to him during his visit almost identically thanks to his photographic memory.^[31] If such a change in the DGSE’s attitude certainly signals a clear desire to modify its public image, sometimes giving rise to the fear of a propagandist offensive, it also raises the prospect – rightly or wrongly – of an authenticity never achieved before.

This search for authenticity is arguably what drove the showrunner Éric Rochant to reach out to the DGSE. And it is also why the intelligence service responded favourably to his request, assuming that Rochant, a director known for his great interest in the topic and his serious treatment of it, would allow them to restore their public image. Rochant’s previous movies, in particular Les Patriotes (1994), which is still greatly appreciated internally, suggest a certain understanding of secret intelligence, as well as a clear intention of the director to move away the usual artifices à la James Bond. When asked about his understanding of the international success of the show, Rochant explained in Variety:

From what I hear, anyway, I think international audiences respond to a credible realism within a genre – in this case, espionage – that often veers towards more fantastical depictions. It breaks with convention, and when I read positive notices, that’s what I find people respond to: They are fascinated by the realism and the process. We have taken a mysterious and intriguing world and opened it up in a realistic way. I think that’s what makes the series a success. Now, is that replicable? I don’t know. You’d need another mysterious and intriguing milieu, and you’d need to explore it in a similar way.^[32]

The quest for a “credible realism,” in the ordinary sense of a certain correspondence with what is usually called “reality,” certainly defines the working framework of The Bureau’s team. In addition to researching every aspect of the story they wanted to tell, thanks to meetings with scholars and specialists, writers also explained that they constantly thought about what would happen in real life. As the chief screenwriter Camille de Castelnau explained:

It wouldn’t be realistic if there weren’t any romantic relationships at work because in real life, in a firm like that, there are stories – even if not with everyone and not all the time.^[33]

Beyond this quest for realism in the writing of the series, The Bureau may be considered an aesthetic attempt to almost duplicate the visual reality of the DGSE. On top of the already-mentioned talent of the set director,^[34] this search for resemblance manifests itself through the use of the DGSE’s real logo,^[35] with several scenes shot inside and outside its real premises in Paris. This willingness to refer to real events and locations, both narratively and aesthetically, materializes itself vividly in a troubling scene that closes season 2. While Malotru is off on a mission to Syria, spectators, and members of the BoL discover together, via a video broadcasted on a TV channel within the fictional DGSE’s premises, that he was taken hostage by the Islamic State: the sinister scene in which the French spy appears on his knees dressed in an orange jumpsuit, surrounded by two hooded men in black, reciting an unfortunately predictable text, is recognizable at first glance.

Given the fact that this “realistic intention” constitutes the working framework of The Bureau’s team, an ambition that is regularly recalled in the different interviews given by the showrunner and the screenwriters, it is not surprising to see this search of the real in the reel manifesting itself in the way the series is received by audiences and critics. Since the release of The Bureau, there have been countless press articles relying on specialists or former intelligence professionals offering to debunk the myths that are conveyed in this series.^[36] Notwithstanding the rare polemics, mainly online, concerning the few breaches to this realistic ambition of the series (a false title of Le Figaro which does not correspond exactly to the real layout of the French newspaper, a Moroccan teapot used by alleged Bedouins in the Egyptian desert), the reputation of the series remains largely intact, both domestically and internationally.

This intransigence of the public as to the way the real world is duly rendered on screens, which expresses itself even more acutely because of the rhetoric of authenticity that surrounds the series, suggests an increasing awareness as to how these fictions impact upon our shared social and political reality. While these polemics are understandable, especially as to how cultural diversity should be duly represented on screen in order to avoid perpetuating offensive or even orientalist clichés,^[37] this constant evaluation of the series’ realism poses the risk of trapping the public and critics in an endless comparison between fiction and reality, a comparison that would remain difficult to carry out as the world of intelligence remains, for a large part, entrenched behind the border of secrecy. In addition, this approach may overshadow the many ways in which the notion of “realism” can be understood in contemporary serial fiction. This is what we are going to see in the following sections.

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 also 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. … We expect in a realistic novel something you might call a phenomenalism of characters: it is built up of observed detail, and in a sense, there is nothing to it over and above what we are shown. That is evidently an oversimplification. To make less of one, I should have to say something about how what is said about a character, when it goes beyond what we have been shown, may be tied to what is actually there in the story.^[39]

According to Diamond, a work of fiction is said to be realistic if it first demonstrates an attention to details and particularities. This explains, in turn, the recurrence of certain themes and writing styles in realistic novels, such as ordinary lives, the abandonment of stylization or the recurring use of description. And she continues:

A further characteristic of realistic fiction, which is relevant in the same sort of way, is that certain things do not happen in it. People do not go backward in time, pots do not talk, elves do not do chores while shoemakers sleep, and holy men do not walk unaided over the surface of lakes or oceans. We all know that if God sells wine in an English village, we do not call the story realistic; and if the devil turns up in a realistic novel, it is within what we can take to be some extraordinary experience of one of the characters, say in a dream or in delirium. Magic, myth, fantasy, superstition: in different ways are terms used in making contrast with realism.^[40]

In addition, a realistic fiction is characterized by the absence of certain elements that are usually associated with the realm of fantasy or magic. This absence explains the presence of a certain typology of characters, namely ordinary men and women, at the expense of superheroes or magicians. However, supernatural elements are not entirely driven out of realistic fictions: they can make a brief appearance in spaces that are dedicated to and identified as such: dreams or fiction, if a protagonist devotes herself or himself to the reading of a sci-fi novel.

Finally, Diamond describes the last defining feature of realistic fictions as follows:

Similarly, in a novel; it is unrealistic if the plot proceeds by a series of improbable events, incredible coincides, and the like; rather, in a realistic story, events develop out of each other, characters respond to circumstances and so on: there is operative of conception of how things work in our lives, what leads to what, what sorts of things do in actual fact determine how events proceed. It is connected with this that a novel in which vice is defeated and virtue flourishes in the end is often felt as unrealistic: that is not how things are determined. The duke does not reveal himself, and the king’s messenger does not come riding up.^[41]

In the words of Diamond, realistic novels demonstrate the significance of causation. This means, on the one hand, that realistic fictions are characterized by an internal coherence to the story: causes lead to probable consequences that are themselves embedded in the way the story is told. On the other hand, a realistic fiction shows an attention to what can be called an ordinary probability, namely how things usually happen in the real world.

This significance of causation for realistic literature resonates with Jacques Rancière’s study of the different forms and meanings of literary realism.^[42] According to Rancière, the truly revolutionary dimension of nineteenth century literary realism comes from its ability to completely reverse the logic of the fictional rationality that had prevailed since Aristotle. While literature had always favoured what he calls a “supplement or an excess of rationality” in order to reveal how the unexpected happens,^[43] writers such as Stendhal, Balzac or Maupassant refocused their writings on the random succession of things, or what is also called ordinary experiences.^[44] This change facilitated the option “to open a door to the world that gave birth to it,” which is, in this case, on the ordinary world – Rancière’s words^[45] – and to show the numerous ordinary people who form this world and had remained invisible until then.

Interestingly enough, this preeminence of both the rational and the ordinary – in the sense of the everyday rather than the social sensitivity Rancière describes – are also among the central characteristics of the spy genre, whose appearance closely followed that of the social novel at the beginning of the twentieth century.^[46] In his book Mysteries and conspiracies, Luc Boltanski argues that detective and spy novels tend to depict an even more banal reality than that of the social novel in order to make the rupture of the ordinary, which is at the heart of detective and spy stories, and its corollaries that are suspicion and investigation, even more salient.^[47] As Boltanski explains, detective and spy novels – at least in their original form – all convey the image of a duplicitous reality, where an apparent and surface reality is progressively replaced by a much more real reality, which is hidden, disturbing, woven with crimes, enigmas, conspiracies and plots. In doing so, spy novels and movies – films having largely replaced novels for Boltanski in this function – not only signals the anxiety of a certain fragility of the “ordinary” reality, which seems always potentially threatened by an extraordinary double. But it also encourages readers and viewers to question the “reality of the reality,” an anxiety that is expressed in various ways in the social and political reality of the time.

The strength of Boltanski’s proposal comes from his ability to place discursive phenomena, and particularly “popular culture” artefacts, at the heart of the social and political reality of the time.^[48] According to Boltanski, fiction does not only mirror a certain state of mind or Zeitgeist, but it also largely influences the way readers and viewers perceive their shared political reality. Thus, by staging the capacity of state agents to guarantee not only the security, but a certain stability of the social and political reality, spy fiction participates in the very construction of state’s power (l’État). What is true for literary creation and for cinema, should also be true for contemporary TV series. 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.

3 The “ordinary realism” of the serial medium

Notwithstanding the precision in the way the series is written and directed, the ability of The Bureau to depict the ordinary life of the world of secret intelligence also comes from the exploitation of the possibilities offered by the serial medium, and especially two of its characteristics: TV series’ photographic nature (something they share with photo and cinema), and their serial-episode principle or seriality.

4 The “performative realism” of The Bureau

As noted above, realism – in the non-philosophical sense of a certain resemblance or correspondence with reality – is certainly what The Bureau seems to achieve. Beyond its sole capacity to refer to real world events, the series appears to faithfully render a certain atmosphere of secret intelligence that is, first and foremost, a bureaucracy in which secrecy and mistrust structure any human interaction. Besides, the willingness of the DGSE to collaborate with the showrunner Éric Rochant, an unprecedented move in the history of French intelligence, also suggests a certain authenticity of the series. However, a closer look at the series reveals the striking invisibility of one of the DGSE’s real main activity: the production of certified information (“intelligence”) to inform political, diplomatic or military decisions.^[61] With the exception of a few sequences in seasons 3 and 4, during which Artus (Jonas Maury) incarnates an analyst who is obsessively searching for information, or when Sisteron (Jonathan Zaccaï) collects an enormous quantity of documents that once belonged to the Islamic State in season 3, the different stages of the “intelligence cycle,” the multiple-step process that is hypothetically followed by any intelligence agencies to turn raw data into valuable information for decision-makers, are not made visible in the series.^[62]

Moreover, the “Bureau of Legends” is particularly isolated in the French bureaucratic and strategic environment. While it has very little contact with the rest of the DGSE, supposedly due to the highly sensitive nature of its mission and the strict compartmentalization it requires, it is also not integrated into the French intelligence community and almost never exchanges with other services in France (with the notable exception of a timid appearance of the DGSI in season 2). This isolation at the national level is, however, compensated by numerous and puzzling links with foreign intelligence services (American, Syrian, Russian), at the risk of making the BoL their privileged point of contact, if not the point of origin of tensions between intelligence services. A closer look at the series reveals that the attic of BoL, this closed cup of French intelligence whose autonomy and room for maneuver never cease to astonish, is busier solving crises it has itself generated than protecting French interests.

Thus, more than a mimetic resemblance with the real DGSE, or a certain correspondence with its day-to-day activities, The Bureau’s realism lies above all in its impact on social and political reality. By providing powerful visual and linguistic referents, which have had a great impact on ordinary conversations but also on decision-makers, the series has become an essential component of the contemporary political and security environment.^[63] Specifically, The Bureau makes visible two secret intelligence structuring elements: on the one hand, the “anarchy” or perpetual state of war between sovereign states, which structures the international stage despite an apparent state of peace;^[64] on the other hand, the ambivalence of democratic regimes, whose foreign policy and security is based on a derogatory principle to the rule of law, a sort of persistence of raison d’État,^[65] which is embodied in the clandestine action of the BoL. Consequently, more than the acquisition of a detailed knowledge about intelligence, The Bureau’s pedagogical dimension resides, above all, in its capacity to reveal and to co-construct following Boltanski^[66] the principle behind secret intelligence: the permanence of a certain political violence that is expressed and resolved by a need for a secret dimension of the state, in spite of the transparency and publicity principles that Western democracies have themselves erected.

Furthermore, this figuration of the state’s secret activities arrived precisely when the role of French intelligence services was hotly debated in the public arena. The multiple upheavals of France’s security environment, in particular the wave of terrorist attacks that started with the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January 2015, along with the numerous reforms of the French intelligence community that preceded and followed such attacks, had made secret intelligence one of the mostly debated issues in the public sphere. First a critical success, The Bureau gradually became an extraordinary social and political phenomenon, due to an increased demand for information regarding France’s intelligence services. After five publicly acclaimed seasons, it is not an exaggeration to say that The Bureau has been an essential part of any discussion (public or private) on the matter of secret intelligence, by providing a common language for both insiders and outsiders of the secret world. As French journalist Jean Guisnel underlines in his recent book on the DGSE:

No one, including its management or those at the top of the state apparatus, speaks today about the DGSE without referring to the television series. A senior executive of the service explains as follows: ‘The day it first happened to me was during a meeting at the Élysée Palace in which someone asked me: ‘Is it really like that, in your service?’ I told myself that it was won, that our contacts were conquered and finally interested in us.’^[67]

Leaving aside this institutional battle for recognition that is captured in the quote, the advertising banner that appears on the cover of Guisnel’s book “Inside the real Bureau of legends” serves as another reminder of the series importance in ordinary language, as well as in any press or research articles that deals, first and foremost, with the authentic DGSE.

The performativity^[68] of the series thus stems from its ability to fix a certain use of language that largely impacted the democratic conversation surrounding intelligence activities.^[69] By providing a common language to talk about the secret activities of the state, a language that makes this conversation about secret intelligence possible, The Bureau has “framed” – in the words of Erving Goffman –^[70] the individual and collective experience of state secrecy in a democracy like France.

This power of the series can first be explained by the asymmetry of information that characterizes the world of secret intelligence. As Timothy Melley and others have already pointed out, the enormous amount of fiction that takes the secret world as its topic often compensates for the lack of information that characterizes the national security state.^[71] And within this prolix fictional world, where more or less grotesque representations cohabit, The Bureau’s alleged authenticity imposes itself as a radically distinct reference.^[72]

This “realism” of the series – in the new sense of its impact on shared representations and reality – also takes its source in The Bureau’s contextualization in the contemporary security and political events. As previously underlined, the five seasons released so far have dealt with the most sensitive issues of the contemporary international scene: Iran’s nuclear program, jihadist terrorism, cyberwarfare, Russia’s power politics… Therefore, all the “documentary versions”^[73] of these real issues uphold, both narratively and visually, the fictional struggle of French intelligence officers against those threats. These solid reference points also allow the series to sometimes leave real events off-camera, without losing any of its force or meaning. Whereas the different terrorist attacks that occurred in France since 2015 are neither depicted in The Bureau nor even mentioned by its characters, viewers nonetheless understand the urgency and the sensitivity of their mission precisely because of what happened in the real world. Likewise, it is the documentary versions of the Syrian conflict, to which the viewer had previous access in the media, that support the vision of Jonas Maury (Artus) making his way through a difficult and perilous path in a devastated Syria (season 4). Finally, the tensions that arise from Putin’s Russia, particularly in its cyber side, support the visualization of the confrontation between the Technical Directorate’s hackers and Russian hackers (season 4), not to mention the cats-and-mouse game between French and Russian spies, which we know to be true in reality (season 5).

In an almost paradoxical reversal, it is the reality of the world as viewers individually and collectively know it that makes the fictional experience possible. By inscribing the series in a certain context, an “ordinary” world that we all experience on a daily basis, The Bureau becomes, in turn, a supplement to the documentary versions already available to the public via other means. This does not mean that viewers risk to confuse the fictional – what they see in the series – with the reality – the real DGSE. It is not because one thinks of Malotru’s character when passing by the DGSE headquarters that one spontaneously believes that he works there. In short, The Bureau retains its own ontology. Yet, by offering an additional point of view on our shared individual and collective reality, and in particular on the behind-the-scenes workings of democratic regimes, The Bureau paints a more complex picture of democracies in all their problematic and ambivalent aspects. From a framed version of reality, The Bureau has become one of the frameworks through which questions of state secrecy and strategic intelligence are experienced in France individually and collectively.^[74] This power of The Bureau over reality makes it all the more urgent to clarify the politics and the ethics exemplified in the series, inasmuch as it may participate in the normalization, or even the trivialization, of the hidden side of government.^[75]

5 Conclusion

Drawing on the case of The Bureau, one of the most popular spy TV series, this article has shown that the problem of “realism” for contemporary media culture is more complex than it first appears. Moving away from the traditional understanding of realism as the sole correspondence with reality, three different realisms stand out from our examination of The Bureau, which all proceed from one another. The first one is what we call a “fictional realism”: simply put the way the series conforms to the aesthetic and narrative conventions of a realistic fiction. Drawing on Diamond’s and Rancière’s writings on the matter, The Bureau lives up to the promise of fictional realism, as demonstrated by the attention to details, the absence of mythical elements and the importance of causality.

Second, the ability of The Bureau to conform to fictional realism also comes from two of the medium’s specificities: TV series’ photographic nature and their seriality. If The Bureau allows viewers to experience and re-experience the world of secret intelligence, it is thanks to the specificities of the serial medium that allows them to see, episode after episode, specific routines or practices, and to get attached to entities that a priori do not exist, namely fictional characters. Seriality also explains the gradual acquisition of expertise regarding a fictional world that may appear at first rather opaque. And because it proceeds from the enmeshment of the series with viewers’ experience, this second type of realism can be qualified as “ordinary.”

Finally, The Bureau demonstrates what I call a “performative realism,” namely the many ways in which the series has impacted shared representations of secret intelligence. By providing a common language about the secret activities of the state, the series has gone from being a framed version of reality to being one of the frameworks through which questions of state secrecy and strategic intelligence are experienced in France individually and collectively. This does not mean that viewers confuse the fictional – what they see in the series – with the reality of the true DGSE. But this power of the series over our shared reality makes it all the more urgent to clarify the moral and political issues exemplified in the series, inasmuch as they participate in the normalization, or even the trivialization, of the hidden side of government.

If The Bureau is probably one of the most striking examples of this “performative realism” of spy TV series, it is certainly not the only one. Just think of the many ways in which the series 24 or Homeland have made a dramatic entrance in the real world, whether in ordinary conversations or public debates, concerning, for example, the use of torture, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the racist stereotypes sometimes conveyed by popular culture. In the same way, Israeli series such as Fauda or Our Boys have not left reality unscathed by reactivating, each in their own way, the debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From a framed vision of reality, with all the ethical or political problems this implies, spy TV series have become one of the privileged frameworks for this appropriation of the secret world and all the clandestine operations carried out in our name. It is time to take the full measure of this upheaval, by considering them no longer as mere mirrors of reality, or objects of philosophical experimentation somewhat “above ground,” but to appreciate their relationship to the political and social world that we all inhabit.